The transactions in Zhu Wen’s “A Boat Crossing” are stark picture of the China during a period of political as well as economic transition during the 1990s and 2000s. This was the time when China was undergoing a transition in political landscape. During this time, the Maoist leadership controlled the economy. However, the grip ended with an economy, that was free and market friendly.
The novella "A Boat Crossing", which is the part of the book "I Love Dollars and Other Stories of China", written by Zhu Wen, one of the representatives of the Chinese authors of the post-Mao era was published in 2007. The novella reflects the writer's perception of the Chinese society in the period of transition in the political and economic situation in China, as well as the central manifestations of these processes in people's behavior. Wen started to write while working at the thermal power plant and soon left the job for full-time freelance writing.
Along with his contemporaries, he depicted the revelations of the Chinese capitalistic society, describing "nihilistic characters in a hedonistic society" ("Three Percent: I Love Dollars Review") through transactions. Wen reflects what society is going through Qi and Chen and other people on the boat. We see them transacting in several ways. There is the issue where some people consume even oranges that belong to others. This is clear show of what the new capitalism entails. There is greed and confusion.
In general, reading the novella infects the reader himself with this unpleasant feeling of paranoia due to the impossibility of the main character to find peace and escape from the weirdness surrounding him. Nevertheless, the reader also feels that the narrator himself is quite a shady mystery, and we probably should not be so surprised at and concerned about why he gets under those circumstances. The story, "A Boat Crossing" story Zhu Wen conveys the reality of China and Chinese people during the 1990s and 2000s, turning into absurdity the absence of people's control over their destiny, the desperate thirst for money and the impossibility to find privacy due to the overcrowded surrounding. Also related to it, there is a constant feeling of being observed and threatened, as well as the total people's indifference and absence of sympathy towards others.
The transactions in boat crossing border on extortion. Rather than exchange goods and services honestly there is the element of greed for gain. This shows the period in Chinese history where the people had started nurturing capitalistic drive. To them, the dollar is quite appealing. This eating of one another's oranges further shows the extent of a capitalistic society. People exploit each other without caring. The events get even stranger when the woman he noticed near the boat enters their cabin along with the girl, and starts to act like they are good friends. She takes a seat next to him and asks him numerous questions, drinks his water and eats his oranges, treating their cabin-mates with them as well, like it is all ok.
The transactions continue when the protagonist, is being sold her niece – a girl she brought with her. Wen successfully uses this transaction to reflect the moral decadence at play. The narrator cannot believe his ears and refuses. In a while, he notices that a second class seems calmer than the third one, so he decides to move to the other cabin in the second class. The different cabins stratified according to economic ability shows that the society is stratified according to one's economic worth; nothing else.
The poor have to contend with poorer amenities while the rich live in abundance. Later while arranging the move, he gets acquainted with a girl in a charge of the second-class cabins, who turns out to be born on the same day the narrator is.
In "A Boat Crossing" Zhu Wen highlighted the most critical issues China faces during the period of transformation in the 1990s and 2000s. This has to do with the thirst or yearning for change. One of the first eye-catching ones is the central idea of the story, which is the absence of personal control over the protagonist's destiny. The narrator's decision to go to Wan Country is arbitral, as well as his spontaneous decision to tell the fat man his real name and to accompany him at the end of the story.
The second issue presented in the story is people's desperate thirst for money. During those years, Chinese people lived on the edge and counted every yuan. This explains the repellent impudence of the clingy woman Lin Yan, who was selling her massage services to the cabin-mates and when they were paying for dinner in hundred yuan notes "her gaze fixed magnetically on the money across the way" (Wen, Lovell, 16), as well as trying to sell her niece to the protagonist.
Thirdly, we see the scenes constantly overcrowded with people and even the author's constant desire of running away from everybody and finding privacy supports the analogy with real China and its living conditions.
The fourth feature of the transitional period's people in China was their indifference and lack of human sympathy. Sex is also there in the story. Form the lady who wants to sell the niece; one sees how individualistic the society has become in this transition time. People seem to be concerned only with personal gain.The narrator didn't care about the destiny of Lin Yan's niece though he felt some guilt for making her cry because he wasn't going to buy her out from her aunt. He also couldn't care less about the man's, whom he met in the hall, story regarding his dad's illness and presumably death, just replying "I'm starving, I am, I informed him, without missing a beat, and then walked off" (Wen, Lovell).
In conclusion, transactions in Wen’s "A Boat Crossing” leave a definite feeling of China and its people during the transitional period in the 1990s and 2000s. Through them we see people who have no control over their lives; they are indifferent, and lack of sympathy towards others. They are exposed and desperately yearn for money. With capitalism comes greed. People go beyond taking what they have to consume even what belonged to others. Also, people wanted freedom yet; they did not know what that freedom portended. The transactions reflect the author's outstanding descriptive skills.
Works Cited
"Three Percent: I Love Dollars Review." Three Percent. Web. 13 Feb. 2016.
"I Love Dollars - Zhu Wen." Complete Review. Web. 13 Feb. 2016.
Zhu, Wen, and Julia Lovell. I Love Dollars and Other Stories of China. New York: Columbia
UP, 2007. Print.
