E-Book, Englisch, 320 Seiten
Ge Strange Beasts of China
1. Auflage 2020
ISBN: 978-1-911284-43-7
Verlag: Tilted Axis Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
E-Book, Englisch, 320 Seiten
ISBN: 978-1-911284-43-7
Verlag: Tilted Axis Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
Yan Ge was born in Sichuan, China in 1984. She is a fiction writer in both Chinese and English. Yan's first short story collection was published in China when she was seventeen. She is the author of thirteen books, including six novels. She has received numerous awards, including the prestigious Maodun Literature Prize (Best Young Writer). She was named by People's Literature magazine as one of twenty future literature masters in China. Her work has been translated into English, French and German, among other languages. She lives in Norwich, UK, and is fluent in English.
Weitere Infos & Material
JOYOUS BEASTS
Joyous beasts are an ancient breed; the god of thunder’s steed was named Joyous. They only have a single gender, and their short stature makes them no different in appearance from a human child of six or seven, apart from a slightly longer left arm with five to seven claws at the wrist.
Joyous beasts love breakfast cereal and plain water, and dislike greasy, strong-tasting foods. They enjoy fantasy novels, and hate maths.
Joyous beasts are auspicious creatures. They live alone, and their movements are mysterious. Anyone who lays eyes on one is destined to prosper and rise above the herd. There are legends of emperors in ancient times encountering these beasts, hence their name, joyous.
The first sighting in Yong’an City was fifty years ago. A record of this incident can be found in the municipal library.
Five decades ago, a Yong’an Chronicle journalist snapped a picture of one such beast. In this colourised image, the tiny thing appears malnourished, with huge eyes, short hair, and a thick fringe. Its skin has been tinted a peculiar shade of pink, and its tracksuit is green. It looks panicked, standing at the edge of the frame, smiling with eyes that look like they’re about to weep.
The reporter followed the beast around for half a month, noting its small appetite, feeding it cereal and plain water, and letting it read fantasy comic books. He recalled, ‘It was very affectionate towards me, as if I was its dad.’
After the report came out, the beast vanished suddenly, and was never heard from again.
The journalist became an overnight sensation, and his career rocketed. Eventually, he became the mayor of Yong’an.
—
A week ago, the former mayor had died in his retirement home. He never married, and had no children. Among the possessions he left behind were three boxes of old books and clothes, and a savings account containing 1,700 yuan.
The story of the mayor and the joyous beast took up an entire page of the Yong’an Daily, along with the old photograph from the Chronicle, and an advert for breast enhancement. The reverse side was full of classifieds: second-hand cars for cheap, young women seeking foreign men for English lessons, marriage proposals, houses for rent, furniture removals, cleaning services, missing persons, missing pets, all tightly crammed together in a bewildering array.
Among these there were a few lines about Li Chun, an old woman who’d been missing for some days now. No picture, just a description: short and slender, a mole beneath her right eye, doesn’t speak much. If found please call this number, grateful reward promised.
I met my friend Charley at the Dolphin Bar. He smacked the paper down on the table and yelled, ‘Did you see this? They put my number on this crappy ad! How would you even find anyone with a description like that? My goddamn phone’s been ringing off the hook since seven this morning!’
Someone laughed, ‘Hey, Charley, I bet someone’s pranking you – must be because you’re so annoying.’
I sat across from him, smoking, my head throbbing painfully. ‘What paper is that?’
And that’s how I saw the picture of the joyous beast.
The creature looked wholesome and innocent. It was smiling, but terror lurked in its eyes; I stared at it for a long time. I went to the municipal library the next day, but didn’t find out much more. In fifty years, there’d only been this one joyous beast, and no one had set eyes on it but the late former mayor.
And now, me.
—
Yong’an City has countless beasts, some identical to human beings, some truly monstrous. At university, I’d seen many pictures of them in my professor’s office, even perspective-free images of long-extinct species from antiquity. Yet none ever stirred me as much as this one. The joyous beast in the photograph looked directly at the camera, terrified yet smiling, strangely like myself.
I called my professor and asked if he had any stories. ‘You know the legends, don’t you? I remember them being on our syllabus.’
He said, ‘Yes, they’re bizarre and dangerous, and we still study them today. Even though no one can say for sure whether they actually exist.’
‘But that picture in the morning paper—’
‘Didn’t show its wrist, let alone any claws! That photograph proves nothing.’
I snapped, ‘You’ve lost your edge! There was a time when you’d have hunted it down.’
