At the start of the three-volume Wu Zi (Without A Word), Zhang Jie says that the heroine Wu Wei planned to write a novel.

"She prepared for it for almost her whole life. But, just when she could make a start, she went crazy."

The author seems to have found the most candid, earnest and audacious way to render her book, inside which every page teems with frenetic passions and decisions, and tears and rage dominate the narrative.

The writing style of Without A Word could be called "extreme."

Many writers, including those who were very radical and vehement when young, show a sort of serenity and detachment in their mind after getting old, acquiring at the same time a measure of compromise with their living environment, family and even their foes.

But there are always some people who not only "forgive none" until they die but who even cultivate their resentment more heartily as they grow older. Such people include writer Lu Xun (1881-1936), and also Zhang Jie.

As a writer myself, I am rather eager to solve the myth of Zhang Jie's unforgivingness. After all, what she confronted was different from what Lu Xun met, and it is apparent that her unforgivingness falls short of the profundity and significance exhibited in Lu Xun's works.

But let's try to put it this way: If everybody were even-tempered and reserved, would we have the writer Zhang Jie? Would there be such a book as Without A Word, which is capable of thrilling you, preoccupying you, making you as uncomfortable as being prickled in the back while sitting upon a thorny cushion?

Scrupulous Writer?

The entire text is based on Wu Wei's feelings, complaints and drifting "contemplation", which sometimes is ingenious but sometimes seems rather immature.

A silly thought once occurred to me -- if other characters in the book were bestowed with an equal writing talent, what kind of story would they tell? The text would not be the same, I believe.

Writers belong to a privileged group which enjoys the prerogative of the power of discourse. The question is, should we act scrupulously and responsibly when we wield that power, just as when we wield any other power?

However, here arises a paradox. A writer can always provide only one version of text. So, who can or needs to be considerate to every person and take every possibility into account? "Partial profundity" has become a compliment in recent years. So the question is whether to write everything that has a chance to preoccupy our mind or to write more selectively.

If we try to follow the former rule, that is, conforming to the privacy and dignity of the original models, as well as the common morality and integrity, , we might not be able to draw the boundary.

But if we choose the latter way, will we be able to draw a boundary and built an embankment for Realism Without Walls? (This is the title of the English translation of French critic Roger Garaudy's 1963 book. I am using the term with its literal meaning.)

The Logic of Marriage

About the candour and sincerity with which the author narrates her story, as well as the heroine's relentless self-interrogation, I do not have the least doubt.

But still I cannot feel very comfortable, seeing the extreme self-pity of the protagonists -- the mother and the daughter -- as well as their inconsolable lamentation over the sharp contrast shown between their inner goodness and the sinisterness of their exterior world, even of their family.

The wife refuses to make love to her husband any more. That is their business. The aftermath, however, is that the husband, as described by the author, explained that the reason he divorced his wife was she would not let him "fuck her any more." Such a saying was first vulgar, second, had the quality of a dirty joke, and third, if we take it further, betrayed the man's subconscious feelings of sexual dominance derived from thousands of years of male-centred society.

The term "love-making," however, means not only a man doing something to a woman but also a woman to a man: It is an activity involving the participation of both sides, rather than a unilateral action.

And marriage, in most cases, involves mutual effort too. If we all agree that, in a marriage, the woman generally does great service for her spouse, isn't it only fair to say the same thing for the man?

The heroine's conclusion that she has been badly used and greatly humiliated seems more of an outcry motivated by deep and vengeful animosity, rather than the result of rational analysis.

For my generation, which has lived in a society affected year after year by political movements, isn't the logic so vividly familiar?

Past Suffering

Might the description of the sad living conditions of the wretched mother and daughter be too sentimental? Under their social background, it is indeed unsurprising that they live in that way.

I myself lived through many days when the next meal was hard to find. After the ugly duckling grows into a swan, should it smile peacefully as it recalls the past years or should it feel unquenchable indignation against the wrong and distress it has suffered?

Sitting in front of a computer screen and looking back into the years that have elapsed, you will surely be lost in the vivid and intoxicating memories and indulge yourself -- that is exactly what makes a writer.

But I humbly think that autumn is a season of harvests and maturity, and the time when we, under the splendid sunset of an autumn day, recollect past times in spring and high summer. There is no need for us to catch the influenza of early spring or the dysentery of summer.

Historic Perspective

Zhang is not satisfied in merely talking, in her novel, about love and hate relationships between a man and a woman, in bed or out of bed.

Working seriously to find the key to comprehension, the heroine Wu Wei tried to seek every possible answer from society, history and politics, to explain the personality development of the two men in her life, her ex-husband and her father, who should have been lovable but who both turned out to be insufferable disappointments.

She incisively dissects the psychology of Hu Bingchen, her ex-husband and Gu Qiushui, her father.

Even the portrait of the old-fashioned military leader -- Bao Tianjian -- is vividly painted.

She writes about military affairs, politics and social changes, as well as venues of crucial historic significance, such as Beijing, Xi'an, Shanghai and Yan'an.

She produces quite a lot of trenchant remarks, black humour and smart jokes, which are capable of making readers exclaim with overwhelming admiration -- but we can certainly see superficial observations and casual fabrications strewn here and there too.

An author who has experienced much and acquired a certain sophistication and who still has the advantage of sensitivity and a nice craftsmanship in writing indeed possesses some of the most precious virtues for a writer.

He or she can definitely offer coming generations some indelible depositions for historic truth.

Portrait of a Woman

But we will surely all marvel at the fact that, by exhibiting the inner world of a little woman living during a great era, Zhang has presented so wonderfully a typical character and a tragicomedy.

Under her pen, Wu Wei, hoping and waiting desperately in a pitiful and abject way, asking for affection like a beggar, nonetheless is resentful, complains, cavils, bristles, is alert, and bolts, like an emotional and painfully underprivileged woman.

And, all the time, she loves herself and others, pining for a "lady-and-gentleman" emotional style in a sleepwalking way, acting in an aristocrat-like, Westernized, bourgeois-like manner, which she does not understand much and can never achieve except through such vain imitation as dining by candlelight, while all the world becomes more and more rough and revolutionary.

Zhang has indeed contributed a magnificent portrait to the literary gallery, as well as something for us to brood on.

For behind the love history of Wu Wei hide the sad stories that kept on happening in China's past, of those Chinese women who defied feudal tradition, pursuing their own way to individual happiness.

Under thousands of years of feudalism, how many Chinese women fought for love and how many of them had ever gained love or known love?

Isn't one of the most moving and most frequently repeated literary themes of the last century one that reflects the cause, defended by Chinese men and women alike, of their jettisoning the old feudalistic ego and seeking a modernistic existence?

At this point, the individual story of Wu Wei is linked with the vast historical background.

But the problem is, couldn't we keep some distance from Wu Wei's personality? Couldn't we assume the deepest meditation and self-interrogation and achieve the greatest comprehension and sympathy? Couldn't we return after having strayed so far and feel quiet pleasure after having moaned for so long? Couldn't we quit cavilling, complaining, lamenting in the way that a donkey hauls a millstone and tramples circle after circle in a dark little hut, and couldn't we instead enter a bright level of thinking and reasoning and enjoy a serene emotional state?

Isn't it time for us to enter a new realm, where the land is much vaster and the view is much more far-reaching?

(China Daily November 19, 2002)