Strange Beasts of China by Yan Ge

Published in China in 2006; published in translation by Melville House on July 13, 2021

Strange Beasts of China was written and published while Yan Ge was living in China, which might explain why the book reads as if she used metaphors drawn from fantasy to avoid censorship. Her criticism of authoritarian rule is indirect but unmistakable. In one chapter, for example, the government operates a fantastic scheme that coerces the loyalty of the middle class, creating “an unquestioning devotion” to their rulers “that would never be overturned.” The scheme comes at a price, as the ruler “wins over his people, but only when they have lost their minds. . . . Is this gaining or losing? No one can say.” An authoritarian mind might accuse Yan of being subversive if she made her criticism any plainer. An American reader might think about how authoritarian rulers in the United States encourage reality denial, a form of lunacy that assures the unquestioning loyalty of their voters. Notwithstanding that theme, the book is not primarily concerned with political governance.

Each chapter in Strange Beasts of China introduces a new beast. Yan makes a point of telling us that each type of beast is very like a human despite their distinguishing characteristics. One type of beast has gills behind the ears. One type has coarse and “mottled black” skin. One is grown like a sapling that eventually takes on human form. One lives underground where bodies are buried. They tend to be male and female but they don’t always reproduce in conventional ways. Some types are violent and other are passive. The beasts are a diverse group, a fact the fictional city of Yong’an should (and sometimes does) celebrate, but the differences that distinguish beasts from humans also cause discomfort among the city’s homogenous human population. The beasts tend to be tribal, sticking to their own, although some types are admired by humans. Some of those are prized as possessions. Others are feared and, thanks to human efforts, are bordering on extinction.

The novel’s narrator is a writer whose stories about beasts (as well as food columns and trashy romance stories) are published in a local newspaper. While each chapter incorporates a different kind of beast into the narrative, the book reads as a novel because of the larger story that runs through the chapters. That story belongs to the narrator. She is a lonely woman, “truly scared. In all the vastness of the city, I don’t have a single blood relative, no family at all.” Her friends die or leave or enter asylums or turn against her. She is depressed. "For many years now," she writes, "I hadn’t felt anything like joy.” As the chapters unfold, she learns truths (or potential truths, as objective truth is never quite clear) about her own identity. Her parents, friends, and former lovers have all deceived her at some point. She is frightened of how easily she believed them, how she imagined she was loved. But maybe she was loved by others, people whose love she failed to recognize.

When she isn’t chasing after strange beasts, the narrator spends much of her time drinking and feeling sorry for herself at the Dolphin Bar. A recurring story line involves the narrator’s complex and evolving relationship with the zoology professor who took a special interest in her for reasons that are initially obscure, and maintained that interest — or perhaps maintained an interest in emotionally abusing her — after she dropped out of college and became a writer. A later story line adds a younger man, also a favored student of the professor, who maintains an ambiguous relationship with the narrator — a relationship that, like all relationships, the narrator finds confusing.

Yan seems to have a dual purpose, illustrating how distant individuals are from each other (“You don’t know my story, and I don’t know yours. We poured our hearts into our own stories, but never shared them with each other.”) while illuminating the close connections between people who seem to have nothing in common. Perhaps the narrator is a strange beast. Perhaps everyone is. When the narrator asks whether love is possible between humans and beast, she is really asking whether love is possible between two humans who can never really know each other.

A wry humor infects the novel, evident (for example) in Yan’s descriptions of the varying preferences of the different types of beasts (Joyous Beasts “enjoy fantasy novels, and hate Maths”; Heartsick Beasts enjoy steamed buns and char siu pork while Impasse Beasts survive on a diet of human despair). Yet the novel’s themes, including depression and loneliness, death (by suicide, by murder, by fate), oppression, prejudice, and the apparent impossibility of understanding ourselves, much less another person, are far from light. Yan achieves a fine balance of comedy and tragedy.

At times, Yan states the obvious, or perhaps the meaningless, as if she is stating something profound. At other times, she expresses deep thoughts that, if not entirely original, are provocative because of the original way in which they are showcased. The last chapter, an attempt to reimagine the entire novel, falls flat. The novel as a whole, however, is creative, surprising, and enjoyable.

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