White Horse - Softcover

Ge, Yan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1908446986 ISBN 13: 9781908446985

Verlag: HopeRoad, 2019

Inhaltsangabe

This compact novella contains a gripping psychological tale, enlivened by wickedly sharp insights into contemporary small-town life in China. 

Yun Yun lives in a small West China town with her widowed father and an uncle, aunt, and older cousin who live nearby. One day, her once-secure world begins to fall apart. Through her eyes, we observe her cousin, Zhang Qing, keen to dive into the excitements of adolescence, but clashing with repressive parents. Ensuing tensions reveal that the relationships between the two families are founded on a terrible lie.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Yan Ge is the chairperson of the China Young Writers Association. People’s Literature magazine choose her as one of China’s 20 future literary masters, and she was picked as Best New Writer by the prestigious Chinese Literature Media Prize. She is the author of The Chilli Bean Paste Clan. Nicky Harman won the Mao Tai Cup People's Literature Chinese-English translation prize 2015, won first prize in the 2013 China International Translation Contest Chinese-to-English section, and won a PEN Translation Fund Award (2006) for her translation of Banished! by Han Dong. She is co-chair of the Translators' Association of the Society of Authors. She translated The Chilli Bean Paste Clan. 

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

My cousin Zhang Qing and I may not have been the prettiest girls in our small town, but we certainly thought we were. One day, while my aunt was out, the pair of us sneaked into her room and pulled all her scarves out of the drawer. Then we stripped down to our vests, wound the scarves around our heads and shoulders, and stood gawping at ourselves in the mirror. ‘Hey, why are we such good-lookers?’ said Qing. ‘We’re the best-looking in the whole world,’ I said. ‘So who wins out of us two?’ Qing asked. I gave her a long look, then said reluctantly: ‘You’re prettier than me.’
     My cousin pulled the scarf down a bit, décolleté-style, so you could see her collarbone. She had soft budding breasts and turned sideways on to the mirror, sticking her chest out so she could admire her figure. I gazed at her breasts enviously, because I had nothing. We carried on messing around, rifling through the drawers again and finding my aunt’s lipstick. It was the kind that coloured up when it was on your lips. We smeared it on and waited and waited, then my cousin said: ‘It only goes red in the sunshine.’
     Still swathed in scarves, we went out onto the balcony to sun ourselves but it was still early in the year and chilly. (Of course, neither of us would have admitted that to the other.) We stood there like a couple of hungry nestlings, pouting our lips at the sun and waiting for them to turn bright red.
     After a bit, my cousin’s face reddened with the cold and she sneezed violently.
     Somehow, my aunt always knew what we had been up to when she left us alone. This occasion was no exception. Qing got a beating. That prettiest face in the world was soon running with tears and snot, and no longer quite so pretty. My aunt thrashed her daughter from the sitting room to the bedroom and from the bedroom to the sitting room, while my cousin cried so hard that I felt my heart breaking for her. I stood by the front door, not daring to move, bawling my eyes out.
     Then my aunt had to go and start the dinner. When I heard her tearing the spinach, I sneaked into the bedroom where my cousin lay sprawled limp and exhausted on the bed. She had no more tears left to cry and sobbed soundlessly. ‘I’m so envious of you for not having a
mother!’ she said fiercely.
     I did not know how to comfort her. I just sat beside her on the bed, patting the hem of her jacket and said: ‘Honestly, it’s quite nice to have a mum.’