‘That’s right, you’ve aggravated me into old age!’
I put down the phone grumpily.
Of course, there was someone in a worse mood than me: Charley was now a de facto private eye, searching for Li Chun. Calls came in constantly with accounts of old women at the train station, by Splendid River, at Heavenly Beauty Mall, even at Municipal High School Number Two. Charley was flung around like a spinning top, but it was always a case of mistaken identity. ‘I hope it doesn’t take me long to return her to the bosom of her family,’ he said to me on the phone. ‘I’m tired of this nonsense.’
I laughed and said, ‘Why not just change your phone number?’ As soon as the words left my mouth, I knew they shouldn’t have. Charley sneered, ‘We’ve been friends for more than ten years, and you get more naïve by the day.’
Neither of us said anything for a while. There are some sore spots no one should prod.
I thought about how Charley didn’t even need to change his number. A call to his pals at the newspaper would sort out the misunderstanding, but of course he’d never do that. He was set on finding this stranger and returning her home.
I said, ‘Charley, you’re too good-hearted.’
He chuckled, and hung up.
I don’t know when people stopped saying goodbye. Anything to cut down on phone bills.
I dreamed of the joyous beast that night. It stood there, smiling at me, as tiny as a human child. Its enormous eyes bored straight into me, and it said nothing, contorting its face into such a horrifying expression that I woke up screaming in fear.
—
I slept badly all night. The next morning, I woke unusually early. Heading out in search of breakfast, I met one of the fabled bird-sellers: a middle-aged woman with sallow skin and dry hair, gnawing at a fried dough stick, sidling over to whisper, ‘Want a bird, miss?’
I looked at her, and something in my brain twitched so I said yes.
The woman took me to look at her birds. I couldn’t help thinking how, more than thirty years ago, Yong’an was full of these creatures: thrushes, magpies, crows, cranes, wild geese, sparrows, any kind you could want, migratory or not, filling the air with their chirps. Then the mysterious massacre of the birds began. First it was the academics who disseminated papers claiming that birds spread all kinds of deadly diseases, that they caused noise pollution, that they reduced the supply of staple foods. Next, the local government got involved, launching a campaign to kill them with guns or nets, burning or burying their bodies, tearing apart their nests and smashing their eggs. Champion bird-eliminators were lauded, and political leaders made speeches of such gravity that no one could treat this as a joke. From then on, birds vanished from Yong’an, at least as far as anyone could see. If any survived, they didn’t dare make a peep. Now and then, bird-sellers showed up from the countryside, and were treated by the authorities as a serious threat, as bad as porn vendors. They’d come over and ask, ‘Hey, want a bird?’ – or sometimes, ‘How about a nature film?’
This may sound comical, but as I said, the local government took it very seriously, and sent out many documents covered in bright red official stamps. No one dared to laugh about it. Even when the leader of the bird-elimination campaign passed away, those who came after him honoured his memory by continuing to arrest bird-sellers.
Which is why, when this woman handed me a bird, I didn’t even check to see what breed it was. She said thirty yuan, and I paid up.
Then I asked, ‘What kind of bird is it, Auntie?’ She replied, ‘A good bird.’
It was grey, with a red beak, maintaining a very unbirdlike silence, except when it shrieked and shook its head, prancing around in its cage. I named it Little Grey.
My professor, with the instincts of a hunting dog, phoned me. After a bit of small talk, he said, ‘So you’ve got a bird now.’
I said yes, and he launched into a rant about how I was sure to get found out and fined a huge sum. Then he said, ‘Come by in a few days, I have some good bird food to give you.’
He asked if I’d made any progress with the joyous beast.
I said no.
‘I’ve found a connection,’ he said. ‘We can go visit the former mayor’s nursing home tomorrow.’
I said, ‘So you’re rejuvenated.’
He laughed icily. ‘Meet me at the usual place, nine-thirty tomorrow.’
—
I waited half an hour but he never came. Eventually, a young man showed up, looking like a student. ‘The professor sent me,’ he said. ‘He’s busy.’ A bright-eyed, baby-faced boy in a checked shirt. Blushing, he said, ‘I’ve read your novels.’
After taking my leave, I got the 378 bus to the retirement home on Shepherd’s Hill. As we zoomed along the airport expressway, I could hear the rumble of planes landing and taking off in the distance. Soon they would soar like phoenixes, heading to distant places.
The retirement home was lovely, a series...
