Product Description

In 1983, Chinese playwright, critic, fiction writer, and painter Gao Xingjian was diagnosed with lung cancer and faced imminent death.But six weeks later, a second examination revealed there was no cancer -- he had won "a second reprieve from death." Faced with a repressive cultural environment and the threat of a spell in a prison farm, Gao fled Beijing and began a journey of 15,000 kilometers into the remote mountains and ancient forests of Sichuan in southwest China. The result of this epic voyage of discovery is Soul Mountain.

Bold, lyrical, and prodigious, Soul Moutain probes the human soul with an uncommon directness and candor and delights in the freedom of the imagination to expand the notion of the individual self.

Customer Reviews (92)

Narrow petit-bourgeois commonness
The Chinese Nobel-prize-winner is depicting his journey to the Southwest of China. For him this means travelling back into the past. I visited the same places while reading the book. Hence I can state that the author understands to reflect very good the scenes of human co-existence. He does it with a simple language which is concentrated on the essentials and offers no surprises. Everybody who wants to know what moves the people over there, which motivations, which pocket faith or superstition they practise, will not find a better book. But if you are no aficionado to be steadily confronted with the errors of the people, their vain toil for undefined fortune, their alleged little triumphs, which they have to give away in the very next moment, their illusions, incremented to the excess, their narrow petit-bourgeois bitchiness, their devilry, then finally you will start to feel bored.
The occasional excurses into the intimate erotisms of the authors are not really helpful to change anything to the better. They are only filling the paper. Perhaps some readers are interested in the sexual life of the author. I do not belong to them.
I put aside the book after increasing laborious reading when I reached the middle of the work. I am namely over the middle of my lifetime and have to configure the remaining time meaningful!

great book
The book looks great! better than I expected. it looks as if it has never been opened.

There is no point...
...and that is the best part.
Quite a few reviews state that there is no "point" in this book, and that slogging through it was pure torture. The thing is, the lack of plot, character development, glamorous prose, or even a proper ending is what makes this book beautiful. This is simply the author's own spiritual journey, and he has invited the reader along for the ride. If the reader must find a plot or characters he can relate with in order to make heads or tails of a book, this is not for him.
Additionally,I believe (but I may be wrong) that this is the main reason why the structuring of the chapters is so abstract: the author wants you to know right away that the chapter numbers are virtually meaningless, and one could even read randomly without losing much relevance. There is no "point" in most of the book. Why should there be? Most truly valuable things have no concrete point: what is the point of your life? So stop analyzing this book, looking for symbolism, philosophy, whatever--and just enjoy. Like a cup of tea.

Another point I wanted to make regards the author's "misogynist" description of women.
There are two ways to reconcile this demerit. Firstly, while one reviewer cried out in exasperation that "this is the 21st century for crying out loud!" the places the author travels in still remain largely rural and traditional. Feminism is a rather modern concept, and arrived even later to China due to many reasons. Indeed, the author would probably be publicly hanged if he were to behave like this in a Western country, but in China, there are many places where this truly is the way people think and act. If one were to rush in and prematurely try to change all that to the "better" concepts of modern equality, he would only be plunging into the follies of social darwinism. Perhaps equality will come to all of China one day, but before that day arrives, we must endeavor to respect cultural differences in all their completeness.
A different perspective on this subject is that She is just a product of the thoughts of He, who of course is just another muse of I. In creating He, the author tried to express a different level of I, and this part is, like I, imperfect. To fully describe this imperfection, he needed a character that was He and at the same time was not only He. This new character was preferably female so that sexual tensions and gender differences could be written in, and she had to be subjective to He, because, essentially, He created her. Thus was born She. By nature of this arrangment, the actions and thoughts of He had to be somewhat misogynist, or the story could not continue after She leaves; if He and She were equals, her leaving would let the reader feel as if He were incomplete, lackluster, so to speak.

If we are to fully enjoy this well-deserved Nobel winner, we should not take this book seriously (not in a jesting or demeaning way). There is no true purpose to its existence, and anyone who cannot accept and enjoy this fact should find another book to munch on.

You have to learn to read this book
I have read and re-read this book a dozen times in the last year. The first time was difficult and now I am addicted. Is there anything to match Xinjiang's descriptions of the Miai festivals, the Daoist rituals in their hidden mountain temple and the old craftsman's last night as he carves the face of Tianguo?

I think you have to learn to read this book. Western authors create characters in order to tell a story; in the far-east the story exists to describe the characters and is dropped as soon as the job is done. This is why there are so many disconnected parts, stories starting from the middle, ending abruptly. Let it go.....enjoy Xinjiang's fragmented tales, powerful descriptions and gentle humour. "A true traveller has no goals, it is the absence of goals which makes an ultimate traveller"; this quotation from the book probably sums it up very nicely.

A journey of one's mind written with subtle religious tenor
I read the Chinese version first and found much was lost in English translation. I think Soul Mountain could have been used by the author as a metaphore for the purest unpolluted conscience in everyone's heart because of this old Chinese saying "ren ren you ge ling shan ta". According to Zen teaching, the more eager one tries to grasp it, the more it eludes one's reach. Soul Mountain remains as one of my favorite books for it was so beautifully written in such a subtle, enigmatic, philosophical, and thought-provoking style. -- Xingzi ... Read more

Product Description

One Man's Bible is a fictionalized account of Gao Xingjian's life under the Chinese Communist regime. Daily life is riddled with paranoia and fear, and government propaganda turns citizens against one another. It is a place where a single sentence spoken ten years earlier can make one an enemy of the state.

