Black Humor in Red China: Meursault’s Party Members

There’s a comic masterpiece on the loose here in Asia, a book screaming to break out of the small circle of Western expats who’ve read it. It’s titled Party Members, by the pseudonymous Arthur Meursault, and it's deadly stuff.

This book puts to shame a lot of the satire published and hailed in Britain and the US. Meursault’s novel is a kick in the teeth, a page turner that doesn’t miss a beat, by turns hilarious and brutal--the hilarity and abject brutality set in a death struggle to see which will come out on top. In fact neither wins as both manage to be so over the top.

Vis-à-vis his Western literary peers in the genre (writing on corruption and greed in London or New York) Meursault certainly benefited from his immersion in the boom-town culture of contemporary China. If there’s anything in the West as fruitful of black humor as a Communist Party bureaucracy directing a bourgeois capitalist revolution, I’m not sure what it might be.

Meursault follows the career of an at first utterly unremarkable low-level official in the government ministry of a third-tier Chinese city. The narrative tells the tale of how he breaks out of his craven mediocrity after his penis, having had enough and able to keep silent no longer, begins to give him life lessons.

Yes, a talking penis, with its own philosophy. The premise, I know, sounds too predictable, or lame, or juvenile, or something. At least that’s what I feared before I took up the book. Who wants to read a few hundred pages of dick jokes?

Boy was I wrong. This book just snaps and pops and sizzles along. Meursault is a sharp prose stylist and ironist; he knows how to wield understatement and offhand aside to riotous effect. Party Members is far, far from a book of dick jokes. In fact, maybe the only dick joke in it is the title. Which is a feat really: that the writer kept himself so thoroughly from succumbing to cheap humor.

I knew I was in for something very different by the time I reached the second page. I’m something of a connoisseur of beginnings, and Meursault’s opening pages are as good an instance of setting tone as I’ve come across in years.

This novel reminds one of Gogol, of his genre-changing short tales like “The Nose” and “The Overcoat”, but given the hyper-consumerist Chinese setting, it’s like Gogol blasted at rock concert volume, wrecking machines and fireworks and shouts as accompaniment.

But does Meursault give us the real boomtown China or an overly negative version? I think the question is rather irrelevant. This is a fictional world, of course, but like all worthwhile satire it is a fiction informed by things that happen or might feasibly happen in the society it depicts. Or as one reviewer on the book’s Amazon page put it: “Foreigners who have lived in China for several years, upon returning home discover that curiously, nobody really believes even the tamest tales of what happened while they were there, as if they are telling war stories at the breakfast table.”

So again: In a novel such as Party Members, it is a matter not so much of recording actual conditions, but of turning up the volume, selecting and pushing certain elements so they cannot be ignored. It is not a total picture of China, but a harrowingly palpable one, enough grounded in social facts to be relevant. All societies suffer from corruption, and a society that has modernized at the breakneck pace China has, and has done so under state direction, will necessarily face unique challenges.

Related to this (and thinking again of the novel’s breakout potential) Meursault has done an amazing job making his fictional world accessible for those who don’t know the contemporary Chinese scene. Yes, there are occasional “in jokes” and allusions, but in general, any reader who knows the rough outlines of China’s history since Mao is going to have no trouble getting into this book.

As a fellow writer of satire, Party Members held especial interest for me, as I had to deal with similar challenges of narrating grotesque metamorphoses and fantastic improbabilities in my novel A Taipei Mutt. Whether I succeeded or not is hard for me to judge, but Meursault has done brilliantly.

And so: If you appreciate black humor, political intrigue, and want to be hit with something that will leave a bruise, don’t hesitate. Pick up a copy.

Eric Mader

And while you're at it, check out my Taipei Mutt. Both Meursault's novel and mine are available in print and ebook.

LaVar Ball: Ass-Clown of the Year

The arrest of three UCLA basketball players in Hangzhou for shoplifting early this month was shameful enough. But it’s the reaction to the event by LaVar Ball, father of one of the players, that takes the cake for clueless. I nominate him Ass-Clown of 2017.

The debate over whether the man should thank the US president for getting his son out of ten years jail time in China is one thing. Of course he should thank him. He’s a moron for not doing so. But it’s not just that. What most people are forgetting in all this is what it means to be part of a nation, part of the United States.

China is our main global competitor at present. The shoplifting by these "students" (I’ll use the scare quotes because I don’t think athletic scholarships should even be a thing) was of course widely reported in the Chinese press. Think about that for a moment. Given China's population of 1.4 billion, that means hundreds of millions of Chinese, catching this event in the news, were confirmed in their prejudice that America people of color are troublemakers and losers. Good job for your son there, LaVar.

