Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: The Invisible Valley
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 1953
WEBSITE:
CITY: New Haven
STATE: CT
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: Chinese
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: nr 89000829
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/nr89000829
HEADING: Su, Wei, 1953-
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035 __ |a (OCoLC)oca02461906
040 __ |a MiU |b eng |e rda |c MiU |d OCoLC |d DLC |d OCoLC |d DLC
053 _0 |a PL2904.W43
100 1_ |a Su, Wei, |d 1953-
400 1_ |a Wei, Su, |d 1953-
400 1_ |a 苏炜, |d 1953-
400 1_ |a 蘇煒, |d 1953-
667 __ |a Machine-derived non-Latin script reference project.
667 __ |a Non-Latin script references not evaluated.
670 __ |a His Yüan hsing jen, 1988: |b t.p. (Su Wei) biog. data (b. 1953; novelist)
670 __ |a The invisible valley, 2018: |b CIP t.p. (Su Wei) data view (“Born in 1953 in Guangzhou, China, Su Wei is known for his nonfiction essays as well as for his highly imaginative novels, which are seen as unique in their treatment of the Cultural Revolution. Like many writers of his generation, Su Wei spent his teenage years being “re-educated” through farm labor in the countryside, working for ten years on a rubber plantation in the mountains of tropical Hainan Island. He moved to the U.S. in 1990, and since 1997 has taught Chinese language and literature at Yale University. The Invisible Valley is his first book to be translated into English”)
953 __ |a xx00 |b yb01
985 __ |c RLIN |e LSPC
SKETCHWRITER NOTE: Downgraded from A to B
PERSONAL
Born 1953, in Guangzhou, China; immigrated to the United States, 1990.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Yale University, New Haven, CT, senior lector in Chinese language and literature, 1997–.
WRITINGS
Author of several books in Chinese, including novels, short story collections, and essays.
SIDELIGHTS
Su Wei was born in 1953 in Ghangzhou (formerly known as Canton), one of the five major urban centers of China. During the Chinese Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, many urban youth were uprooted from their homes to be “re-educated” at agrarian work camps throughout the country. It was thought that immersion in the primitive rural lifestyle would reinforce their commitment to the Communist ideal. It was Su’s fate to be transported as a teenager to Hainan Island, the most southern and tropical point of the People’s Republic of China, where he spent ten years clearing the tropical jungle for rubber plantations.
The work was rigorous, but Su survived, sufficiently re-educated to earn the privilege of advanced education in the United States. He returned to China in the 1980s and became a well-known figure of the Beijing literary scene. Su moved to the United States permanently in 1990; by 1997 he was teaching Chinese language and literature at Yale University. He is the author of several books of essays and short stories, as well as at least three novels, all in his native Chinese. One of the novels was translated into English.
In The Invisible Valley, it is twenty-one-year-old Lu Beiping who is removed from his home in Canton and sent to a rubber plantation on Hainan Island. Hard work in a rustic setting is intended to strengthen his alignment with the values of the Communist state, but in his case the re-education strays far from the Party line. Lu’s group foreman hoodwinks him into a prohibited “ghost marriage” to his deceased daughter. This folk practice, believed to bring rest to the soul of the dead, prevents the groom from pursuing romance in the world of the living, and the young man becomes a target of ridicule among his peers. Lu is rewarded by a “promotion” from hard labor in the tropical jungle to the lonely life of a cowherd in the mountainous interior. He is isolated up on Mudkettle Mountain until he encounters the mysterious group of woodcutters who will change his life.
Lu has spent many long and lonely hours exploring the wilderness when he meets a boy who takes him home to meet his family. The family is a free-living, free-loving group of outcasts who eke out a meager living in the forest, largely beyond the reach of the government. They are bound to the land and the lore of ancient folk magic and ritual. The men of the “driftfolk” are formidable and strict, but Jade, the only female and therefore a figure of great power, takes Lu under her wing. She introduces the groom of the ghost bride to the forbidden pleasures of the flesh, and eventually Lu is adopted into this peculiar family. He learns about their belief system, especially the giant Snakeweird that sleeps beneath the mountain until awakened.
