Wuni Lake Annals

Author: Fang Fang
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-05-01
Features: Most people who have watched the movie "Ambush," adapted from Fang Fang's novel and starring Feng Gong, would have such an impression: the story is interesting, not like what a female writer would write. Indeed, Fang Fang has never been an advocate for women's private voices. Her 《》 continues her distinctive style, depicting the painful journey of ideological transformation of Chinese intellectuals from 1957 to 1966, focusing on human destinies. The story takes place in the Wuni Lake dormitories of the Yangtze River Water Conservancy Planning and Design Institute, where ten small red buildings are inhabited by a group of hydraulic experts—some returning from overseas studies, others from renowned domestic universities—who, inspired by the Communist Party and New China, came to contribute to the world-renowned Three Gorges Project. They are highly intelligent, vibrant, refined, and arrogant, expecting to make a significant mark in national economic construction and achieve great accomplishments. However, in the ten years following the Anti-Rightist Campaign of 1957, their personalities gradually erode, their enthusiasm fades, their conscience is pushed to the corner of their souls, and their arrogance is utterly crushed. Not only is the Three Gorges Project they yearned to dedicate themselves to still distant, but they themselves have long lost their former brilliance and are filled with despondency. By 1966, the year of the "Cultural Revolution," they are like frightened birds, terrified and helpless, 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 labeled a "Rightist" for accidental reasons. His noble yet fragile personality makes him unable to endure this undeserved injustice and misfortune, so he resigns and takes his family back to the countryside. His gentle wife and frail daughter become true farmers together. Lin Jiahuo is kind, upright, and a good father, but his "Rightist" status leads to distrust of his son, Lin Wentian, who can only work in a boiler room after graduating from university. A sudden accident further worsens his plight, leaving him unable to defend himself for a hundred days. This honest and innocent young man is eventually driven to desperation 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 inadequate treatment. Huang Fubai had once made the worst possible predictions about his own future, believing he could endure any misfortune. When he hears the news of his son's death, he is heartbroken and bitterly thinks, "I am the murderer of my son. Why did I once stand up for justice at the cost of 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 person without a soul?