An alternative view of Beijing history over eight centuries of unparalleled power in Chan Koonchung’s new novel
- ‘Zero Point Beijing’ follows a boy trapped in the netherworld and his search for truth over 800 years of the Chinese capital’s history
- The book weaves together a bloody historical account of the country’s feudalistic autocracy
The protagonist in Chan Koonchung’s new book Zero Point Beijing is a 14-year-old student shot dead on June 4, 1989, in Tiananmen Square. After his skull is split open by a bullet, he finds himself in the netherworld. There, he goes on a search for truth in history, studying books and historical literature day and night.
“[I am] in a world of no listeners … What should I say? … It won’t be passed on, let alone understood … I am just mumbling to myself. I am the only listener,” he says in the book’s opening.
“As I have chosen history as my vocation, I can do nothing but … look for books and magazines, and read them voraciously, shuttling between old and modern history with an obsession … to forever seek knowledge and … talk about history to remedy people’s historical views.”
Chan told the South China Morning Post he felt it was essential to employ the style of magical realism – which paints a realistic view of the modern world while also adding magical elements – when writing about contemporary China.
Chan, who was born in Shanghai, raised in Hong Kong and has lived in Beijing since 2000, says the main chapter in the three-part book is a piece of speculative fiction that ponders the cost of seeking truth.
“In a country where [people are afraid to speak out], the protagonist keeps questioning why he needs to do historical studies and pursue the truth,” he says. “Even if he finds the truth, he cannot pass it on. Even worse is that we no longer have a readership [interested in] the truth.”
The title of the book refers to a plaque reading in Chinese “Kilometre zero point of highways of China” mounted on the ground in Tiananmen Square, which signifies the starting point of all highways in the country (the distance from that point to Hong Kong is 1,959km, or 1,217 miles.) Chan says “Zero Point Beijing” is an analogy for a centralised China.
“The zero point is not only the geographical centre of Beijing … but also the nucleus of power. Before the modern age, Chinese culture [was based on] China being the centre of the world. Being the centre of China for the past eight centuries, Beijing is the origin of unparalleled power and prestige,” he says.
“Even today, the thinking of many Chinese people follows the pattern of concentric circles. They respect, fear and even worship the centre and origin [of power] … There’s a saying that political power monopolises violence – and power is inseparable from violence.”
In Zero Point Beijing, Chan reconstructs some of the innumerable social injustices, inhumane persecutions and unjust deaths that have taken place in Beijing across 800 years of the city’s history, weaving together a bloody historical account of China’s feudalistic autocracy through the book’s protagonist.
The deaths recounted include those of Li Dazhao, co-founder of the Chinese Communist Party, a democracy advocate who was executed by hanging in Xicheng district in 1927; Qing dynasty reformer Tan Sitong, who was beheaded in Caishikou in 1898; and Southern Song dynasty politician Wen Tianxiang, who was also beheaded in Dongcheng district in 1283.
Chan says justice has yet to be served for many of those killed wrongfully in Beijing. “In an age when the truth is often buried I feel hopeless, but I want to partially revive history through storytelling.”
Historians have to go back to the source to dig out the truth … respect the facts and not shy away from taboos so that they can reinterpret history, remove prejudices … and save history from ideology
Chan says he included this in the book in memory of the Tiananmen victims.
Never one to shy away from politically sensitive topics, Chan – a supporter of Hong Kong’s Occupy Central movement who has called for universal suffrage in the city – says there has been increasing censorship of his works in mainland China over the past decade.
His new book and his celebrated China trilogy – The Fat Years (2009), Naked Life (2012) and Jianfeng Year Two: A New China Uchronia (2015) – have not been published on the mainland.
“Although no mainland Chinese publishers are willing to publish them, The Fat Years was converted into simplified Chinese characters by readers who put it online [in China] for free downloading. No one put a stop to it. I gained many new readers because of that. There were even some shops selling it on the sly,” he says.
“However, when Naked Life came out three years later, online censorship had grown stronger, making distribution of the book impossible. So most readers in mainland China don’t know I wrote [three more books on China] after The Fat Years.”
That has not stopped Chan’s quest for truth. Citing how Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels preached that a lie repeated a thousand times becomes the truth, and how British author George Orwell’s “Ministry of Truth” propaganda department was tasked with rewriting history in 1984, Chan says there is only one way to prevent history being hijacked by those in power.
“Historians have to go back to the source to dig out the truth … respect the facts and not shy away from taboos so that they can reinterpret history, remove prejudices … and save history from ideology.”
