Sinologist heaps praise on Chinese genre writer

Kubin approved: China’s Stephen King

Update (2009.03.28): Having obtained a copy of the book, I see that the cover text translates the title 人间（上）谁是我 as The Destiny: Who Am I, instead of “The Human World,” which we have used below.

Update (2009.03.24): I have learned from several people who have contacted Professor Kubin that he did not say what the suspect newspaper report quoted him as saying, and additionally that he is not familiar with Cai Jun’s work at all.

Update (2009.03.23): The publisher’s blog has issued a fairly ambiguous statement about Kubin’s endorsement:

We have been continually receiving calls from the media asking for our opinion of Kubin’s praise of Cai Jun. This is difficult for us, because no matter what we say, people will think we aren’t being objective, but they’ll be suspicious if we don’t say anything. All we can say is that we agree with Kubin’s recognition of The Human World. As for whether Cai Jun can compare to Dan Brown or Stephen King, it’s not really important. We’ll borrow an aphorism from The Roots of Wisdom: “The highest level a text can attain is nothing other than being precisely appropriate. The highest level a person can attain is nothing other than being entirely natural.”

We attempted to contact Kubin to obtain his exact views on why he suddenly turned his attention to genre writing. Even before Cai Jun’s The Human World goes on sale, we printed fifty copies to give to noted writers and critics to obtain their opinions and to plan the release ceremony. Kubin could only have obtained the book by going through one of those experts.

Follow this statement we will not say anything more about the matter.

It’s quite possible that this entire episode was cooked up by Cai Jun and his publisher.

On the release of Mysterious Messages: Rakasa (volume II of the series), they got into a very public spat over the jacket band’s promotional copy, which read “Mysterious Messages reaches a height that Cai Jun will never be able to top.” Cai complained on his blog that this amounted to the publisher cursing his future career, and the two sides warred back and forth for a few rounds — heavily covered in the online media — before declaring that they’d had enough of the subject and would not speak of it again.

Cai Jun is a bestselling thriller writer whose works often deal with the supernatural. His latest book, the first since the Lost-inspired four-part adventure novel Mysterious Messages, is The Human World (人间), which comes out at the end of the month.

Today, an astonishing story about this new book appeared online, sourced to the Xinming Evening News (or perhaps the New Express*). It has not been verified, but we’re going to run it anyway.

If it’s true, it’s a nice indication that literary critics may be broadening their range a little, moving beyond the usual big names. If it’s a hoax (which seems more likely), then the sheer audacity of faking an endorsement from a prominent Sinologist to promote a new thriller makes it noteworthy:

Recently, Sinologist Wolfgang Kubin told the New Express: Someone told me that I should read Cai Jun’s novels because he is one of the major representatives of the thriller genre in China. Someone else handed me a manuscript and said that if I wanted to read Cai Jun, I should start with The Human World, and if I couldn’t take it, then I should just dump all of his earlier books into the garbage. I’ve actually read one of his books before: Virus (病毒), a novel deeply infused with local Chinese culture. Compared to Virus, The Human World has an additional layer of narrative exploration, and stresses the importance of personal exploration. Cai Jun’s The Human World can be compared to the best works of Dan Brown and Stephen King, but no one is willing to acknowledge that a Chinese author has reached such a high level.

In an interview with the authoritative German media outlet Deutsch Welle, this internationally-renowned Sinologist sent a shockwave through Chinese literature, with comments such as “Contemporary Chinese literature is garbage…Chinese authors look down on each other…Chinese authors are too timid….” So why does he so strongly support Cai Jun? With that question in hand, this paper called up Kubin, who said over the phone: I have criticized the failings of contemporary Chinese authors in the past. First, they don’t know anything about people. Second, contemporary Chinese writers like to tell stories that have already been told before. They have no imagination. Third, I cannot stand the attitude toward women shown by the narrators in novels by many Chinese writers. In their works, men have no way to understand women. Take Mo Yan’s Republic of Wine, for example: when a man encounters a woman, her breasts are big and he wants to touch them. When I open a book and see a line like that, I close it again immediately. I can’t stand that attitude toward women.

The imagination shown by Cai Jun, his attitude toward women, and the idea he expresses in The Human World that “reality is the most spectacular novel, and the human heart is the greatest thrill,” are all very interesting. And while the structure of Cai Jun’s novels bears the mark of western thrillers, on the whole they are quite good. However, I am not saying that Chinese thrillers overall have reached any particular level of quality. I am well aware that Chinese thrillers rank in the middle and lower levels on the world stage. Cai Jun is a rare exception.

Despite being reposted on a number of news portals, the article does not appear on the Xinmin website or in the PDF edition of the newspaper. The New Express report cited in the first paragraph doesn’t seem to exist, either.

Cai Jun himself was suspicious when he read the news. He wrote on his blog:

Reading this, my first reaction was astonishment, and then intense suspicion — Mr. Kubin is in far-off Germany, we are completely unknown to each other, my books have not been published in Germany (the only foreign editions are in Russia and Vietnam), and although Mr. Kubin knows Chinese and is able read the Chinese edition directly, his field of study is contemporary Chinese literary fiction and he rarely says anything about popular fiction in China. Why, all of a sudden, would he mention me, and why would he praise me so excessively? (I do hope it’s not mockery.)

Considering all of the fake news reports and falsified interviews going on these days, I wondered whether this was a fabricated news item made up by the publisher or a reporter. But when I contacted my publisher just now, they were unaware of the situation — they had only learned about it after reading the news, so it apparently wasn’t designed by them, as I had first imagined.

As for Kubin, I first heard of him because of the 2006 news report, “German Sinologist calls contemporary Chinese literature garbage.” His incisive opinions and unsparing criticism mortified China’s literary establishment and whipped up a storm of controversy. But I actually approved of some of his criticisms. In particular, I strongly agreed with his criticism of Wolf Totem as fascist.

Last September, I nearly brushed shoulders with Kubin in Shanghai. One day I was there for a taping of Hunan TV’s Midnight Meetings talk show, and a few hours later the program recorded an interview with Mr. Kubin.

Overseas Sinologists generally restrict their attention to the “pure literature” side of Chinese contemporary literature, so if they have begun to look at popular literature and genre fiction, then it’s a step forward.

However, what’s particularly mystifying to me is that The Human World doesn’t go on sale until March 31, so how did Kubin get a look at the manuscript? Maybe he just looked at the press materials and detailed summary.

Wouldn’t it be even better if he gives another, detailed critique after the book comes out? If Mr. Kubin is willing, we could do a face-to-face, and then we’d see whether his high praise was real or fake.

Note (2009.03.21): Yesterday, the Sina version of the article cited the Xinmin Evening News. This morning, the citation has been changed to the New Express. Additionally, Baidu’s news search does not index the article (except for one repost on BrandCN that still cites the Xinmin Evening News).