LaVar said he would have thanked President Trump if he’d flown his kid home on Air Force One. “There’s a lot of room on that plane,” he said on CNN. Uh-huh. Does the man really have no idea what it means for national leaders to visit another country? Imagine how it would have played in Chinese media if our president, after getting them bailed out for their criminal behavior, had actually then flown these entitled "student" morons home in the presidential jet. Imagine the message it would convey, how the Chinese media would use it to dis American common sense in general and America’s leader in particular.

Rather than being a smart ass on national TV, LaVar Ball should be hanging his head in shame. Ball's son, a youth representative of the US, disgraced tens of millions of Americans in front of literally hundreds of million Chinese. And yes, he and his two teammates disgraced people of color. Why aren't more black Americans calling out the father on his cluelessness? This “father” thinks his son stealing is no big deal; and the Chinese, reading American reports, will naturally assume this to be typical of how American blacks think.

That CNN treated LaVar Ball with anything but contempt tells you something about CNN. Not thanking your country’s president for saving your son’s future? Shoplifting “ain’t that big a deal"? It's true I myself have never given much of a damn about ball players. But as for this ex-ball player and his "father", they are trash role models and a disgrace to America.

My novel A Taipei Mutt is now in print. The Asian capital unmuzzled.

Letter to a Trump Supporter

Dear T-----:

I know you are a Trump supporter, and I know in our conversations that I’ve pointed out aspects of Trump’s approach that I like. I’m writing now to say that I’ve pretty much vetted Trump to my satisfaction, and have come to the conclusion: He should not be in the White House.

The final straw was my review of his foreign policy positions. They don't make sense. They'd sound alright if US foreign policy were a direct business transaction, but it is not.

The benefits the US has gotten from its political and military clout in Asia and the West are immense. Trump's plan, abandoning long-held policies, would create power vacuums in key regions. He talks as if these power vacuums would not be taken advantage of by our enemies. They would. That's the point about power vacuums: the enemy moves in immediately and begins reaping advantages where previously you did.

From a US foreign policy perspective, the main enemies are three: radical Islam, China, Russia.

We cannot afford to let whole regions fall further under the sway of these serious strategic competitors.

The problem with Trump's thinking is that it is based on his life as a businessman. In a large-scale real estate project, you fight for the best prices, bribe the right people, strong-arm the local authorities to bend zoning ordinances, build and promote the building--AND THEN, TAKING YOUR PROFIT, YOU LEAVE.

Trump talks as if American foreign policy is a kind of real estate project. The blindness in this is clear. With foreign policy, you can never do that last part of the deal: LEAVE.

In other words, Trump's whole perspective is not suited to the long game that is statesmanship. Once things get messed up on one part of the picture (as has often happened with Trump's individual business ventures) he cannot just move on to the next big project. No--the world is the whole world; there’s no next project to move on to.

I imagine Trump in the Oval Office fuming that he cannot just let some particular project go bust so he can get up and running on the next: Trump University; Trump Steaks, etc. But he will not be able to. In the White House, when one project goes bust, it just keeps going bust, and you can't really extricate yourself. Because you are in charge of managing America's relations in all of these regions, and unlike casinos, or steak brands, regions can’t be sold off.

If you combine this short-term real estate developer's approach with Trump's erratic flip-flopping, and his nearly pathological narcissism, you will see what I see. A formula for disaster.

And it's no small disaster either. You need to keep in mind, when you think of supporting Trump, that this guy will personally be in charge of the system that keeps your finances in order. In short: When Trump fails on foreign or trade policy, which are closely interlinked, America's economic well-being will take the hit. The market will drop, companies will lay people off, home values will suffer, etc.

You have to try to imagine this guy not as what he's been so far, the loudspeaker in which you hear your justified grievances against the system, but as the one in charge of keeping our whole egg cart from tipping over.

Trump's approach so far is not one to inspire confidence in his skill as a careful egg cart driver.

I don't completely support any of the candidates on offer, as I've said, but I'm hoping the GOP ends up with someone else. You personally don't like Kasich, his demeanor, but he's the most stable of the three who are left. And he has a lot of experience in government. 



We'll see what happens. I'm also furious at all the corruption, both cultural and political, in America. But Trump is not the answer. Yes, he has done the country a service by underlining some of the worst aspects of the problem. But we need a calmer, cooler head, with a better sense of political complexities, to actually fix the problems.