But One Man's Bible is also a profound meditation on the essence of writing, on exile, on the effects of political oppression on the human spirit, and on how the human spirit can triumph.

The bulk of Xingjian's absorbing narrative takes place in this bleakworld of exposure, hysteria, and reprisals, and from an appropriatelydistant third-person point of view.But the act of recollection is spurredby a four-day-long affair with a near-stranger in the mid-1990s.Thenarrator, long exiled from China, has been brought to Hong Kong to helpstage one of his plays.Here he runs into a German-Jewish woman,Margarethe, whom he knew slightly from his final years in China.ForMargarethe, survival hinges on memory.It is she who persuades the narratorto let his painful, rigorously suppressed memories begin to thaw, and if notto drop his mask, at least to remember that he is wearing one.--ReginaMarler ... Read more

Customer Reviews (14)

A very personal story within the Cultural Revolution
One Man's Bible conveys the life and death choices the narrator had to make every day during a period of extreme social turbulence.This book excels in communicating the tension between the desire to survive and thrive in society and a personal desire (in this case to keep writing)that is forbidden by "society". The narrator is certainly not a hero and does not judge what his happening around him.

I also found the book very good in being able to paint a picture of daily life, at the collective and individual level, in the period where the book is set.

beautiful, accomplished work
Gao Xingjian's second novel, "One Man's Bible" contains partially autobiographical life story of a Chinese writer, who tries to find his own place, peace of mind and right to writing and publishing in the Communist China.

The writer, living in permanent exile from China, goes to Hong Kong to attend a premiere of one of his theater plays. There, he meets Margarethe, one of the women who had an impact on his life. Margarethe, a German Jew, who stayed in Germant despite many doubts and reservations, is enquiring about the writer's past and this triggers and avalanche of memories. In fact, it is not a novel compositional trick, but because of Gao's dream-like style, similar to "The Soul Mountain", it seems still fresh and original here.

The chapters, which describe the Chinese past of the main character during the Cultural Revolution are separated by the ones closer to the present. The difference is stressed by the changes in narration between second and third person.

Among enemies and friends, career wolves and people desperately trying to preserve their individuality and self-respect, the young writer tries to figure out his own place, which requires a lot of time and effort, many schemes and being always a step ahead of the others. To write and publish in the capital, one must escape the Party purges, must have a job, a right to lodging in a tiny room in the communal apartment, an impeccable past and a perspective of a career within the Party.

Initially, the protagonist manages quite well. He becomes a leader of young rebels in yet another uprising, labeling the former previous party officials as "The Snake Spirits" (name given to all enemies of the system). He is also a lover of one of the Party leader's wife. Thanks to her warning (apparently the proofs of his disloyalty have been found (in the form of the information that in the remote past, just after the war with Japan, his father was in the illegal possession of weapons), the writer finally realizes that he will never be able to find for himself a safe place in the communist structures, allowing him creative freedom. Only then he decides to escape, initially hiding n the far away, mountain village, under the pretenses of rehabilitation through physical labor. After a long period of creative hibernation and waiting, he manages to leave China and stay abroad permanently, getting the status of the political refugee.

This seemingly realistic plot is spiked with the descriptions of events from emigrant times, the weird dreams pestering the protagonist and the masterful portraits of people who he met in China (the whole gallery of human types, from small cheaters, through people using their professional positions to the good and bad purpose, to intellectuals broken by the system) and outside (especially interesting are the female characters - already mentioned Margarethe and Sylvie, a person whose personal experience separates her like a chasm from the protagonist; it is interesting to notice, how her character is the opposite to the writer's). Various motivations and life attitudes are shown very clearly and convincingly, so that the reader can rest assured, that in each regime everyone has their own free will and our life choices depend on our will only.

The parallels to Gao's life come to mind automatically during reading. The protagonist is not from the working class (his father, like Gao's, works in a bank), he is educated, writes and then destroys his writings, afraid that they can be discovered and used against him (Gao had burned all his manuscripts before leaving China), during his years in exile he cannot visit China... It is hard not to wonder whether "One Man's Bible" is a kind of the catharsis, as the writer is shown as a person who to reach his goal - to write and publish - does not hesitate to become an opportunist. Although he is trying to live in agreement with his conscience, he makes mistakes, which he later regrets and which affect other people's lives. If Gao writes here about himself, he definitely does not try to excuse his actions or to show himself in the best light...

The autobiographical style makes "One Man's Bible" less contemplative and looking more like a "traditional" novel than "The Soul Mountain", but here again comes back the motif of integration with the rural people and respect for the antique Chinese traditions - for example, the scene of conversation with the old doctor and description of his handbook are beautiful).

This novel is worth recommendation, especially, because the access to the Chinese writers who describe the country's reality well and at the same time their books present the high level of artistic achievement, is limited, and Gao's works are banned in China (apparently, they are available on the black market, but not published officially), therefore it is very likely that they contain accurate observations (like the Polish, Soviet or other emigrant writers, to which I can relate).

Isolated In a Crowd
Part of why Gao Xingjian's book "One Man's Bible" has such an impact for the Western audience is that many of us who have heard of the Cultural Revolution in China still have no adequate experience that helps us understand it or its impact on the Chinese people.Xingjian's detached style may be the only way to deal with this and not go crazy.So many of the details are startling.When he relates how his father's ownership of a gun some 30 years previously is held against him so that he's threatened by the dreaded "reactionary" & "counter-revolutionary" labels is amazing to the Western mind.To hear of families split apart as educated parents are sent for 8 years of "re-education" in rural labor camps is shocking.When those in political disfavor become ill, the hospital becomes the ideal method for assassination.I believe it's because of this subject matter that the book has such an impact.

