Fu Ping, by Wang Anyi

So many works of historical fiction revolve around the limited roles women had for, well, most of recorded history. In fiction, we see women break through these limits to find careers or true love or adventure, etc In Wang Anyi’s Fu Ping (translated by Howard Goldblatt), we are presented with a similar scenario. The titular character, Fu Ping, has traveled to Shanghai from her village after sort of making a deal to marry a young man. She doesn’t particularly want to marry him. She doesn’t particularly want to marry anyone. She would, as the Scrivener said, “prefer not to.”

Fu Ping is an orphan with few options in mid-twentieth century China. Her parents died when she was young. Relatives took her in, but they were not particularly loving. She was maid/nanny/laundress/odd job woman around the house. It’s little wonder that she takes an offer from a woman called Nainai to marry her adopted grandson. Until the arrangement can be formalized, Fu Ping will live in Shanghai with Nainai, sharing her work as nanny/housekeeper/cook for a well-off family. Fun Ping is quiet, very reluctant to reveal much of herself. The novel conspires with her to keep her personality and history opaque by spending most of its words showing us everything about Nainai, the other servants in their apartment building and neighborhood, a friend of the girls Nainai cares for, and so many others. We see Fu Ping mostly through their eyes. Because Fu Ping doesn’t talk much, all of these other characters ascribe all kinds of feelings and motives to Fu Ping based on her slightest responses. This might be funny if they all weren’t so wrong about her.

So much of Fu Ping revolves around family obligations. Nainai adopts a boy to be her grandson because she wants someone to take care of her when she is too old to work. A neighbor, Taitai, is a formidable matriarch who stage manages the careers and marriages of two generations of her family. (She only stops when one of her grandsons out-stubborns her.) But Fu Ping’s family weren’t well off to give her an education—or even much of a childhood—when she is orphaned. Later in the book, we see that part of Fu Ping’s reluctance to marry is because she doesn’t want to get involved with a sprawling family where everyone is pulling strings. The system of filial piety failed her; why should she prop it up by marrying into a family that only wants her for her ability to work?

In the face of tremendous cultural pressure (politeness is almost weaponized in her world), Fu Ping is quietly, infuriatingly subversive. She avoids questions about a wedding date. She neglects to make plans. She even disappears a couple of times when Nainai and others turn up the heat too much. As is so often the case, I enjoyed Fu Ping and its eponymous protagonist a lot more when I stopped trying to guess what was going to happen or where the book was going to go. (Mysteries have encouraged bad habits.) The more I read, I sympathized with Fu Ping more and more. I wished so much for her that someone would stop making plans for her and just ask Fu Ping what she wants.

On the other hand, I loved right from the beginning the way that Wang recreated mid-century Shanghai. This book is full of rich detail about food, commerce, education, culture, tradition, and even the various accents and dialects Fu Ping hears as she moves around the growing city. More than once, I felt like the book was the closest thing I’ve ever found to a textual time machine. The only issue I had with the book is that it either needed a little more editing or maybe some more careful translating. There are some grammatical errors (possibly proofreading oversights) and some awkward phrases that jarred me.

Fu Ping is one of the least depressing novels I’ve read from a Chinese author. There are some sad moments, but I was so interested in what was going on around Fu Ping that I didn’t feel like I was being pummeled by tragedy the way I did when I read Red Sorghum, by Mo Yan. I also had the highly original puzzle of Fu Ping to figure out. I’m not entirely sure I figured everything out, what with all I don’t know about China and Chinese cultures. I would definitely recommend this book to readers who would like to dip a toe into Chinese literature.