Chinese Novelist Ning Ken Discusses Chinese Society Via the “Ultra-Unreal”

On Monday 26th of October a Chinese Author came to speak at the Robert A. Jones conference room on being a writer in contemporary China, "When Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction." His name was Ning Ken, and like his novels, he is more than what meets the eye. It was his pen name, of course, but I only realized what it could mean politically when I wrote it out in Chinese. The direct translation would be “would rather,” and when I asked him to make a sentence with it, he offered this: “I would rather write in this way than to achieve fame and rake in a lot of money.”

The dose of personal resistance that Ning lets out through his pen name is palpable enough. Yet his attitude towards dress and appearance is altogether quite different. Ning is a medium-height man in his mid-fifties, who dressed in smart casuals, a pair of jeans, black shoes and a brown leather jacket on both of the two days I saw him. His looks were that of an honest, harmless man. From my conversations with him I know him as a very friendly “uncle,” someone who is passionate about the ways that he has been able to synthesize various aspects of the contemporary Chinese society through his writings.

One has to wonder, why do being a good writer and enjoying popularity have to be in constant tension with each other in the Chinese context? Ning is the author of no fewer than five novels, and his most well-known ones touch on very controversial and taboo subjects. His critically-acclaimed novel about a university professor who escapes to Tibet after the June Fourth Tianamen Massacre  ’89, Sky Tibet, reached the final rounds in the nomination process for a prestigious award only to stay there because of a government order.

Though this may be enough to frustrate many writers with a fiery passion and an unequivocal sense of justice, qualities that certainly describe Ning, he has a very clear sense of the privileges and responsibilities of a writer in contemporary China. When I asked him at his lecture whether there is an ideal readership in his mind, his answer was rather astonishing: he said that he does not write for anyone, that it does not concern him whether his books sell or not. Instead, he just wishes to exploit as fully as he can the possibilities that present-day China has handed to him.

The literary movement that he is spearheading is called “the ultra-unreal,” a term whose meaning is still slowly taking shape in the Chinese literary world. The label came out of a conversation he was having with a friend, when they were discussing the most recent scandal that involved a top level government official. This time, a deputy chief justice from the Hebei province died in a car crash, his supposed “legal” marriage to four wives being exposed when all four of them wanted to claim his body. For him this is a classic example of what is ultra-unreal about the Chinese society: things happen that “surpass the unreal or the imaginary.”

Over lunch, he told me that each epoch should leave its own unique mark in the literary history of the world. He said though the underlying human desires may not change very much from epoch to epoch, the circumstances with which each has to work to fulfil those desires differ. Subjects such as romance, marriage, and the domestic life have been explored almost to perfection by the 19th century English novels. Or take the Latin American brand of magical realism for example: a mix of severe social critique, history, and pop culture, which even until this day still lends itself to a relevant way of making sense of dictatorial rule and patterns of inequality.

For Ning, the ultra-unreal is an unprecedented exploration into the ways that an illogical system operates on a consistent brand of logic that keeps on producing illogic results. He argues that there is not a civilisation comparable to the contemporary Chinese one, wherein the logic of power is so absolute and its reach so far and so complete. Evidence for this claim can be found in the absolutely ghastly speed at which everything is moving in the country: from GDP growth to cell phone usage  and car ownership rates to the build-out of highways and railways systems.

Ning’s novels are concerned with those very few who can wield power without any checks and balances. He chooses never to write directly about the System. In one of three parallel plots in his newest novel, Three Trios, he talks about an official who has lost favor with the Party and falls in love with a woman. He describes this character’s journey as “the gradual reawakening of his humanity,” the part of him which had been suppressed as a government official because everything then was transactional.

As a writer he is also aware of how adaptable this particular brand of Chinese logic is: he mentioned the newly established Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and characterized it as the spreading of the Chinese approach to economic development beyond China. It is a particular logic of economic development that relies too heavily on government-led public infrastructure investment projects, a natural product of a highly centralized power system. Just like in his own works, Ning showed a deep understanding of the resilience and pervasiveness of power. Yet, with the kind of wonder and disbelief that Ning beholds the current Chinese establishment, can he not be anticipating the radical changes that this unmistakably unsustainable approach to development is subjected to? At a time when the Chinese GDP growth is at its all-time low and the unemployment rate its all-time high within the past two decades, Ning’s visit gave the college community an invaluable insight into why these might be, and where the country is going from here.