China Dreams, By Ma Jian

Translated by Flora Drew

(2018, translated 2019)

Counterpoint

(Satirical Novel, Political and Social Commentary)

Ma Jian is a successful artist and writer who fled China and now resides in England. Interestingly, Ai Weiwei, a fellow artist and critic of the Chinese Government, contributed the painting of the blasted, dismembered tree that serves as the cover of the novel. Ma’s protagonist, Ma Daode, is a man at the top of his game in the Ministry of Propaganda. He has risen high in the ranks of the party and he is enjoying all the benefits of Xi Jinping’s “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics”: he has a family, he is rich enough to own several properties, he is fat with corruption, and he has a veritable harem of mistresses text him at all hours of the day with promises of achieving new heights of sexual depravity or threats of exposure. The only issue is that Ma, troubled by nightmares of what he did and witnessed during the Cultural Revolution, can not sleep. Neither Western nor Chinese medicine afford him any relief. Perhaps as a result of his sleep deprivation and his rising guilt, Ma hits upon a new campaign: “China Dreams!” Ma promises his bosses that the necessary and inevitable next step of the government’s effort to erase the history of the 20th century is to supplant those memories with a universal Chinese Dream that will instill in China’s citizens the appropriate levels of allegiance and obedience to the state as well as feelings of deep contentment and unfailing patriotism. Unfortunately, Ma’s nightmares outpace his efforts to find an elixir that will help him and China wipe the slate of memory clean. In meetings, at the family table, and in a high-status brothel made up to look like Mao’s private rail car, he begins hallucinating and talking aloud to people who died in the Cultural Revolution. His superiors discipline him for his outbursts, but when they warn him that one more outburst will end his career, Ma bets everything on a barefoot doctor who claims he can cure him if only he can track down the appropriate ingredients for “Old Lady Dreams Broth of Amnesia.” Will Ma be able to escape the ghosts of China’s past?

“Our job, in this Bureau, is to ensure that the China Dream enters the brain of every resident of Ziyang City. It seems clear to me that if the communal China Dream is to fully impregnate the mind, all private remembrances and dreams must first be washed away. And I, Ma Daode, volunteer to wash my brain first.” (3)