The Fat Years: A Novel
Language: English
Pages: 336
ISBN: 0385534345
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Banned in China, this controversial and politically charged novel tells the story of the search for an entire month erased from official Chinese history.
Beijing, sometime in the near future: a month has gone missing from official records. No one has any memory of it, and no one could care less—except for a small circle of friends, who will stop at nothing to get to the bottom of the sinister cheerfulness and amnesia that have possessed the Chinese nation. When they kidnap a high-ranking official and force him to reveal all, what they learn—not only about their leaders, but also about their own people—stuns them to the core. It is a message that will astound the world.
A kind of Brave New World reflecting the China of our times, The Fat Years is a complex novel of ideas that reveals all too chillingly the machinations of the postmodern totalitarian state, and sets in sharp relief the importance of remembering the past to protect the future.
the Taiwanese like their little brothers: China’s party-state government has long regarded Taiwan as a renegade province, and the 85 percent of Taiwanese on the island (as opposed to 15 percent of mainlanders) are considered of lower status than mainlanders. The Tiu Keng Leng refugee camp: Also known as Rennie’s Mill, this was a special settlement created by the Hong Kong government for Nationalist (Kuomintang) soldiers and supporters after they lost the Chinese civil war in 1949. Chen
China Gao Shengchan and Li Tiejun, organizers of an underground Protestant church, the Church of the Grain Fallen on the Ground, in Henan Province Liu Xing, a former classmate of Gao Shengchan, and a local government official County Head Yang, a young and ambitious local government official Part One 1. TWO YEARS FROM NOW Someone not seen in a long time One whole month is missing. I mean one whole month of 2011 has disappeared, it’s gone, it can’t be found. Normally
economy. This made it possible for producers and consumers throughout the world to go online and locate the most up-to-date price-control information. Price controls make real prices transparent. They are intended to allow businesspeople to make money and encourage them to produce, but prevent them from entertaining ideas of speculation, hoarding, and profiteering. What should be regulated, what should not be regulated, and what is the influence on supply and demand? These are the things that
Now China has emulated the nineteenth-century United States and announced that it has absolutely no intention of contending with other great powers for global hegemony. But East Asia is for the East Asians, and China has invited the Euro-American great powers, primarily the United States, to leave East Asia. (What China means by East Asia also includes Northeast Asia and Southeast Asia, Japan, and all the nations that were historically part of the Chinese tributary system.) During the long
appear in the media, publish, lecture, or teach. There was now only the occasional small fry, like Little Xi—his eyes met hers—who went on the net and carried on a very weak guerrilla resistance. Heaven save the Communist Party This was certainly a long, slow night. As Lao Chen, Little Xi, and Fang Caodi listened to He Dongsheng bombard them with information, their emotions went on a roller-coaster ride; they were totally exhausted, and yawning continuously. Zhang Dou had already dozed