A sense of dislocation settles over Lu as he navigates between the propaganda of the work camp and the spirit world of the driftfolk. They believe so strongly in their traditions that Lu is challenged to distinguish between reality and folklore. He is drawn to the mystery of his ghost bride: how did she die? Why is her soul in a state of perpetual unrest? The answers to these questions disturb him greatly, and the questions themselves seem to trigger a sequence of events that may or may not be connected. The local village officials learn that Lu has taken up life among the driftfolk; a typhoon rages through the foothills; Lu’s alpha bull disappears in the storm; and the Snakeweird is showing signs of life. The atmosphere is permeated by an ambience both “mystical and menacing,” according to a reviewer in Publishers Weekly, but Lu must project an air of normalcy if he harbors any hope of returning to his home in Canton. He must also decide if that home of government oversight, personal discord, and political correctness is the place where he wants to spend the rest of his life.
The Invisible Valley was received with acclaim, both in its original Chinese and in the English translation. Set “against a backdrop of rainforest landscapes, Taoist mysticism, and Cantonese folklore,” as described at the Deep Vellum Books website, the novel “is a lyrical fable about the shapes into which human affection can be pressed in extreme circumstances.” Amy Lantrip reported in World Literature Today: “The Invisible Valley takes the reader along a journey full of mystery, magic, and political intrigue. The characters are full of nuance and contradiction, each keeping their own secrets.” A Kirkus Reviews contributor observed: “This unique adventure of youth, identity, and the natural world intoxicates with overlapping mysteries.” “The truth slowly reveals itself,” commented Jennifer Rothschild in Booklist Online, “in Wei’s lushly atmospheric and haunting novel.” Rachel Cordasco suggested in her review on the Speculative Fiction in Transition website that “Su Wei asks us to broaden our definition of reality, as Lu does, in order to better understand the peoples and landscapes around us.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, February 1, 2018, review of The Invisible Valley.
Publishers Weekly, February 5, 2018, review of The Invisible Valley, p. 38.
ONLINE
Booklist Online, http://www.booklistonline.com/ (March 15, 2018), Jennifer Rothschild, review of The Invisible Valley.
Deep Vellum Books, http://deepvellum.com/ (June 17, 2018), book description and author profile.
Speculative Fiction in Translation, http://www.sfintranslation.com/ (April 23, 2018), Rachel Cordasco, review of The Invisible Valley.
World Literature Today, https://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/ (March 23, 2018), Amy Lantrip, review of The Invisible Valley.
When Chinese novelist Su Wei and his translator Austin Woerner first met in 2005, little did they know that their friendship would spark a ten-year-long experiment in creative co-translation that would take them from the classrooms of Yale to the mountains of far southern China and back again. Join Woerner as he recounts this literary odyssey, culminating in the publication of the English translation of Su’s novel The Invisible Valley in April of this year. Woerner will tell the story behind the story, a coming-of-age narrative set during the Cultural Revolution <
About the Book
Lu Beiping is one of 20 million young adults the Chinese government uproots and sends far from their homes for agricultural re-education. And Lu is bored and exhausted. While he pines for romance, instead he’s caught up in a forbidden religious tradition and married off to the foreman’s long-dead daughter so that her soul may rest. The foreman then sends him off to cattle duty up on Mudkettle Mountain, far away from everyone else.
On the mountain, Lu meets an outcast polyamorous family led by a matriarch, Jade, and one of her lovers, Kingfisher. They are woodcutters and practice their own idiosyncratic faith by which they claim to placate the serpent-demon sleeping in the belly of the mountains. Just as the village authorities get wind of Lu’s dalliances with the woodcutters, a typhoon rips through the valley. And deep in the jungle, a giant serpent may be stirring.
