Binu and The Great Wall: The Myth of Meng by Su Tong

[Drunk Monk]

I still have a good bud in the book biz that sends me a box of reader's copies and such. It's nice. Most of the books go straight to Half Price Books, where I can usually glean another single volume of something I want from a box of stuff I don't want. My book bud is ok with that. He would throw them out anyway, so he's happy to see them go somewhere. Anyway, I'm in the habit of reading books by Chinese authors or about China in hopes to poach a line or two for my own writing. Lord knows, after writing about kung fu for over a decade and a half, I'm always on the hunt.

Su Tong wrote Raise the Red Lantern, so I figured I'd give it a pass. Ouch. What a dreary tale. Miserable people, with no hope, struggling to achieve the impossible, only to be thwarted. Yeah, that's what I want to purloin for the mag. Misery. To add insult to injury, it doesn't even resolve in the end. It just ends. Maybe Zhang Yimou could turn this into another awesome film, but as a translated book, it was epic depression, bound into a cute little hardback. The only highlight was this colony of gay boys who volunteered to be deer for the emperor's hunts and were honored by the chance to get shot by an imperial arrow.

[Greg_phpbb3_import1]

Shot by the imperial arrow? Was that a euphemism?

[Drunk Monk]

i suppose it could be read euphemistically, but in the story, the deer boys acting like deer. they hopped about like deer and wore antlers. at first, it was surreal because they didn't explain the backstory - they were like some kind of forest elves or something. but later, the history was revealed and you learned the nature of the tragedy. they were really irritating and needed to die.