Sad Stories of Asian People

On the literary West's curious fascination with suffering Asians.

Raise the Red Lantern, the queen of “sad stories of Asian people”.

There's one section of the bookstore that I judiciously avoid.

I call it the “Sad Stories of Asian People” shelf.

I mean, I do like my periodic injections of Did you know how much we suffered as Asians in all our history or OMG being an Asian is hard in the modern world stories.

For one, I adore Su Tong's novels, who wrote the novel behind the world-famous Zhang Yimou movie, Raise the Red Lantern.

And I mean, logically, I know there's demand for it, especially overseas-born-Asians who have to wrestle with East vs West cultural pressures. But something about the West's adoration of these novels has always rubbed me the wrong way.

What is it about these stories that Western publication houses love them so much they throw awards at it?

And even if the story is set during modern times, you will inevitably have an Asian character lament about how hard it is to date/live/work/just be an Asian. Usually over ethically-sourced coffee with another friend of a minority race. Whether they live in the West or East, it's hard, baby. We Asians, we have it hard. Always.

I once read a short story written by a Malaysian writer - it was awarded some prestigious Western literary award thingy. And it was about her staring into her roti canai thinking sad thoughts about her sad life.

After completing it, I looked up and said out loud: Oh wow, I'm reading Asian suffering over breakfast!

I don't know about you, but when I stare at my roti canai I'm thinking if dhal or fish curry goes better with it . (Usually I can't decide, so I dump both it on top of the roti.)

This is probably why I refused to write stories in English about my culture for the longest time. Because there’s this unspoken thing in writer circles (at least in Malaysia) that if you write stories set in Malaysia's colonial past or about the angst of being Asian, it’ll get noticed by the big Western publications and win awards.

Damn it, Asian literature is so much more diverse than that.

Recently,

ARX-Han

of Decentralized Fiction shared an essay of his that helped me nail down one aspect of why I don't like "Sad tales of Suffering Asians."

To be very honest, the essay had so many American terms and concepts that, while I understood what was being said intellectually I don’t quite relate to them. But this quote stood out to me:

Why is Asian-American literature so boring? Why does it so thoroughly lack passion? Why are the characters so passive and never, ever, angry? Why do they almost invariably have nothing substantive to say about anything? Why does it so studiously deviate from anything interesting or controversial or innovative or offer a challenge of any kind?

Asian-American literature is boring because liberalism is the mother-of-all identity shredders and our literary elites are approval-seeking strivers by ARX-HAN

And this is a recent realisation of mine: I don’t relate to most Asian American angst or problems!

The reason is simple. There are lots of Chinese people in South-East Asia, so we are not minorities in this part of the world even if we are minorities in our countries. Also, in Malaysia, we don’t get the pressure to conform to a different culture. So, we don't struggle with our identities much. And even if we do, our parents will slap it out of us.

We struggle with other issues though. For one, being viewed with suspicion in our countries just for being Chinese. (That issue will take more than one newsletter issue to unpack!)

But what ARX-Han said about Asian-American literature though, got me chuckling.

Here's my unpopular politically-incorrect opinion: I dislike them because I consider most of them navel-gazing dreck.

One can’t really relate to the laments of privileged people living in the West, even if they're Asians, at least where I’m from.

Yes, I'm probably being unfair and may look like I'm dismissing their pain. But the angst and over-focus on identity issues is just something I do not get.

See, in my part of the world, genocides still happen and the threat of World War III possibly breaking out in our backyards is real (cough Taiwan cough US anti-China sentiments).

So, sorrylah, we have more serious problems to worry about than our identities. (Like, whateverlah. You don't think I don't have the right values? Go fly kite¹.)

Fortunately, absolutely fortunately, things are changing.

I was so happy when Jin Yong's wuxia² novels received a flashy English translation, or when dan mei³ novels like Heaven's Official Blessings were published, even if I thought the English translations for them were shite. Because more diversity in translated-to-English Asian fiction is a good thing.

On top of that, more Westerners are discovering webnovels! (China and Korea has a very robust and profitable online writing culture which I wish, wish, wish the English-speaking world could have.)

Then, hard sci-fi Three-Body by Chinese author Cixin Liu won the Hugo.

I've not read the books, but AvenueX, a video blogger I follow, commented that the Cixin Liu's second book of the series is actually far superior than the book that won all the awards. I thought her comment about this was interesting:

"Most people would agree the second book probably is the most exciting book. The third book has too many crazy ideas, but then it is the first book that got the Hugo awards. I think, among the three books, why people would pick first one to get the awards is that it is more exotic because it contains a significant part of the Cultural Revolution, which started in the mid-60s and pretty much ended in mid-70s. … it's one of the most sensitive political periods in China's history.

And from an outsider's point of view, it's the most juicy part … Whatever you think (about) this camp of "free West" and that camp, starting from Soviet Union to China to communist party to socialism … that is the juicy part, from the Westerner's perspective of modern Chinese history."

Yeah, yeah, Asian sad times is exotic mah!

What I'm saying in this long-winded ramble is that we just need a more well-rounded representation of Chinese and Asian Literature in English beyond Sad Stories of Suffering Asians, and I'm really glad we're finally getting it, even if Western publishers are still going goo-goo eyed at fiction depicting Asian suffering during cultural revolutions, wars and colonialism, or publishing Asian American writers wrestling over identity and culture issues. At least these lighter fare will balance out the dour angst.

I hope.

But to be honest, I prefer reading Chinese classics or webnovels these days and eschew Asian American fiction or Asian fiction hailed as praiseworthy in the West.

Sure, webnovels are trashy but damn they’re not self-absorbed at least. Also Chinese classics. Again, not self absorbed.

And not preachy and unconcerned about espousing the right values. Just yummy, trashy, wacky goodness.

In conclusion: I just can’t stand “my life sucks” fiction, in general.

The end.

End note: Confession - I worried about this issue and wondered if people would get offended, especially since my sense of humor leans on the sarcastic side. While I may not relate to the angst and cultural struggles an immigrant of a Western nation faces, it doesn’t mean that I’m not sympathetic.

Book recommendations

Since I wrote so much about the need for more diverse genres of Asian fiction, here's a few!

Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio or Tales from the Liao Zhai is a famous collection of scary tales written by a scholar, Pu Songling. He started writing fiction during “the Troubles”, towards the end of the Ming Dynasty and the start of the Qin Dynasty, the last imperial dynasty of China.

PS: Reading these stories at night was probably a bad idea 🤣 The story that got me closing the book quickly was the one with the woman's corpse. (PS: Never a good idea to sleep in a room with a dead body. ☠️)

What I find interesting is that the stories do not follow the short story structure that I'm familiar with. Instead they are like a snapshot in time and often end amusingly and oddly, as if to say that we can't solve these mysteries, we can only accept and live with them and get on with our lives.

Another novel I'm reading is There's No Such Thing as an Easy Job by Kikuko Tsumura. As a person who fantasized of ditching her corporate job to get an "easy job" this book was a barrel of laughs. And probably a slap of reality.

Cultural notes

1 Go fly kite is a nice way of saying "get lost, you dweeb".

2 Wuxia is a unique Chinese genre exploring the adventures of martial arts experts in the "jiang hu" (direct translation: "Rivers and lakes", but is actually a social order with its own rules and regulations that exist in parallel with the world ruled by the Emperor. It is often commonly understood that these two worlds must not interfere with one another.

3 Dan mei is a genre of fiction featuring romantic relationships between men.