The Invisible Valley <
About the Authors
A Chinese-English literary translator, Austin Woerner has translated two volumes of poetry, Doubled Shadows: Selected Poetry of Ouyang Jianghe and Phoenix , and edited the English edition of the innovative, bilingual Chinese literary journal Chutzpah!. Together with Ou Ning, he co-edited the short fiction anthology Chutzpah!: New Voices from China. He has a BA in East Asian Studies from Yale and an MFA in creative writing from the New School, formerly taught creative writing and translation at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, and is now a lecturer at Duke Kunshan University. He can be found at www.austinwoerner.com, @invisiblevalley on Twitter, and @invisiblevalleybook on Instagram.
Author Su Wei spent ten years working on a rubber plantation on Hainan Island during the Cultural Revolution, and afterward he was among the first mainland Chinese to pursue an advanced degree in the United States. He returned to China and played a key role in the Beijing literary scene during the 1980s “culture fever,” relocated permanently to the U.S. afterward, and since 1997 has been a lecturer at Yale University. He has published three novels and several books of short stories and personal essays in Chinese. The Invisible Valley, translated by Austin Woerner, is his first book to be published in English.
The Invisible Valley
Publishers Weekly.
265.6 (Feb. 5, 2018): p38+.
COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
The Invisible Valley
Su Wei, trans. from the Chinese by Austin
Woerner. Small Beer (Consortium, dist.), $16
trade paper (400p) ISBN 978-1-61873-145-6
Wei's pleasantly picaresque novel, his first to be translated into English, deploys humor and drama as it exposes the harsh realities of China's
agricultural reeducation program in the 1960s through the experiences of one of its hapless young victims. Lu Beiping is a 21-year-old city
dweller when the government sends him "down to the countryside" to work on a rubber plantation on Hainan Island. Almost immediately he is
tricked into a "ghost-marriage" to the spirit of his foreman's dead daughter, dispatched to herd cattle on Mudkettle Mountain, and befriended by a
ragtag family of government-fearing "driftfolk" who have fled to the wilderness. Bei (as he is nicknamed) feels as though he has fallen "from the
bright outer world ... into this dark, hidden place at the earth's edge," and from his naivete and inexperience arise most of the tale's comic
moments, as when Bei sweats so much during his duty as a cowherder that his feet become pungent enough to clear a room. The superstitions and
customs of the driftfolk, and the atrocities recounted by one who saw his family massacred during the Cultural Revolution, give the book's events
a sense of the <
sometimes defies understanding, that feels appropriate given the complexity of China's Cultural Revolution. (Apr.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"The Invisible Valley." Publishers Weekly, 5 Feb. 2018, p. 38+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A526810359/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=7bf89c6c. Accessed 4 June 2018
Gale Document Number: GALE|A526810359
Su, Wei: THE INVISIBLE VALLEY
Kirkus Reviews.
(Feb. 1, 2018):
COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Su, Wei THE INVISIBLE VALLEY Small Beer Press (Adult Fiction) $16.00 4, 3 ISBN: 978-1-61873-145-6
A sensuous coming-of-age story set in a jungle during China's Cultural Revolution, this historical novel flirts with the fantastic.
Su's first novel translated into English tells the story of Lu Beiping, a 21-year-old Cantonese city boy who, along with many of his peers, has been
sent to the countryside for "reeducation through labor." As with many stories set in that era, conflict results from a clash between the protagonist's
sense of himself, his comrades, and locals whose customs are foreign. And what would it all be without a scoop of romance for good measure?