     My aunt always enjoyed taking me to school. The nights I stayed over, she carried my school bag and we were out of the door before 7.30 in the morning. We went through the South Gate market and my aunt always had plenty of people to exchange greetings with: ‘Hello Chen, fish for dinner today, is it?’ ‘Mr Zhu, are you having water spinach again?’ ‘Doing good business today, Mrs Li?’ ‘Hello, Mrs Cai!’ they greeted her politely: ‘Taking your niece to school?’
     My aunt always puffed herself up and retorted angrily: ‘What do you mean, my niece? This is my daughter!’
     After this happened quite a few times, the market shoppers got the message. Now, they called to her: ‘Good morning, Mrs Cai! You and your daughter are off to school early!’
     That made my aunt happy. She gave a loud, clear response and made me call a greeting too.
     One day, after we had gone through the old city gate, my aunt took me by the hand and said suddenly: ‘Yun Yun, I really am your mum. Don’t you ever forget that!’
     ‘I won’t,’ I promised.
     ‘If anything’s wrong, you just tell me. So long as I’m here, I’ll make sure no one ever pushes you around,’ she declared.
     ‘Yes,’ I said.
     That afternoon after school and after much searching, I found my father in the compound of the old people’s home where we lived. He was hemmed in by a bunch of old men who were watching him play chess. As I squeezed through, my dad banged the horse down on the board, taking his opponent’s chariot and shouting in elation: ‘See my “White horse bright hooves”!’ ‘Come and cook dinner, Dad,’ I said, but he wasn’t listening. ‘You played like a fool today, didn’t you, old Chen,’ he said.
     He finally realized I was there: ‘Yun Yun! You home from school?’ Affectionately, he sat me on his knee, holding me firm with one arm, while with the other, he carried on playing chess.
     I’d been watching chess for so long that every move my dad made I could name: ‘Gunfire blasts the mountain’ or ‘Horse walks into the slanting sun’ or simply ‘Checkmate!’ When it was checkmate, we could go home for dinner.

     Mostly, it was noodles for dinner. My dad threw a handful of noodles into the water and, when they were cooked, he took a ladleful for himself, gave me a bowlful, and added soy sauce or lard. Then he took a bowl of cooked, minced meat from the cupboard and put a big spoonful on top and we sat there together and gulped down our dinner.
     My dad slurped his noodles down, breathing heavily and had finished in less than a minute. He threw the ladle into the sink, wiped his mouth and said to me: ‘Yun Yun, wash the dishes, right?’
     ‘Right,’ I said.
     And before I knew it, he was out of the house and I could hear him next door: ‘Mr Zhong, come and have a game of chess!’
     I did the dishes and then my homework, or the other way around, or maybe I just did the dishes and, instead of my homework, I stole one of my dad’s martial arts novels. Or I shut the house up and dropped in on the neighbours. The old folks always made me welcome. As soon as they saw me coming, they looked out titbits for me: a couple of slices of boiled pork in garlic sauce, or a White Rabbit milk candy left over at the bottom of a tin. Mrs Yu, who lived at the opposite end of the compound, had the most spending money - ten yuan a month - and sometimes she even gave me a bit of chewing gum, a rarity in those days. Mr Zhong who lived in our row of houses, on the other hand, was very poor. He habitually went around in a khaki military great coat, a hand-me-down from my dad. Wherever I was, I was free to please myself until nine o’clock at night, by which time all the old folks were asleep, except Mr Zhong and my dad who were still locked in combat at the chess board. I could go to bed, or not, as I chose, either in dad’s bed or in my own small bunk bed, and so long as I slept, no one cared whether I lay on my back or my side or my stomach. Except for my cousin who warned: ‘You should never sleep on your stomach!’
     ‘Why not?’
     ‘You’ll squash your chest and your breasts will never grow!’
     I was alarmed. I took a look at the small swellings on her chest, and back at my own chest, flat and skinny as pork ribs, and swore to myself that I’d never sleep on my tummy again. It’s not too late, I thought. They’re sure to grow sometime.

     It was summer by then and when I slept at my cousin’s, we shared her sleeping mat of bamboo slats and just wore our knickers. We played at being a...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: HopeRoad
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2019
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1908446986
• ISBN 13: 9781908446985
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Zeichner: Nunn James
• Anzahl der Seiten: 84
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: preigu GmbH & Co. KG; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; Niedersachsen; 49078; Deutschland