We've discussed Trump several times, and I wanted to send you my current thinking. Hope you’ll reconsider supporting Trump in the Wisconsin primary.

Best,

Eric

My new book Idiocy, Ltd. is now available through Amazon.

Doing Everyday Business in Chinese: What Is the Problem Here?

I want to be clear from the start that I'm not writing this to complain and I'm certainly not writing it to imply that the people I deal with every day are idiots. No, I'm trying to raise certain questions about communication in English, say, vs. in Chinese. I'm trying to present what to me is a cultural mystery because, really, the people I deal with every day are clearly not idiots. The mystery is why they choose to communicate as they do.

The following runaround happens to me all the time. In fact it has happened to me so many times during my years in Taipei that I'm now going to take the trouble to type out an example of it verbatim. Today I walked into a restaurant to order food and the ordering process went like this:

At Mos Burger, a fast food restaurant. About 1:00 p.m. All dialogue is in Chinese:

SERVICE PERSON (a woman, about 23): I can help you here, sir.

ME: Yes, I'd like to order three original flavor MosBurgers, two for here and one to go. On the one to go I'd like no mayonnaise or butter.

SP: Okay, three original MosBurgers. Would you like them with a meal or a la carte?

ME: A la carte. All three a la carte. [I repeat the order exactly] Three original flavor MosBurgers, two for here and one to go, the one to go with no mayonnaise or butter.

SP: Okay. [she incorrectly repeats the order to me] Three MosBurgers, two to go and one for here. And you don't want any mayonnaise on them.

ME: No. I want two for here and one to go. And I only want no butter or mayonnaise on the one to go. The two for here are just regular, with everything.

SP: Okay. Three MosBurgers, two for here and one to go. No mayonnaise on the two for here. [she starts to pass my order to the prep people] Three MosBurgers. . .

ME: No, no. Excuse me. The one to go is for someone who is allergic to dairy. So it's the one to go that has no butter or mayonnaise. No butter on the bread or mayonnaise. The two for here are just regular, with everything.

SP: [she thinks for awhile] Okay. Do you want the original sauce on the three burgers?

ME: Yes, original sauce. Three original flavor. It comes with the sauce.

SP: Okay. So you want three MosBurgers, the one to go with no mayonnaise. Do you want mayonnaise on the ones for here?

ME: Yes. It's only the one to go that has no mayonnaise.

SP: Okay.

[Another service person has been listening. She helpfully pipes in:]

SP2: Would you like cheese on the one to go?

[I begin to feel like I'm on a sinking ship. Consider: 1) original flavor MosBurgers don't come with cheese, and original flavor is what I've now three times expressly ordered; 2) I've already said the one to go is for someone who is "allergic to dairy"!]

ME: No. I don't want cheese on any of them.

SP: Okay. Three original flavor MosBurgers, two for here and one to go, no mayonnaise or butter on the one to go.

ME: That's it.

SP: Would you like those with a meal or a la carte?

[What should I say at this point? Yes, a few years ago I'd have angrily pointed out that I'd already answered that question earlier, and that in fact I'd already given my order four times and it should all be clear by now. But I want to be helpful, the girl is in fact polite, so I just repeat:] All three a la carte.

So I've finally placed my order. But wait. Now the woman has to pass my order to the food prep people. And it happens almost just as I predict. I stand there and listen as almost the same conversation she's just had with me, only slightly less involved, occurs between her and her coworkers. In fact I have to talk to the food prep people myself to clarify what the order really is.

I go sit down at a table and wait for my food to arrive. In my experience, after all that has transpired, the chances are about 50/50 that the order will be screwed up. But when it comes, I check it and it's correct. I then go back to the counter and order a medium iced tea.

Why, you may wonder, didn't I order the iced tea to begin with? I made the omission intentionally. It's because I've been here many years and didn't want to add any further complicating elements to my order--radically complicating elements such as a drink. Since I knew I'd already have to place my order half a dozen times, I wanted to be sure the burgers were straightened out before even thinking about drinks.

This is how it has gone for me countless times in restaurants and other businesses. It was the same again today. Now let me make a few things clear.

1) This is not happening because the service person is stupid.

2) It is not happening because the service person is especially irresponsible or inattentive. No, she was polite and clearly trying to do her job.

3) It is not happening because the restaurant is busy or the service person feels rushed or is otherwise multitasking. No, I was the only customer ordering at the time.

4) It is not happening because Mos Burger doesn't like to deal with special orders. No, they deal with such orders all the time. And after all, my request wasn't even very special: I wanted three of their most common product, one with slight modifications to go.