Early on, Lu is coerced into a "ghost marriage" with his foreman's deceased daughter's spirit, which allows her younger brother to marry. His
fellow "re-eds" (translator Woerner's deft rendering) mock him, but the foreman promotes him to the position of cowherd. Now isolated from the
group, he spends long, lonely days and nights in the jungle with his animals until a boy who lives in the wilderness nearby introduces Lu to his
family. Lu discovers a group of lumberjacks led by an enchanting woman named Jade. Soon they fall in love. Lu loses his virginity to her and
becomes an honorary member of the family. Companionship and his newfound self-reliance give him a sense of contentment and confidence he
had yet to experience, but his past won't let him escape so easily. Despite some overlong descriptions, odd vocabulary, and a clunky frame
narrative, the plot moves quickly. The novel's high drama is matched by complex, colorful characters.
<
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Su, Wei: THE INVISIBLE VALLEY." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Feb. 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A525461561/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=5101c65b. Accessed 4 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A525461561
Su, Wei: BEIJING KID
Kirkus Reviews.
(Sept. 1, 2017):
COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Su, Wei BEIJING KID Lulu (Indie Nonfiction) $15.95 11, 20 ISBN: 978-1-4303-0338-1
Su recalls the peculiarities of growing up as part of China's one-child generation in this debut memoir. Despite its affable title, this is a stark,
striking memoir in stories recounting episodes from Su's early years that are worlds away from the standard American notion of what a childhood
should entail. For instance, the author recalls sitting at home one night in June 1989 watching a detective series on television--the government
broadcast four episodes that night instead of the usual one--only to find out later that, not far from her home, the People's Liberation Army was
slaughtering protesters in Tiananmen Square. Born in 1978, just before China instituted its one-child policy, Su was the daughter of a mother who
had wanted sons--she miscarried three before Su's birth, aborted one after--which caused her to keep Su at a distance: "I once asked my mother
why she never held my hand, hugged me and kissed me," writes Su. "I remember my mother said to me she did not think it was necessary." Su
received more affection from her grandmother, though despite (or perhaps because of) this, she would often deliberately hurt the old woman's
feelings. Many of the pieces in the book concern initial experiences: the first time that Su rode a bike, or saw a sunset, or watched television.
Rather than marking an addition, however, each experience seemed to whittle something away from the maturing girl. This is a book of
disappearances--of a chronic, evolving sense of lack. Su writes in a detached prose that evokes the naivete of childhood while hinting at the
deeper trauma that some of these events inflicted. The result often borders on the surreal; for example, in the opening chapter, "Tiger," the author
describes a beloved pet dog that "was big, as big as a donkey, I used to sit on his back. I was about nine years old. He liked grass very much. I
used to pick a lot of grass for him." Because owning an unregistered dog was illegal, and because registration was expensive, Su's mother decided
that Tiger should be killed, so she strangled the dog in the yard while Su looked on. The next day, the family ate Tiger for dinner. "Now I love
dog's meat," Su ends this disturbing tale. "It is the most delicious meat that I have ever had." The fablelike perfection of some of the pieces--
"Song Yali," "Sange," "Garden"--suggests quite a bit of authorial shaping, and as a result, some readers may be tempted to view the book as a
collection of short fiction. In the end, though, the literal truth barely matters; Su so sharply captures the universal experiences of lonely youth and
sets them so starkly against the austerity of 1980s China that the book delivers an artistic truth that's powerful enough on its own. It's a work that
will sneak into one's soul and linger there for a long time. A haunting childhood remembrance set in China's recent past.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Su, Wei: BEIJING KID." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Sept. 2017. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A502192212/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=e2c0d84f. Accessed 4 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A502192212
The Invisible Valley by Su Wei
FICTION
Author: Su Wei
Translator: Austin Woerner
The cover to The Invisible Valley by Su WeiEasthampton, Massachusetts. Small Beer Press. 400 pages.
