Buying a Fishing Rod for My Grandfather, by Gao Xinjiang

Translated by Mabel Lee

(2004, translated 2005)

Harper Perrenial

(Short Story Collection)

“The Temple”

Having returned from honeymoon, the first-person narrator relates a few charming anecdotes from his adventures with his new wife, Fangfang. Before beginning, though, he acknowledges there was some difficulty securing permission to be away from work. He asks for two weeks; his employer permits one. The narrator notes that their options are limited by their narrow financial straits; he often needs to gather coins at the end of the month to afford cigarettes. Nevertheless, the happy couple board a train. Stopping at a quaint and quiet town to stretch their legs, they spontaneously decide to alter their itinerary, explore the town, and spend the night there. They are completely at ease with one another. They hike, climb, and explore an old temple where they talk to a local man and his nephew. Only a few times do their memories of the Cultural Revolution interfere with their present; when they do, they quickly push them aside.

“Both Fangfang and I had experienced years of hardship, and we had learned what life was all about. During those catastrophic years in this country, our families suffered through many misfortunes, and to some extent we still resented our generation’s fate. But I won’t go into that, either. What was important was that we could now count ourselves happy.” (2)

“In the Park”

An assignation in the park: the man and the woman discuss the weather, work, etcetera. The woman talks about her family and her husband. They turn to memories. She remembers playing ball. He corrects her: she never played ball. She always wore white shoes, like a princess. She reminds him that passersby thought they were brother and sister and that although he was just a few months older than her, she was taller then. A woman in red arrives and sits on a bench. They infer she is waiting for her lover and calculate the probability of whether the object of her affection will appear. The conversation between the man and woman is spare, but there is some bitterness, some resentment. What was the substance of their shared past?

“Do you have a girlfriend?”

“I seem to.”

“Then why don’t you get married?”

“I probably will.”

“It seems you don’t really like her.” (22-23)

“Cramp”

A man notices a woman in a red bathing suit taking the last of the late afternoon sun. He rises from his towel, jogs into the surf, and begins swimming strongly, straight out from the shore. One kilometer later, he doubles up in pain. He knows his mistake. He lies on his back, tries to slow his breathing, and begins massaging the spasming muscles in his side. He rolls over slowly and attempts to swim to sure but the pain returns, this time redoubled. The beach is now empty. He might be able to get to shore by swimming on his back and using only his legs. What story will he tell when—or if—he makes it back. And who will understand him?

“Along the whole coastline no one else was in the water. He had gone straight into the water without looking back, thinking that the woman might be watching him.” (33)

 “The Accident”

The story focuses on an accident that takes place on a crowded street in broad daylight. From a throng of bicyclists, carts, motor trucks, and pedestrians, a cyclist crosses in front of a crowded trolley, the action occurring so slowly and with such inevitability that eyewitnesses are already screaming in shock as the trolley driver sounds his horn and applies the brakes. The man is killed instantly. While some gawk at the blood running down the front of the trolley, another group gathers around the baby stroller the cyclist had attached to the front of his machine. Miraculously, the child is alive. Quick-thinking bystanders flag a passing car and drive the child to the hospital. The detached, disinterested voice of the narrator relates the conversations between policemen, strolling lovers, trolley riders, and street vendors. We hear half a dozen perspectives on who was at fault and what should be done. The passengers are allowed to leave, someone comes to remove the body, and someone else thinks to throw dirt over the blood stain. The trolley is moved away and after dark, a street-cleaning vehicle washes away all evidence of the event.

“Most of the people standing on shop steps have either gone inside or left, and the long stream of cars has passed. At the center of what has become a small crowd in the middle of the road, two policemen are taking measurements with a tape measure, while another makes notes in a little notebook. The blood under the wheels of the bus has begun to congeal and is turning black.” (52)

“Buying a Fishing Rod for My Grandfather”

As with many of Gao’s stories, this narrative is decidedly non-linear. The narrator, Reminiscing about his grandfather’s love for fishing, and perhaps still feeling guilty for having broken one of his grandfather’s favorite rods when he was just a child, the narrator finds himself poring over an assortment of fishing poles at a high-end sporting goods store. The one he holds in his hands is a nine-piece collapsing model made of carbon fiber; his grandfather only ever fished with a bamboo pole he hand-straightened over a smoky fire. He selects his gift and then goes off to revisit his hometown and hand-deliver the pole to his beloved mentor and fishing companion. The journey takes the narrator through a geography shaped by time, memory, and loss as fate and history cast grandson and grandfather trying to connect with one another despite their different fates. One of the highlights of the story is the stunning interlacing of the narrator’s vivid recollection of a football match between Argentina and West Germany and his attempt to wade the desert of memory and finally reach his grandfather.

“I walk past a new shop that sells fishing equipment. The different fishing rods on display make me think of my grandfather, and I want to buy him one. There’s a ten-piece fiberglass rod labeled ‘imported,’ though it’s not clear if it’s the whole rod that’s imported or just the fiberglass, nor is it clear how being imported makes any of it better.” (61)

“In an Instant”

The most experimental of the stories in the collection, “In an Instant” offers a series of enigmatic scenes that may be both entirely random and linked via some just-out-of-frame logic. On the sun-washed shore, a man sleeps in a beach chair, his face obscured by a hat, as the tide rises around him. A writer working at a word processor types a series of sentences that start out promising but completely undo themselves by the time the period falls. A languorous woman is dishabille, dressed for a night out, but nevertheless naked. A figure under a sheet lies prone upon a mattress in a flooding basement; the water is so high that the mattress is nearing the ceiling. One man begins hauling on a long heavy rope that extends into the ocean. More and more men arrive, each joining in the work. A couple flirts in a bar; the woman offers a brilliant apple and then hesitates as the man eavesdrops, apparently more interested in the conversations of the other couples. An elderly duo plays jazz: he plays drums, she plays the piano, and both sing. As disparate, unsettling, and as resistant to interpretation as these fragments are, the vision the author creates is a tour de force. Perhaps jazz is at work, or the great force of the sea that the men are striving against. Is there a moment when all the pieces will fall into place? And for how long?

“A big hand with blue veins is on the woman’s thigh, under the black leather skirt. Who does it belong to, and where is he? Is the old black man still playing the drums, is the piano still playing? Where is that pinging noise coming from? Anyway, everything seems to be swaying.” (101)