There is also another underlying theme of human isolation.Surrounded by people, the main character cannot let anyone get close to his heart and emotion.He interprets freedom as an absence of love; and this is perhaps the saddest aspect of the book.Xingjian's series of lovers from the German Marguerite to his first love Lin and the many other casual affairs reflect the satisfaction of the basic hormonal drives, but leave an emotional detachment that precludes real intimacy.On a purely human level, this clinical self-examination is put under a harsh light.

The novel's construction uses some of the techniques that made "Soul Mountain" also seem fresh & "un-Western."The alternation of time periods, flashing back and forth from past eras in China to the present detachment works to produce a tension in the novel.Use of various persons (e.g. I, he/she) including second person (you) narration adds a variety; whereas more accepted Western standards would look for consistency.People may react negatively to the book because we're used to a plot line where a story is told.Xingjian's story is told here, but it's in more of a travelogue format than the traditional structure that builds to a climax.Xingjian's tale seems to travel to anti-climax, much as life often can seem mundane or routine.

Some of the philosophical chapters near the end did not connect with me as well.The book does seem to end simply because the author put down the pen.But all in all, this is an important book.My family watched the film "Balzac & the Little Chinese Seamstress" the other night.I found myself using Xingjian's book to fill in many of the details about the re-education camps for my family.Translated works may lose some of the original nuance and impact, but Mabel Lee did a good job with the translation.I often would ponder an unusual image.This is an excellent mind-stretching book.Enjoy!

Engrossing
This is a fantastic autobiographical novel about the author's experiences under Mao's China and how it affected him and others.The subject matter itself is enough to reccomend this book because we rarely get insights into this closed world and must strive to understand it as it emerges as a world economic power.

The author uses an interesting techinque of detachment where the main character is also the narrator who speeks most often in the third person.Irme Kertesz in his novel "fatelessness" beautifully dscribes how people can survive even the worst suffering, such as the holocaust, by detachment of soul from body.In "Fatelessness", the protagonist survives the concentration camps by escaping outside himself and comes to not only view his suffering and surroundings in the third person but becomes so detached that the physical pain, wounds, illness and suffering of his own body are described and experienced as a thiid person.This mode of escape was subconcious and persisted after the war, leaving a permanent scar of detachment that leaves the reader wondering how the protagonist will relate in peacetime.

Gao has evidently experienced a similar form of coping mechanism that is evident in the sections of the novel that take place in the present, during his expatriat years.It becomes manifest by his casual serial sexual encounters with women who also have similar problems of forming lasting bonds and attachments because of trauma (rape etc).Gao's inability to form a lasting personal bond extends to his lack of attachment to China, his people and his new home, career and friends.Though his insights are [rofound, Gao's emotions and actions are superficial and dream-like.

The most brilliant technique is his use of the word "you."The detached narrator (Gao)uses this word to refer to the subject (Gao)as if he is writing for and talking to himself.I have only seen this technique used in Gao's other novel translated into English "Soul Moutain."Later in the novel, when describing the past he uses "him" to describe the subject "Gao" living in Mao's China.The Narrator uses "you" to refer to the Gao in the present, expatriat state.

The use of "you" and "him" has a multilevel effect on the text and the reader."Him" Gao of the past becomes "You" Gao of the present - a different level of detachment."Him" Gao is the Gao of the present describing the Gao of the past as if from a distance, as if that person no longer exists and is dead or lost.The "You" Gao is more familiar, closer, intimate yet detached, a different, mature Gao of the present who is having these relationships, having his plays performed and struggling with the present novel and his past.If a man is the sum of his experiences we are left still wondering who the real Gao is and if he knows himself.It is as much a discovery of Mao's oppressive China as an effort of self descovery -- both painful.

The other effect of the use of "You" used by the narrator to describe Gao in the present is the author subtly drawing in the reader, to place him or herself in Gao's place, to become Gao."You" also refers to the reader.We are invited to become Gao in our imagination as we read the text.The simplicity of one word creating somany layers of meaning and effect on the text and reader is on par with Jose Saramago's penchant for a lack of puntuation in many of his works.

This book is indeed something special, ingenious, and genuine.You may walk away haunted and disoriented, angry, frustrated, helpless and questioning your security.But as Gao makes clear at the begining, the experience of a Chinese mind under Mao can only be compared to the Holocaust under Hitler.Here East and West share a commonality of humanity at its best and worst, a common suffering and experience and a place to begin a dialog of understanding.Evil takes on many forms but it's effects on the human soul are universal.

Cultural Drift
To this day, the bizarre, cult-like events of the Cultural Revolution remain a prime focal point for Chinese novelists and, especially, memoirists. Writers from Adeline Yen-Mah, Jung Chang, Jan Wong, and Anchee Min to Yu Hua, Mo Yan, Dai Sijie, and Yan Geling have plumbed the depths of political capriciousness, human debasement, and the sheer will to survive in their own lives or in those of their fictional characters. Yet few if any Chinese writers have dared examine the effects of the Cultural Revolution on their later, post-Tiananmen Square massacre (1989) lives. Gao Xingjian's semi-autobiographical novel, ONE MAN'S BIBLE, is the first I have encountered, and the results are hauntingly devastating.