Su Wei currently teaches Chinese language and literature at Yale University, and The Invisible Valley is his first novel available in English. The novel stars Lu Beiping, a “re-ed,” one of the many students sent to the Chinese countryside in the 1960s and ’70s to learn from farmers and be reformed. Lu is sent to the tropical jungle island of Hai-nan, where he is torn between the modern Communist movement of which he is not too fond and traditional ideas he considers backward. He is “ghost-married” (married to someone who has already died) to the daughter of the foreman of his work group and sent to Mudkettle Mountain where he will herd cattle in seclusion. While on the mountain he meets a group of drifters. The woman, Jade, is the center of a polyandrous family structure and takes interest in Lu. He must be careful not to offend the drifter men, especially Kingfisher, the superstitious and strict head of household. Lu quickly becomes integrated into their band, but not without consequences.
Mudkettle Mountain is rife with dangers both natural and supernatural. The locals speak of wispwomen and a mysterious serpent demon that lives on the mountain. Although Lu does not believe the myth, he begins to herd his cattle more cautiously. When a typhoon rips through the area, one of the animals goes into labor and the lead bull goes missing, with some blaming the serpent demon for the disappearance. The paranormal aspects of the mountain are quickly overshadowed by the very real problems facing Lu. The mysterious suicide of his “ghost-wife” begins to haunt him, and he attempts to investigate her death, eventually unraveling an abusive past and her deep despair. He must also be careful to hide his dealings with the drifters from his working group and make a good impression if he has any hope of returning to the city. The story reaches its climax when he is eventually confronted about his relationship with the family.
The Invisible Valley takes the reader along a journey full of mystery, magic, and political intrigue. The characters are full of nuance and contradiction, each keeping their own secrets. As each secret is revealed, the reader comes closer to understanding the larger picture. Combined with the balance between the natural and supernatural, this makes the novel interesting for any reader.
Amy Lantrip
University of Colorado Boulder
additional reviews from sketchwriter
Booklist Review March 15, 2018
Jennifer Rothschild
REVIEW. First published March 15, 2018 (Booklist Online).
During China’s Cultural Revolution, Lu Beiping is sent down to a Hainan rubber plantation for reeducation. After being tricked into ghost-marrying the foreman’s dead daughter, he is sent to herd cattle outside the camp. In the mountain jungles, he can read forbidden books and meets a makeshift family of woodcutters who live on the edge of society, eking out a barely legal existence. A strict set of rules and laws on how to appease the local spirits govern their otherwise free-loving, carefree ways. When the details about Lu Beiping’s ghost bride’s death, the camp’s zealousness for Chairman Mao’s edicts, and the woodcutters’ lifestyle clash, the effect is more destructive than the typhoons that ravage the mountains. Although Wei’s tale lacks the magic realism of those by the renowned Chinese author Yan Lianke, readers will recognize the same ever-shifting ground as the memorable characters take the plot in unexpected directions. As an outsider, Lu Beiping (and by extension, the reader) finds himself constantly, if vaguely, aware that he is missing context and subtext. <
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In 1960s China, life takes a dramatic turn for 21-year-old Le Beiping immediately after he is tricked into entering a “ghost marriage” with Han, the dead daughter of the foreman from his reeducation group. Sent off to work as a cattle herder in a remote area called Mudkettle Mountain, Lu meets Jade, a woman in a free, loving community of “driftfolk,” who has three children by three different men in the community. Lu is soon adopted into the group and enjoys the contentedly nudist lifestyle of several individuals there. Based on the author’s own experiences, the story may surprise readers expecting a ghost story, but what comes to light at the end is more shocking and gritty than anticipated. The vernacular of the driftfolk, well translated by Woerner, recalls Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn; obviously these characters are not in the mainstream.”
