Sheng Keyi is one of the exciting international authors who attended the 2014 Open Book Festival, coming all the way from China to be part of the festivities. Her novel Northern Girls, the first of her works to be translated to English, represents China in the 1990s – a country very different to South Africa. However, as Keyi pointed out during her time in Cape Town, there are important similarities between the setting of her novel and our country.
CA Davids, who interviewed Keyi during a session at Open Book, said that she felt this book was important and also deeply political, although not in an obvious way. For this reason it was quite difficult for Keyi to find a publisher for Northern Girls. Keyi has never been censored or threatened, however, perhaps because she is (in her words) just “a small potato” in the Chinese publishing industry.
The following excerpt is from the first chapter of Northern Girls, in which the sultry and headstrong heroine, Qian Xiaohong, is introduced:
Her. Right there. That’s Qian Xiaohong, from Hunan province.
A little over a metre and a half tall, sporting short black hair with just a hint of a curl, her round-faced look is pretty much that of a model citizen, good and decent. She’s just the sort of girl a guy wouldn’t mind taking home to meet his parents. However, her breasts – through no fault of her own – are much too large for civilised, polite society. Such breasts could not help but invite the same suspicion and groundless gossip normally saved for young widows.
Xiaohong’s breasts, to put it bluntly, are gorgeous! Even observed through clothing, it’s easy to imagine their consistency. To touch them must be heavenly. To simply gaze upon them is to fall under their seductive power. The problem is that same unavoidable difficulty that always arises in tight-knit communities. When everyone is cast from the same mould, the person who stands out for any reason at all is sure to be seen as something of a maverick. And so, Xiaohong’s full figure has always made her just a little too striking in the eyes of those around her.
Xiaohong’s mother died of cirrhosis of the liver at a young age. Her chest was as flat as could be so it’s clear the child gained nothing by inheritance. From then on, Xiaohong was brought up in the shelter of her paternal grandmother’s bosom.
Her grandmother, a widow for fifty years, passed away at the age of eighty. She was the only one who knew the secret behind Xiaohong’s well-endowed physique, but she went to the grave without ever breathing a word of it.
Ever since Xiaohong was in year five of school, rumours had surrounded her. There was always a stinging word hissed in her direction, ever a pointing finger trailing in her wake. All the other girls in the village duitfully hunched forward, guarding their chests under loose-fitting clothing, doing all they could to prevent their breasts from giving the slighest impression of sluttiness. Only Xiaohong allowed her twin bulging mounds to appear as openly and ominously as storm clouds descending upon an unsuspecting city. It was a rare gift she had, the way she carried that pair, and no one could denythat it required courage for her to do so.
At the ripe old age of thirteen, Xiaohong lost all interest in her studies. As soon as she finished middle school, she dropped out, preferring to take life easy and hang around the village.
Her father’s work regularly took him away from home for weeks at a time. When he was back, Xiaohong would run and sit on his lap like a little girl, cuddling up to him, cheek to cheek. The villagers would look at them askance. Clearly the affection between father and daughter made them uncomfortable. He worked as a contractor and, with his earnings, built a two-storey house with suites on each floor. Both the interior and the exterior of the house had a more cosmopolitan air than anything in the city. Xiaohong chose for herself a room on the upper floor with a private staircase running up the outer wall.
Book details
- Northern Girls by Sheng Keyi
EAN: 9780857961730
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