Jia Pingwa is one of the most respected and widely read writers in China. He is particularly associated with realist writing about rural communities in his home province of Shaanxi. Though several of his novels have been translated into English, he has not yet had the major breakthrough he deserves.
Old Kiln adds to the growing list of contemporary Chinese fiction that explores Mao Zedong’s disastrous Cultural Revolution, including works by Yan Lianke, Zou Jingzhi and Zhang Xianliang. Jia Pingwa was a teenager during that period and writes with both the authority of direct experience and the benefit of perspective.
The novel is set in the remote village of Old Kiln, known in years past for its excellence in porcelain, but now a poor backwater relying on subsistence communal farming.
The story focuses on young Inkcap, who was found in a river and adopted. He lives with his Gran who is considered a “class enemy” owing to Inkcap’s grandfather’s ties to the nationalist Kuomintang army.
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Bash is a charismatic local tough who becomes the leader of a violent faction at the vanguard of the Cultural Revolution. He is central to the bloody internecine struggles between rival factions in the village. Contrasting with Bash is Goodman, the village’s unofficial spiritual guide and healer, whose world view is steeped in Daoism and Buddhism rather than Maoist ideology.
This long novel moves at the slow pace of village life; however, it is brimming with vibrant characters, ribald humour and memorable anecdotes. It offers precision writing that re-creates the experience of living among uneducated people who have become infantilised and bewildered by successive waves of ideological reform.
The translation has been split between three talented translators, and it is to their immense credit that the novel retains such unity of style and coherence of tone, without losing any of the comedy and tenderness that makes it so human.
Old Kiln is quietly epic in its patient but unforgettable depiction of life in rural China under the tyranny of the Cultural Revolution. It is unquestionably a masterpiece and ought to consolidate Jia Pingwa’s reputation as a writer of international importance.