— Library Journal, date not available
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Speculative Fiction in Translation
http://www.sfintranslation.com/?p=4206
Rachel Cordasco
April 23, 2018
The Invisible Valley is one of those hard-to-classify novels that resists labels precisely because it’s exploring, through the story it tells, what terms like “fantasy,” “reality,” and “magic” even mean, and how that differs between, and even within, cultures. Here’s the translator, Austin Woerner, discussing how he understands the story:
My sense is that Chinese writers have often employed fantastical elements to grapple with difficult and traumatic things for which traditional realism might seem inadequate….The Invisible Valley isn’t fantasy or magical realism in the traditional sense, though I think it will appeal to readers of both genres. In those genres, magical things really happen; characters slay dragons or storms of yellow butterflies rain down on Macondo. By contrast, The Invisible Valley takes readers into a world where characters believe so strongly in magic that the reader cannot help believe in it too. That’s fundamentally a different kind of storytelling. I see it as having more in common with the work of John Crowley, in which a series of events could have either a magical or a realistic explanation, and it’s up to the reader to decide which to believe.
The merging of the “real” and the “fantastic” that Su Wei describes throughout the novel represents, in part, the dislocation that many young Chinese men and women felt when they were sent to the countryside for “re-education” during the Cultural Revolution. Going from a life spent in cities and in school to one of strenuous field labor and ongoing Party propaganda must have seemed to many like a step into another dimension. The Invisible Valley takes this feeling of dislocation and uses it to explore several different binaries in protagonist Lu Beiping’s life: city vs. country, Party vs. mountain community, tame vs. wild, real vs. fantastic, and others.
The strand that runs through the entire story is “chance”- how it is random and inexplicable and yet has the power to significantly change an individual’s life. In Lu’s case, just picking up a bit of red paper from the ground after coming to Hainan for “re-education” leads him into a “ghost marriage” (a belief among some in Hainan when a dead older sibling is “married” so that the younger sibling may marry without being harassed by the dead). Only after this whirlwind and hasty ceremony, though, does Lu actually learn what it means to be ghost-married, and later, what really happened to his ghost-wife Han. It is this event that sets Lu onto a completely different track from the one he had expected: his ghost-father-in-law, the foreman of his unit, gives him the seemingly-easy job of herding cattle around on the mountainside (manure production is a major part of the unit’s purpose in the region).
Initially terrified by the cacophony of insects, animals, trees, plants, and water, especially at night, which he hears through the thin walls of his small, isolated hut, Lu slowly grows acclimated to his surroundings, experiencing an unsettling yet enriching shift in perspective. He learns about the legends surrounding the spirits that live on the mountain, especially the “Snakeweird” and the myriad ways in which mountain-dwellers keep it at bay:
Deep in the mountains there dwells a giant thousand-year-old python: the Snakeweird, font of the land’s bounty and of its ruin. Never, never, wake the Snakeweird. As Lu Beiping drove his cattle into the foothills, the thought of the Snakeweird was never far from his mind. Never mind if what they said was true; here he was, having recently donned the eerie mantle of ‘ghost husband,’ pressing ever deeper toward the monster’s legendary haunting place. He felt as if he were departing from the land of the living and crossing into the country of shadow…
As Lu travels around the region with his cattle, exploring hidden glens, seemingly-wandering valleys, and dangerous precipices, he gains respect for the folktales and rituals the mountain-dwellers developed over time. Lu soon becomes part of one particular mountain community, falls in love with Jade (the only woman in the group and a powerful force), and embarks upon a complicated friendship with a young “down-countried,” highly-educated man called “Autumn.” All the while, Lu tries to find out exactly what happened to his ghost-wife (was it suicide? murder? malaria?) while trying to figure out if he has indeed crossed over into this mountain life for good, leaving behind the slogans, petty bickering, and competition of the unit.
The question that follows the reader around in this book really comes down to: should we call this “speculative” fiction? If an entire community in the book believes that “reality” includes serpent spirits and wandering valleys, then such stories wouldn’t at all be speculative to them, would they. They seem that way to Lu, at first, but his ultimate immersion in the life and landscape of Mudkettle Mountain unsettles his long-held beliefs about what is real and what isn’t. This gets to the heart of how writers depict “reality,” a discussion that will go on as long as humans write. In The Invisible Valley, <
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