That’s how life is! (1–2)

Mai Jia’s novel, Life, portrays the transformations that have taken place in China from the beginning of the twentieth century to the early years of the current century, through the changes experienced by characters living in a small village on the Yangtze River. The narrative begins in the village, as recounted by a ten-year-old boy, and concludes when the boy reaches sixty-two. This village is unique in contemporary times; the transformations that have affected such villages have turned them into large villages or small towns over the past six decades. Few visitors to China are familiar with such places. Even those who have been traveling to China since the 1980s were typically allowed to visit only the capital, Beijing, and the cities of Shanghai and Guangzhou (formerly Canton). Therefore, the author of these lines considers himself among the fortunate ones who have visited parts of China containing such villages described in Life. I visited China in August 1988 for a period exceeding three weeks as part of a delegation from the Livestock Company and the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development. The delegation included, in addition to the author, the late Dr. Abdulrahman Salman and Dr. Hamed Al-Hadidi. We toured China accompanied by a Chinese economic team, which sometimes comprised more than seven members. Most of our travel was by train and in a small bus, and we visited both large and small cities and villages. While walking through the streets of these villages, children would follow us to watch non-Chinese people for the first time. During our tours in the small bus, we visited and passed through dozens of villages. Our destination was determined by the purpose of our visit: to evaluate investments in agricultural projects in China. We traveled hundreds of kilometers to or through villages and cities, witnessing the China described by Mai Jia in Life. We saw women planting fields while carrying their children on their backs. When we arrived in a village, we passed through its markets and saw Chinese people on bicycles, each carrying six chickens and four ducks on their bikes. I recall that in a hotel in a small city, I took a bicycle and rode it myself amidst dozens of city residents. Some of them, upon seeing me, were amazed and disbelieving of what they had seen. In addition to Beijing, we visited the cities of Jinan and Qingdao in Shandong Province. In Jinan, I climbed a mountain or hill approximately 300 meters high called “Buddha Mountain.” During the climb, I met an educated young Chinese man who spoke English. We engaged in a conversation about politics and Chinese history, during which I mentioned Chairman Mao Zedong and described him as an intellectual. The Chinese man replied that Mao was more of a politician than an intellectual. In the same province, Shandong, we visited Qingdao, a city whose development was significantly influenced by Germans in the nineteenth century. The German architectural influence remains evident there, and German impact extended to making this city the most important in China for beer production. We also visited the port and city of Qinhuangdao in Hebei Province. From the capital, Beijing, we took a train to Hohhot in Inner Mongolia. During this journey, which lasted more than ten hours, I shared with the late Dr. Abdulrahman Salman (“Abu Fawaz”) the bread and Akawi cheese he had brought from Kuwait. We then ate watermelon that we purchased through the train window. I recall remarking that a visitor does not truly grasp the population size of the capital and the number of bicycles until they wander through the train station. In the city of Qufu, the mayor invited us to lunch. He was remarkably generous with the meal, which even included fried scorpions, which I declined to eat. However, I learned that the price per kilogram of scorpions was equivalent to a hundred times the price of a kilogram of mutton. Qufu is famous as the birthplace of the philosopher Confucius and is home to a temple built before 500 BC. During the trip, we learned that Chinese people prefer eating pork over mutton, as the latter has an undesirable odor. I believe that every type of meat has its own cooking method, and that the best cooks of mutton are Arabs, Iranians, and Turks. Among my memories of this trip is my surprise when Abu Fawaz told me he had brought bread and Akawi cheese with him. However, once we were on the train from Beijing to Inner Mongolia, I said to him, “Abu Fawaz, may God protect you. Please give us the bread and cheese.” This was Abu Fawaz’s second trip to China. He had previously visited China two years earlier as part of a team from the Livestock Company to sign a contract for purchasing Chinese sheep for Kuwait. The truth is that I felt a special connection while reading Mai Jia’s Life for several reasons. Much of what the author described resonated more closely with my imagination than it might with another reader. Additionally, I realized that the narrator, whose name is never revealed, was born in the early 1950s, making me a peer in the temporal period he experiences. Dr. Hamed Al-Hamoud