The story opens in a Hong Kong hotel in 1996 with the unnamed Chinese narrator (an internationally successful playwright) and his temporary paramour, a white Jewish woman of German descent named Margarethe. Theirs is an affair of mutual convenience and simple animal lust, but it is also a continuation of two largely hopeless searches for human closeness and warmth even as both characters deny that they seek such a thing. Margarethe works insistently to draw out the narrator's past, asking him to tell his life's story and suggesting that he turn it into a book. The narrator for his part insists that such a thing is not possible, that "things in China can not be explained by language alone," yet the book of his life unfolds before us in chapters that alternate (for the first half of the book) between his present-day encounter with Margarethe and his autobiography.

What emerges from this approach is a haunting tale of a rational, intelligent man trying desperately to cope with the utter irrationality of the Cultural Revolution. At first a nonpolitical citizen of Beijing, the narrator decides that he can best survive by becoming a faction leader. Having established his revolutionary bona fides, he then lays low and chooses his moves carefully, ultimately realizing that his next move is to the countryside, to keep his head down as a peasant farmer and teacher for perhaps the rest of his life. To maintain his sanity, he secretly writes about his feelings and experiences, keeping his papers well-hidden from nosy neighbors. Over time, he discovers that survival under Mao requires repeated acts of selfishness and disregard for the feelings of others, particularly the women who pass through his life, offering sexual temptation coupled with the threat of personal ruin. Ultimately, Margarethe returns to Europe and disappears from the alternating scenes, leaving Gao to examine ever more intensely his own past, his failings and regrets and lost relationships. He never shares with us the manner in which he "escapes" from China, partly because it doesn't really matter and partly because, in a psychological sense, he will never escape.

By using the alternating chapters, the author establishes a clear divide between history and the present while simultaneously illustrating how that history impinges on the narrator's current life. Gao takes this structure even further by bifurcating the narrator himself, referring to his present-day self in the second person (you) and to his pre-escape self in the third person (he). Yet they are clearly just variations of the same person; the narrator's past is an inescapable part of his present. He is scarred for life by the Cultural Revolution, and the lonely, distant, untrusting person he has become is a direct reflection of the persona he was forced to adopt in order to survive those times. He has learned to be a soulless user of others, and little else.

This is a dark and haunting examination of life and survival during the unimaginable events of the Cultural Revolution and its aftermath. Timed and placed in 1996 Hong Kong just before the British turnover over that island to the Communist government in Beijing, it is also a fascinating metaphorical contemplation of modern China, a nation of soulless users lusting after money the same way his narrator lusts after women. Gao Xingjian emerged from relative obscurity (at least outside of China) to become his country's surprise first Nobel Prize winner for Literature. In ONE MAN'S BIBLE, Western readers can get a sense of why he was chosen. Deservedly so, it would seem. ... Read more

Product Description

These six stories by Nobel Prize winner Gao Xingjian transport the reader to moments where the fragility of love and life, and the haunting power of memory, are beautifully unveiled. In "The Temple," the narrator's acute and mysterious anxiety overshadows the delirious happiness of an outing with his new wife on their honeymoon. In "The Cramp," a man narrowly escapes drowning in the sea, only to find that no one even noticed his absence. In the title story, the narrator attempts to relieve his homesickness only to find that he is lost in a labyrinth of childhood memories.

Customer Reviews (7)

intriguingly different
A short book, with stylized Chinese fish on its cover, Buying a Fishing Rod for My Grandfather was an intriguing foray into foreign short stories for me. The author is a Nobel prize winner, so I knew at the outset that this wouldn't be light reading. But the stories are truly fascinating. In the first tale I feel like a fly on the wall, listening to someone speak; is he remembering the past? Is he talking to his family, or to his wife, or to the pictures in his mind? The stories each left me slightly off-balance, not quite sure what I was reading. But the title story, Buying a Fishing Rod for My Grandfather, suddenly centered me as the narrator looks into memories of his past and finds himself lost in change.

The final story, In an Instant, fills most of the second half of the book. It is a beautiful piece, reminding me of a Chinese plate my grandmother had. I don't remember much about the plate, except that there were blue pictures, a temple and a bridge, trees, and a feeling that the closer I looked at one image the more likely I was to find myself in another. The writing flows in the same way between scenes, adding imagination to each and drawing the reader on with the movement of the prose. There's no story as such, but there's reflection and change; it's oddly mesmerizing, like that moment of falling asleep or of waking up, when objects take on meanings that really belong to something else. It takes much more than an instant to read, and stays longer than an instant in the mind, but it's beautiful in the same way as that plate.

So now I'll go back and reread them all, in light of the mysteries of memory and time, and in appreciation of something truly different and impressive.

Six Flashes in a Flash
I read Gao Xingjian's "One Man's Bible" and came away ready to read more of his prose.The problem is; he hasn't written that much (at least that's been translated into English).My next step was either the epic "Soul Mountain" or the series of snapshots that comprise "Buying a Fishing Rod for My Grandfather".I came across "Fishing Rod" first and it didn't take me or anyone else much time to stroll though it.

"Buying a Fishing Rod for My Grandfather" is a small collection of six short snapshots; scenes that convey an image or emotion that, presumeably, warrents the story's inclusion in this book.There's a story about an accident that says as much about the bystanders as the people involved.I read this shortly after driving past the site of a serious accident in Atlanta.The way everyone had to slow down to see what they could see came to mind as I read the story titled "The Accident".Others were good in their own way.The last story, "In an Instant", was one I had given up on as a chaotic rambling.However, I kept with it and it wrapped up quite impressively at the end.

I don't know that I benefited greatly by having read this book but it didn't hurt any and it only took a brief sitting to read through it.

