"This book exists because one morning as the sun was coming up I told myself that I had to swallow up all of the fear and garbage around me, and once it was inside me I had to transform it all into candy. Because I know you all will be able to love me for it." - Mian Mian
After the suicide of her classmate, Hong decides to drop out of her competitive high school and moves to Shenzhen, a Special Economic Zone. There, she immerses herself in the world of drugs, sex and rock & roll. Soon, she meets Saining, an aspiring musician, and they fall in love but in very destructive way. The novel shows love in a twisted way as Hong and Saining fall in and out of love. Hong and Sianing live the degenerate lifestyle wandering around not doing much but being sucked into the worlds of addicts, prostitutes and other such vices. Mian Mian writes in both first person and third person which give the reader insight into not only the narrator’s life but those around her as well. The author also uses very descriptive and candid portrayals of the people around Hong that the reader gets a clear understanding of how the youthful crowd lives in Shenzhen.
For me, the idea of the disillusioned youth in China at the time and the changing economy did not really register in my mind as I read the novel. I enjoyed the novel purely for the candid and blunt way Mian Mian writes. The swear words, references to drugs and the blunt nature of how she describes her life kind of reminds me of my friends who are smart but oddly self-destructive. Even if you are not involved in the world of sex, drugs and rock and roll, there is something about the book that is relatable. The lifestyle that Hong and her friends lead can be seen here in the US. In fact, you might even have a few friends that lead a similar lifestyle. The idea of the hard partying, lost souls that are trying to find themselves is nothing new but somehow the novel does not come off as clichéd. Maybe it is due to the setting of the novel, where the traditional views and rules are being casted aside but Candy comes off as a refreshing tale.
it was a bunch of shorts that mian mian has written before and she just put them together and add some transactions. so maybe most of the stories she told us are truth in some sense.
ReplyDeleteIt almost seems as if China were 30-40 years behind the U.S. the hippie/post-consumerist movement. I guess now that China's economy and political climate as relaxed to the point of where the U.S. was probably at in the 1970's, the social reality in China as portrayed in Candy inevitably follow the reality many youth subcultures in the U.S. developed decades ago.
ReplyDeleteIn this line of thinking, this kind of trend will likely emerge in currently developing nations when they reach a certain threshold of political and economic progress, so the reviewer is right in thinking that the themes represented in Candy is not a phenomenon unique to China.