Geling Yan, a prominent voice of the post-Tiananmen Chinese diaspora writing here for the first time in English, turns a satirical eye to the cultural and social fall-out of China’s economic boom. Through the innocent gaze of the book’s accidental hero, unemployed factory worker Dan Dong, we are shown the compromise and repression behind Beijing’s growing prosperity.
That’s not to say ‘The Uninvited’ is a heavy read. It’s not. The social criticism somehow sneaks in through the back door while we are busy with the page-turning narrative. When Dan Dong works out that he can make a tidy living from bluffing his way into the extravagant press banquets, he starts on a career of mistaken identities and misunderstandings that sweeps him up Beijing’s social ranks. He stumbles into friendships with Happy Gao, a world-weary journalist, and Ocean Chen, an ageing artist whose abstract paintings are fashionable in Beijing high society. But when people keep approaching him with their misfortunes, he slowly sleepwalks into his false identity. Like a modern-day Candide, he reveals the corruption of those around him.
But we never feel like we’re being lectured. As soon as one possible allegorical reading presents itself, it just as quickly disappears. The success of Yan’s narrative is its lightness of touch and the vividness of its characters. Together, they make this a clever and deceptively simple read.