Emotional Kaleidoscope
This book contains six beautifully crafted short stories built on ordinary events. Crafted more to evoke emotions than tell a tale, these stories range in style from sparse dialogue to rich description of detail.

The dream-like imagery in the last two stories, "Buying a Fishing Rod for My Grandfather" and "In an Instant", carries you along in a hypnotic stream. "The Temple" starts as a charming journey into the country with newlyweds and slowly turns melancholy. "In the Park" takes place almost entirely in dialogue that is surprisingly effective at conveying nervous regret. "The Cramp" skillfully turns danger into triumph into insignificance. "The Accident" is a masterful demonstration of how a tragic death is a mosaic of different events based on point-of-view.

The stories are different in style, but the same themes can be seen running through each: memory, change, loss, and family. These short stories are not going to be everyone's cup of tea - if you need a plot, this isn't for you. But if you appreciate beautiful use of language to paint a picture, you'll probably savor this small collection. The translation seems very unobtrusive - you never get jarring feelings of disconnect from the language.

Six Charming Stories by a great writer...
A great book that carries six great stories. Each story has it's own character and charm. Gao Xingjian style is simple and reflects some of the Chinese proud culture...Gao Xingjian is able to make you live the detail of each story, make you wonder on the events and worry about the situation of some of the characters.

The book (even being 120 pages) has so much to offer, a very entertaining book, and the stories are so different and so amazing, it all adds up to being a great product of a Noble prize winner...

Easy, great reading.

Six Prose Paintings
Reading the six short stories in Gao Xing Jian's BUYING A FISHING ROD FOR MY GRANDFATHER is like wandering into a small gallery containing six Impressionist paintings.Each story paints a quiet verbal picture of loss and gain, of change, of solitary existence and the consolations of love and family.Gao's works seem nearly plotless, vignettes whichcreate scenes and atmosphere more than story lines.Then again, life consists of such brief moments and experiences; stories are the fictions we create to connect and give personal meaning to these separate moments.

Gao's technique varies from story to story.His opening work, "The Temple," describes the spontaneous actions of a honeymooning couple as they disembark from a train to explore a decaying hillside temple.The story, written in standard prose form, speaks achingly of history and loss, of life moving forward in spite of past tragedies.The second story, "In the Park," switches almost completely to dialog between two nameless acquaintances who meet by coincidence in a park and reclaim their childhood memories as another young woman sits crying on a nearby park bench.

The third story, "The Cramp," gives a harrowing account of a casual swimmer who nearly dies alone within sight of the shore, only to discover when he makes it ashore that no one has noticed.The next story, "The Accident," tells nearly the same story in a moment by moment account of a fatal traffic accident on a Beijing street.The police arrive and take care of the situation, street cleaners come to remove the broken bicycle and wipe the blood from the streets, and life continues on anonymously, as if the death never occurred.

The title story follows, offering a powerful account of a neighborhood no longer recognizable to its main character who had lived there as a boy.The story conveys a sense of loss and disorienting change, of a simple way of life no longer to be found.

The stories in this collection were written between 1983 and 1990, about the same time Gao was completing his novel SOUL MOUNTAIN.The writing is simple and direct, yet it creates memorable images and a strong sense of atmosphere.Despite being written by China's first Nobelist in Literature, these are not stories about China or Chinese culture.Several of these stories offer no sense of place or culture - they could be taking place anywhere in the world.Perhaps this is a reflection of Gao's status as an expatriate in Paris.

For those who enjoy modern Chinese and Chinese-American literature by the likes of Mo Yan, Su Tong, Ha Jin, and Liu Heng, Gao Xing Jian's BUYING A FISHING ROD FOR MY GRANDFATHER stands out for its daring style and its sublimation of Chinese culture to more universal settings and themes.In that respect, Gao is stylistically closer to Japanese writers like Kenzaburo Oe and Haruki Murakami than any Chinese writer I have yet encountered.Anyone who reads this book will likely be motivated to pick up a copy of SOUL MOUNTAIN or ONE MAN'S BIBLE. ... Read more

Product Description
When Gao Xingjian won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2000, he became the only Chinese writer to achieve such international acclaim. The Chinese University Press is the first publisher of his work in the English language. Indeed, The Other Shore is one of the few works by the author available in English today. The Other Shore: Plays by Gao Xingjian contains five of Gao´s most recent works: The Other Shore (1986), Between Life and Death (1991), Dialogue and Rebuttal (1992), Nocturnal Wanderer (1993), and Weekend Quartet (1995). With original imagery and in beautiful language, these plays illuminate the realities of life, death, sex, loneliness, and exile. The plays also show the dramatist´s idea of the tripartite actor, a process by which the actor neutralizes himself and achieves a disinterested observation of his self in performance. An introduction by the translator describes the dramatist and his view on drama. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

Heads Roll
Gao Xingjian's "The Other Shore" is an excellent collection of his plays.Translator Gilbert C. F. Fong does a good job expressing the eloquence of Xingjian's dialogue.The scholarly introduction gives analysis on the staging and influences on the playwright.

"Between Life & Death" is an amazing play, essentially a 32-page monologue for a female, although it could also be broken between various actresses playing aspects of the same character.It reminded me of an esoteric extended version of "The Vagina Monologues."

"Dialogue & Rebuttal" is an existential exploration of the male-female relationship.Man's expectations clash with woman's needs.It's not a plot-oriented play, but could be a gripping on stage.

