Synopsis:

See also separate blog entry on the film This Side of Heaven based on this work:

http://www.redroom.com/blog/geling-yan/film-side-heaven

This novella is about a clever, pretty twenty-year-old village girl named Chiao-chiao who, as the story opens, is traveling by train with two other girls from her village, chaperoned by an older woman, Auntie Zeng, who is vaguely related to a shady but familiar character in her village. Chiao-chiao is very excited to be traveling to Shenzhen, the special economic zone near Hong Kong, to take a factory job there. As they change trains in the provincial capital of Xi’an, Auntie Zeng takes the two other girls to the bathroom of the train station and tells Chiao-chiao to wait for her in the waiting room. Chiao-chiao waits, and waits, and waits, until hours have elapsed.

Finally, a young man comes and introduces himself as Chen Guodong, a nephew of Auntie Zeng’s, apologizes for being late and says he has come to take her to join the others. Chiao-chiao leaves with him, and the two of them end up in a seedy hotel room not far from the station. Chiao-chiao wants to go next door to where Chen says Auntie Zeng and the girls are staying, but Chen holds her back, noting that it is now quite late. Meanwhile, he and Chiao-chiao are to sleep in the same hotel room. Suddenly, the neighboring door opens, and an enormous man goes down the hall to the bathroom. Chiao-chiao realizes she has been tricked. She puts up a fight, but Chen subdues her, both by physically restraining and cajoling her. Finally concluding that part of the deal for her to go to Shenzhen included matchmaking with this man, who seems to be a decent, schoolteacher type, Chiao-chiao and ultimately succumbs to his advances. They set off the next day together, and Chiao-chiao now considers the two of them to be a couple.

Before going to Shenzhen, Chen says he would like Chiao-chiao to take a side-trip with him farther inland and stay a few days with his maternal uncle, a poor, kind-hearted road maintenance worker who raised Chen after he was orphaned. Chiao-chiao willingly takes the long trip with him.

The pair arrive at a tiny train station in the middle of nowhere in the dead of the night. They still have a long-distance bus ride ahead of them, according to Chen, so they stop off for some noodle soup first. The next thing Chiao-chiao knows, she has awakened in an enormous, rough-hewn house miles from any neighbors. She is in a huge bed, and no one is at home. She tries to reconstruct the last 24 hours as she goes about exploring the house. She concludes that Chen must have slipped some kind of drug into her noodle soup as she was outside rinsing the chopsticks with hot water. She wait for what seems like an eternity Chen and his uncle to return. Finally, the uncle returns, covered with dust from a hard day of road work. He and Chiao-chiao greet each other awkwardly, and Chiao-chiao is miffed that Chen has not shown up with him to make proper introductions.

After some conversation, Chiao-chiao comes to realize that Chen is no longer there, that the man she is staying with is not his uncle, and that Chen Guodong’s name is not Chen Guodong. The huge man, named Big Hong, the same man she had seen in the hall of the seedy hotel, lives there with his equally enormous retarded younger brother Little Hong. When Chiao-chiao protests her situation, Big Hong innocently but firmly notes that he has paid a large sum of money for her, on the understanding that she had consented to marry him. He then presents Chiao-chiao with their marriage certificate, duly stamped and sealed, with both their photos on it.

The next days are tense, as Chiao-chiao stays in their house and weighs her options. From the treatment her village has given to the few girls who have returned to her village from mysterious circumstances, plus the large sum of money that was paid to her mother as “an advance on her wages,” Chiao-chiao concludes she has few if any options. With time, she finds that Big Hong is simple and rustic but decent, and Chiao-chiao takes on the role of mistress of the household, then eventually starts living with Big Hong as husband and wife. She hopes vaguely to escape to Shenzhen one day, but in the meantime, she keeps badgering Big Hong to buy her a color TV to relieve the tedium. She also nags Big Hong about putting curtains on their bedroom window, but Big Hong keeps putting it off, noting that there are no neighbors for miles around.

