Wuni Lake Chronicle (Representative Works of Contemporary Famous Novelists in China)

Author: Fang Fang
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2000-09-01
Features: Representative works of contemporary Chinese literary masters. Fang Fang was born in Nanjing in 1955. She worked as a loader for four years. In 1978, she enrolled in the Chinese Department of Wuhan University and began publishing her works during her time there. After graduation, she worked at Hubei Provincial Television Station and joined the Hubei Provincial Writers' Association in 1989 to engage in professional writing. She has written novels such as The Annals of Wuni Lake and The Setting Sun, as well as middle-length stories like Scenery, My Grandfather in My Father's Heart, White Fog, Blooming Peach Blossoms, Ambush, and Running Firelight. The Annals of Wuni Lake won the Third People's Literature Award. The story takes place in the Wuni Lake dormitories of the Yangtze River Water Conservancy Planning and Design Institute, where a group of water conservancy experts—some having returned from overseas studies and others from prestigious domestic universities—reside. They came to the world-renowned Three Gorges Project, inspired by the Communist Party and the New China. Each is highly intelligent, spirited, refined, and self-assured, expecting to make a significant impact and achieve great things in the nation's economic construction. However, over the decade following the Anti-Rightist Campaign that began in 1957, their personalities gradually erode, their ambitions fade, their conscience is pushed to the corner of their souls, and their arrogance is utterly crushed. Not only is the Three Gorges Project they yearn to dedicate themselves to still distant, but they themselves have long lost their youthful vigor and are filled with melancholy. By 1966, during the "Cultural Revolution," they are like frightened birds, filled with fear and without support, left to be arbitrarily battered by the storm of radical left-wing politics.
Some plot points in the novel will be familiar to many readers. For example, Su Feicong is mistakenly labeled a "Rightist" due to chance circumstances. His noble yet fragile personality makes him unable to bear this injustice and misfortune, so he resigns and takes his family back to the countryside. His delicate wife and weak daughter become true farmers alongside him. Lin Jiahuo is kind, upright, and a good father, but his "Rightist" status prevents his son Lin Wentian from gaining trust. After graduating from university, he can only work in a boiler room, and a sudden accident makes his situation even worse, leaving him unable to defend himself. This honest and innocent young man is eventually pushed to the brink and imprisoned. The Party member intellectual and leader Huang Fubai also cannot escape the fate of being labeled a "Rightist." His son Huang Hao is similarly denied university admission due to his father's "problem" and is sent to a remote mountainous area for the Down-to-the-Countryside Campaign. He is injured by a cow during labor and dies due to improper treatment. Huang Fubai had once made the worst possible predictions about his future, believing he could endure any misfortune. When he hears of his son's death, he is heartbroken and bitterly thinks, "I am the murderer of my son. Why did I once insist on justice for my conscience? I have not lost my conscience, but I have lost my son!"
The main character of the novel, Ding Ziheng, has always been cautious and reserved, and he has been fortunate enough to survive one disaster after another, saving his family and himself. However, by the end of the novel in 1966, as he watches the desperate Wu Songjie jump from a chimney, he feels as though he has already died. What is the difference between living and dying for a soulless person?