"Nocturnal Wanderer" impressed me as most likely successful play for production in the United States.The Sleepwalker is the main character.Xingjian employs the interesting technique of having most of the dialogue of this character in second person, as if he were expressing extended prose monologues.The Sleepwalker encounters the Prostitute, the Ruffian & the Tramp, who each weave into what appears to be Xingjian's closest flirtation with traditional plot structure.The play becomes interesting with several gunshot assassinations and a head that rolls out of the briefcase at various intervals.

"Weekend Quartet" reminded me a bit of Philip Barry's "Hotel Universe" where a diverse group of travelers meet for a weekend.In Xingjian's play, an aging artist Bernard and his longtime live-in friend Anne invite a young author Daniel and his youthful girlfriend Cecile for the weekend.Xingjian's form is unique, writing sections of the play that lists the characters who speak.For instance, a section is labeled as dialogue between Daniel and Anne without designating the specific lines to be spoken by each character.The reader follows along with Xingjian's lead, understanding that probably Daniel speaks first followed by Anne and then alternating through the end of the section.It's a very different way of reading a play.What I understood is that this leads us to understand that the characters are playing aspects of each other that could be shuffled so that each assumes the other's point of view.Some of the quartets are more plot-oriented with the final section getting quite metaphysical.There is an extended moving monologue at the end by Bernard who faces death that could shine in oral interpretation or as an audition piece.

"The Other Shore" is a Buddhist play about a monk who is condemned for speaking the truth.It is non-realistic with the actors donning characters and shucking them at different points in the action.It requires very physical (handstands, etc.) and stylized staging.

I was glad to become acquainted with this Chinese playwright's theatrical works.Along with "Snow In August," it is an important body of work that begs production in the United States.Enjoy!

For serious readers only
This collection of recent plays by Gao Xingjian is worth investigating by merit of the dramatist's receipt of the Nobel Prize and for the controversy raging around him and the Prize in China. Most readers will probably pick up this book for those very reasons. The plays contained are post-modern, avant-garde, and in some cases utterly abstract. They're the sort of scripts that probably make for very interesting plays when performed, but make for rather tedius reading. Some scripts make for very enjoyable literature, but Gao's are a little too "artsy" to work in print alone. I recommend "The Other Shore" for serious readers only: dramatists, academics, and the hardcore Chinese literature enthusiast. Casual readers, merely curious about this year's Nobel winner, should avoid this collection and instead read Gao's novel, "Soul Mountain", which is much more accessible.

Nobel Press Release
The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2000 goes to the Chinese writer Gao Xingjian

"for an œuvre of universal validity, bitter insights and linguistic ingenuity, which has opened new paths for the Chinese novel and drama".

In the writing of Gao Xingjian literature is born anew from the struggle of the individual to survive the history of the masses. He is a perspicacious sceptic who makes no claim to be able to explain the world. He asserts that he has found freedom only in writing.

His great novel Soul Mountain is one of those singular literary creations that seem impossible to compare with anything but themselves. It is based on impressions from journeys in remote districts in southern and south-western China, where shamanistic customs still linger on, where ballads and tall stories about bandits are recounted as the truth and where it is possible to come across exponents of age-old Daoist wisdom. The book is a tapestry of narratives with several protagonists who reflect each other and may represent aspects of one and the same ego. With his unrestrained use of personal pronouns Gao creates lightning shifts of perspective and compels the reader to question all confidences. This approach derives from his dramas, which often require actors to assume a role and at the same time describe it from the outside. I, you and he/she become the names of fluctuating inner distances.

Soul Mountain is a novel of a pilgrimage made by the protagonist to himself and a journey along the reflective surface that divides fiction from life, imagination from memory. The discussion of the problem of knowledge increasingly takes the form of a rehearsal of freedom from goals and meaning. Through its polyphony, its blend of genres and the scrutiny that the act of writing subjects itself to, the book recalls German Romanticism's magnificent concept of a universal poetry.

Gao Xingjian's second novel, One Man's Bible, fulfils the themes of Soul Mountain but is easier to grasp. The core of the book involves settling the score with the terrifying insanity that is usually referred to as China's Cultural Revolution. With ruthless candour the author accounts for his experiences as a political activist, victim and outside observer, one after the other. His description could have resulted in the dissident's embodiment of morality but he rejects this stance and refuses to redeem anyone else. Gao Xingjian's writing is free of any kind of complaisance, even to good will. His play Fugitives irritated the democracy movement just as much as those in power.

Gao Xingjian points out himself the significance for his plays of the non-naturalistic trends in Western drama, naming Artaud, Brecht, Beckett and Kantor. However, it has been equally important for him to "open the flow of sources from popular drama". When he created a Chinese oral theatre, he adopted elements from ancient masked drama, shadow plays and the dancing, singing and drumming traditions. He has embraced the possibility of moving freely in time and space on the stage with the help of one single gesture or word - as in Chinese opera. The uninhibited mutations and grotesque symbolic language of dreams interrupt the distinct images of contemporary humanity. Erotic themes give his texts feverish excitement, and many of them have the choreography of seduction as their basic pattern. In this way he is one of the few male writers who gives the same weight to the truth of women as to his own.

The Swedish Academy

Great Offerings from the Chinese Master
Gao Xingjian's artistic sensibility was chiselled out of his double frustration of public condemnation and private shock.

After being established as a prominent Chinese playwright, he suddenly fell out of grace of the communist authorities, who dubbed his works as `Spiritual Pollution'. At that time he was also undergoing an intense personal trauma, being diagnosed, wrongly, with lung cancer. He set out on an extensive journey to the heart of China covering 5 months and 15,000 kilometres which helped him rediscover his self and his countrymen and helped change his world-view.