Chiao-chiao discovers she is pregnant. Counting the days, she realizes there is no way it can be by Big Hong. After some hesitation, she tells him she is pregnant by the man who called himself Chen Guodong. Big Hong is sad but accepts this situation and promises to support Chiao-chiao in whatever decision she makes. In the end, Chiao-chiao opts for an abortion at the county clinic.

On her return, Big Hong goes deep into hock and buys a color TV. One evening after a good meal in front of the new TV, during which the three of them have too much to drink, Chiao-chiao goes to bed. Later, Big Hong comes to bed, seeming quite different from his usual self, and makes love to her very roughly. The next morning, she wakes up with blood in the bed and reconstructs that Little Hong must have raped her the previous night. She angrily confronts Big Hong, insisting that he send Little Hong away. Big Hong refuses, stating that, of the ten thousand yuan they had paid to purchase her, three thousand had come from Little Hong and represented his life savings. He and his brother had always shared everything, and the wife was to be no exception. Chiao-chiao realizes that Little Hong has been staring through their curtainless bedroom window at night, with Big Hong’s complicity, and that they view her as a slave. Chiao-chiao flies into a furious, blind rage.

Part Two of the story opens in a remote military way-station somewhere in the mountains, and narration follows the soldiers who live there, especially to a sensitive young enlisted man who likes to go off by himself into the forest and draw. The isolated, bachelor life of this military installation is suddenly interrupted by the arrival of a young woman of mysterious origin who is passing through all alone. Bending the rules because of the difficult passage across the mountains at that time of year, they allow her to stay with them for a while. She becomes the mystical, feminine muse of the way-station, humanizing, civilizing and beautifying its entire atmosphere. Her presence turns the soldiers grinding, day-to-day tedium into a kind of pastoral idyll. Several soldiers fall in love with her, and she is sweet but non-committal toward all. Those who fall for her include the second-tour lieutenant in charge of the way-station; his thirtyish, more worldly-wise second-in-command in charge of matériel and finances; and the sensitive young soldier.

After the snow melts and trucks cross the mountain passes bringing mail, the young soldier finds a wanted poster in the mail delivery bearing the mysterious girl’s likeness and seeking her arrest in a case of double murder. He withholds this mail for three days. Realizing he cannot keep the secret forever, he approaches the second-in-command, who then talks to Chiao-chiao and discovers the circumstances of the crime. The second-in-command then approaches the commanding officer, explains Chiao-chiao’s situation and has an altercation with him about what to do. Noting that mail routinely gets lost on the way to their post, the second-in-command suggests that they pretend they never received the notice and give her safe passage out of the area. The commanding officer agrees and says he will arrange for a truck to pick up Chiao-chiao at 5 p.m. the following day.

The second-in-command tells Chiao-chiao this and suggests that he can find use his business connections connections to get her to the no-man’s land just across China’s border with Burma, where she can evade capture indefinitely. If she wishes, he will even await an opportune time to desert and join her there. Chiao-chiao thanks him but does not want to endanger him. She makes ready to meet the truck, but instead a different truck comes at four o’clock and takes Chiao-chiao away. Secretly, the lieutenant in charge had arranged for the civil authorities to take her into custody.

The second-in-command and the other soldiers are outraged, feeling betrayed. The story closes a few weeks later as we accompany the young soldier to the woods in the spring. He is feeling melancholy, just like all his comrades after Chiao-chiao’s departure. He draws pictures of the girl’s face from memory and ponders the news he has just heard: Chiao-chiao was found guilty of double homicide and has just been executed.

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Author Comment:

This novella was made into a film called The Other Side of Heaven by Chinese film director Ms. CHEN Jie. It has won prizes at film festivals and is seeking distribution. (See separate entry on blog regarding this film.)

Topics/Categories:

abduction of women, rural life in China

Genre:

Chinese - Chinese-American Literature

Type of Work:

Novella

Publishers:

Modern World Publishing House San Min Books

Awards:

Best Novella China September 2002. (See blog entry for film awards.)

Purchase From:

www.sanmin.com.tw (traditional Chinese characters)
dangdang.com (simplified Chinese characters)

Original Publish Date:

February 1, 2001

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