5) It is not happening because of my Chinese. Though I'm a foreigner speaking Chinese to a native speaker, my Chinese is certainly good enough to conduct a simple hamburger order. A few years ago I used to suspect otherwise--that maybe these runarounds were my fault because I wasn't communicating clearly. Now I highly doubt it. Why? Because I regularly watch locals getting into the same kind of back-and-forth dialogues with each other that I myself just underwent. And today again it seemed the counter person had nearly as much trouble communicating my simple order to her coworkers as I originally had communicating it to her. But why? Why couldn't she just put it into a sentence and they listen to each of the separate elements of the sentence and make sense of them? Why all the back and forth for God's sake?

6) I am not exaggerating this phenomenon. In fact today I wish I'd recorded the whole thing so I could type it out in Chinese as proof. If anything, I've simplified the dialogue.

7) I'm well aware that such things occur in every culture, my own American culture included. But in the West so much back and forth is certainly not the norm. And the point is that even before walking into that Mos Burger restaurant I had a pretty good idea what was going to happen at the counter--that I was going to have to repeat myself at least four times. Because for some reason, in many situations here, repetition of details is the norm.

So what gives? There seems to be something like the following going on: When I as a Westerner go into a shop to place an order or conduct business of some kind, I expect that if I carefully formulate my request in a simple sentence that the service person listening to me will absorb my sentence and organize the elements in his or her head so as to get the desired result. But-- When the Taiwanese goes into a shop to place an order, things are quite different. What he or she expects, and the people taking the order expect, is that there will be a repetitive and circular back and forth about the order, a kind of verbal touch and go, that will continue until the order is all clear in both parties' minds. Further: If the person listening to the order misunderstands it the first two or three times around, this is not rude or inefficient service but rather just how things are expected to be. In short: Taiwanese don't mind repeating themselves: for them such repetition is part of the nature of communication. And further: Taiwanese don't bother to listen carefully, because they know whatever they hear will be repeated anyway.

Am I right about this?

My anthropological suspicions on this point perhaps get some support from another aspect of communicating with Taiwanese that I've long noticed--and one that has often driven me nearly mad. I'm talking about the tendency not to answer Yes/No questions with a simple Yes or No.

Example, on a Taipei bus:

A: Excuse me. Does this bus cross Chung-Hsiao East Road?

B: Where do you want to go?

A: Uh. It's hard to explain. I just need to know if the bus crosses Chung-Hsiao East Road.

B: Are you going to Chung-Hsiao East Road?

A: No. I'm going north of Chung-Hsiao East Road. It's straight north of where we are now. Does this bus cross Chung-Hsiao East Road?

B: What section of Chung-Hsiao East Road?

A: Never mind. Thanks for your help.

Now of course in this case the person might be commended for wanting to know precisely where I was going so as to better help me. But the gist of my question was clear. Either the bus crosses the road in question or it doesn't. The man I was talking to knew the answer, I believe. He just didn't want to tell me with a simple Yes or No. There were so many other issues to be raised, it seems.

I'm afraid this bus dialogue isn't the best example though. It's hard to capture these exchanges in print. It's true that at least weekly I will find myself posing questions to people--friends, strangers, etc.--that have simple Yes/No answers, but I will never get the answer I need. Instead I will get comments on tangential issues or answers to questions I didn't ask. I almost wish I'd kept a journal on these kinds of dialogues: some of them are almost uncanny in the sheer irrelevance of the evasion.

When I want to know if a bus crosses a certain road, why should I be made to feel that I'm trying to coax some secret out of someone?

I'm aware that in business negotiations refusing to give clear-cut answers is often a matter of strategy. And that Asians--Japanese and Chinese in particular--are particularly good at being noncommittal as the terms of a deal are hashed out. Still, why should this kind of dogged avoidance of clear-cut answers happen when the stakes of the discussion are minuscule?

I overhear Taiwanese conversing with each other and notice the same kinds of non sequitur. Namely, 1) a clearly stated order at a counter is not taken as such, but is rather a kind of invitation to go round and round restating the order's elements; 2) a direct question is not respected as such, but is instead an invitation to talk about something else.

What gives? I'm aware that linguists and people in East-West relations have probably studied these questions.

Make no mistake. I love Taiwan and its people. I've come to think of these linguistic oddities as a kind of mystery more than an annoyance. At times such runarounds are humorous because they are so predictable. But what are they grounded on?

Comments very welcome.