Although a direct outcome of this emotional journey was the phantasmogoric novel `Soul Mountain', the present five plays also bear testimony to his broadened horizon.

In his plays the mythical findsplace with the real, as he tries to make sense of the diversity of his land's culture and its people. Gao tries to mask the horrors of the Cultural Revolution in a set of highly original imagery. The symbolism sometimes obfuscates the proceedings, but the stark realism of the human drama comes back again and again. Some of Gao's views, on man woman relationship for instance, may not be palatable to the Western sensibility, but one has to understand the vast compass that he is handling in these plays.

Out of the five plays `The Other Shore' and `Nocturnal Wanderer' are the most gripping. But all the five plays reflect the yearning of the individual to break lose from the stifling collective memory.

Try it...
I read in the NY Times that Gao won a Nobel Prize for Literature, though most of his work is banned by the Chinese government. For this reason alone, I would read it. See NY Times' 10/13/00 article for more on him. ... Read more

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"Painting starts where words fail or are inadequate in expressing what one wants to express." -- Gao Xingjian, Harvard University Gazette

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Return to Painting
It came in a very timely fashion and in excellent condition.I am enjoying it.

Ink Painting of Transcendental Beauty
This can be for you one of those life-transforming books.It is filled with ink washes of transcendental beauty.For the used prices available in 2007 you can't afford not to buy a copy!Yes, what he says about painting can alter your way of thinking about art.Have a look at my scan of "Earth and Sky" to give you a slight taste of what lies between the pages of this book. ... Read more

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Straight to the Truth
This slim but powerful book makes a case for literature as a living, crucial source of nurture and a noble human activity, in these times of doltish cynicism, profit-taking ignorance and commercially manufactured discouragement.

Gao stresses a rigorous program for the writing of literature, which earns it a place on my own short shelf of indispensable and inspirational books on writing. But the individual expression Gao champions should not be confused with the self-indulgent and programmatic confessionals lining the bookstore shelves. "In this postmodern age, which is concerned only with consumerism, the unchecked bloating of the individual is already a far-off myth..." Though he rejects ideological purposes, he does believe literature has social benefit, in the creation of empathy. "Yet through literature there can be a certain degree of communication, so the writing of literature that essentially has no goal does leave people a testimony of survival. And if literature still has some significance, it is probably this."

Gao Xignjian achieved his first success in China in the early 1980s with plays, and continued to write for the theatre, as well as fiction and literary essays through years of shifting political winds until he went into exile towards the end of the decade. His output only increased in the 1990s. Though his autobiographical novel, "Soul Mountain", was published in the U.S. in the same year as his Nobel Prize, and remains his best known work in America, it was completed shortly after he left China.

For Gao, the purpose of literature is simple: the search for truth. "...its value lies in discovering and revealing what is rarely known, little known or thought to be known, but in fact not very well known, of the truth of the human world." "For the writer, truth in literature approximates ethics, and is the ultimate ethic of literature."

But this truth is not in the realm of metaphysics or ideology. "Truth is perceptual and concrete. Full of life, truth is available for human observation at any time and in any place; it is the interaction between subject and object." It is the individual's "testimony of his times."

"The language required by literature comes from spontaneous speech that goes straight to truth." Gao is a particular champion of the auditory. "The human need for language is not simply a need for the transmission of meaning; language is also needed for one to listen to, and for affirming one's own existence."

"It is my view that the only responsibility a writer has is to the language he writes in." And that language must sing. "The musicality of language is of extreme importance, and music provides me with more insights than any sort of literary theory." "If I fail to hear music in the sentences I have written, I acknowledge defeat..."


Gao writes about his own approach to fiction and theatre, and (especially in a terse but harrowing chapter near the end) his battles with Chinese authorities, but all within the context of this literary purpose. Agree or disagree with his assertions, this is a book anyone involved in literature must read. In the main, it is a book that everyone should read to understand the activity of literature--the single voice singing a surviving truth beyond the amorphous noise.

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Inspired by the author's personal trauma in Europe and Mao's China, these two plays scrutinize the psychology of self-proclaimed heroes and the consequences of dangerous revolutions that turn literature and art into hostages of politics, fashions, and trends.

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Gao Xingjian is the first Chinese Nobel Laureate in Literature. The Swedish Academy summarized his achievements as follows: "An oeuvre of universal validity, bitter insights and linguistic ingenuity, which has opened new paths for the Chines novel and drama." The collection, which aims to present the diversity of Gao's literary talents, contains the highlights of his essays, stories, plays and poems.

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This collection of over 60 ink paintings by Gao Xingjian represents his philosophy and painting style. Gao believes that the world cannot be explained and that artistic creation offers the only way to escape into meaning. The images convey these aspects of an inexplicable world-the black-and-white inner world that underlies the complexity of human existence. Drawn in traditional Chinese black ink on rice paper, each painting is characterized by a spontaneous overflow of the ink, creating metaphorical abstract images. ... Read more

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Gao Xingjian, the Nobel Laureate in Literature 2000, is a writer of many talents, being a novelist, playwright, stage director, painter, translator and critic at the same time. The Swedish Academy summarized in a press release Gao's achievements as follows: "an ouvre of universal validity, bitter insights and linguistic ingenuity, which has opened new paths for the Chinese novel and drama." His novels,Soul Mountain andOne Man's Bible, and his many later plays seek to rediscover the self in its originary consciousness, which is translingual and transcultural. Educated in China and now residing in France, Gao Xingjian writes in between two traditions, the Chinese and the Western. He started his literary career in the early 1980s, and has been noted for his experimentation with the dramatic form and his innovation in the use of narrative voice. In his works, he explores subjectivity beyond the limits of language by examining the self in relation to gender, culture, location and politics. This book presents a collection of critical studies on various aspects of Gao Xingjian's novels and plays. Contributors include distinguished scholars in the fields of comparative literature, theatre and Chinese studies, whose views form a critical dialogue on the writer's achievements in literature and the theatre.

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From Gao Xingjian, a winner of the 2000 Nobel Prize for Literature, comes a "major drama about life."

Snow in August is based on the life of Huineng (AD 633-713), the Sixth Patriarch of Zen Buddhism in Tang Dynasty China. Packed with the myriad sights and sounds of both the Eastern and Western theatrical traditions, the play exudes wonder and mysticism. The manykoan cases and the story of Huineng's enlightenment afford the audience fascinating vignettes of Gao's vision of life and existence -- an awareness of the Void and the need for a personal peace with oneself.

Customer Reviews (1)

An Eastern Wind
Nobel Prize winner Gao Xingjian's play "Snow in August" is borne by an Eastern wind, quite different from what Western audiences would expect to see for a night in the theatre.The scholarly introduction traces Xingjian's influences from Meyerhold, Artaud & Brecht and points out similarities and differences.With more than 30 characters and much of the script sung, it would be a challenge to stage.Rather than having a traditional story, we see more of a philosophical development.To describe what happens, a monk named Huineng becomes a major Buddhist leader before his death at the end of Act II.Act III follows up and communicates that life continues with its joys and disappointments.I enjoyed reading the play because it was quite different.Xingjian creates excellent tension with many of his crowd scenes and short staccato dialogue contrasted with flowing spiritually flavored speeches.Not knowing the music, it is harder to interpret the impact of the singing from just reading the page.All in all, this is an interesting reading experience that makes me want to become familiar with more of the playwright's work.Enjoy! ... Read more

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In this pioneering study of the entire written works of Gao Xingjian (高行健), China's first winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Jessica Yeung analyses each group of his writing and argues for a reading of Gao's writing as a phenomenon of "cultural translation": his adoption of Modernism in the 1980s is a translation of the European literary paradigm; and his attempt at postmodernist writing in the 1990s and 2000s is the effect of an exilic nihilism expressive of a diasporic subjectivity struggling to translate himself into his host culture. Thus Dr Yeung looks at Gao's works from a double perspective: in terms of their relevance both to China and to the West.

Avoiding the common polarized approaches to Gao's works, her dual approach means that she neither extolls them as the most brilliant works of contemporary Chinese literature eligible for elevation to the metaphysical level, nor dismisses them as nothing more than elitist and misogynist mediocre writings; rather she sees this important body of work in a more nuanced way.

This book is suitable for all readers who are interested in contemporary Chinese culture and literature. It is particularly valuable to students who are keen to engage with the issue of contemporary China-West cultural relationships.
... Read more

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This book argues that Gao Xingjian's Idea of Theatre can only be explained by his broad knowledge and use of various Chinese and Western theatrical, literary, artistic and philosophical traditions. The author aims to show how Gao's theories of the theatre of anti-illusion, theatre of conscious convention, of the "poor theatre" and total theatre, of the neutral actor and the actor - jester - storyteller are derived from the Far Eastern tradition, and to what extent they have been inspired by 20th century Euro-American reformers of theatre such as Antonin Artaud, Bertolt Brecht, Vsevolod Meyerhold, Jerzy Grotowski and Tadeusz Kantor. Although Gao's plays and theatre form the major subject, this volume also pays ample attention to his painting and passion for music as sources of his dramaturgical strategies. ... Read more

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Written by Gao Xingjian, the first Chinese recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature. This book sets out to make sense of the horror that was China's Cultural Revolution. ... Read more

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A reclusive painter living in exile in Paris, Gao Xingjian found himself instantly famous when he became the first Chinese-language writer to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature (2000). The author of the novel Soul Mountain, Gao is best known in his native country not as a visual artist or novelist, but as a playwright and theater director. This important yet rarely studied figure is the focus of Sy Ren Quah's rich account appraising his contributions to contemporary Chinese and world theater over the past two decades.

A playwright himself, Quah provides an in-depth analysis of the literary, dramatic, intellectual, and technical aspects of Gao's plays and theatrical concepts, treating Gao's theater not only as an art form but, with Gao himself, as a significant cultural phenomenon. The Bus Stop, Wild Man, and other early works are examined in the context of 1980s China. Influenced by Stanislavsky, Brecht, and Beckett, as well as traditional Chinese theater arts and philosophies, Gao refused to conform to the dominant realist conventions of the time and made a conscious effort to renovate Chinese theater. The young playwright sought to create a "Modern Eastern Theater" that was neither a vague generalization nor a nationalistic declaration, but a challenge to orthodox ideologies. After fleeing China, Gao was free to experiment openly with theatrical forms. Quah examines his post-exile plays in a context of performance theory and philosophical concerns, such as the real versus the unr!eal, and the Self versus the Other. The image conveyed of Gao is not of an activist but of an intellectual committed to maintaining his artistic independence who continues to voice his opinion on political matters.

Gao's reputation in China has suffered from a seeming lack of relevance for the history of Chinese drama due to his disinterest in social concerns. In the West, by contrast, his willingness to explore themes considered universal has won him a place within the world literature curriculum, but not widespread recognition. Students of modern and Chinese theater and literature, as well as those with an interest in comparative literature and cultural studies, will welcome this illuminating work that probes Gao Xingjian's transcultural creativity and its complex significance. ... Read more