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Irish Times
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Old Kiln by Jia Pingwa: An unforgettable masterpiece depicting rural China during the Cultural Revolution
Old Kiln Author : Jia Pingwa, translated by James Trapp, Olivia Milburn and Christopher Payne ISBN-13 : 978-1838905262 Publisher : Sinoist Books Guideline Price : £19.99 Jia Pingwa is one of the most respected and widely read writers in China . He is particularly associated with realist writing about rural communities in his home province of Shaanxi. Though several of his novels have been translated into English, he has not yet had the major breakthrough he deserves. Old Kiln adds to the growing list of contemporary Chinese fiction that explores Mao Zedong's disastrous Cultural Revolution, including works by Yan Lianke, Zou Jingzhi and Zhang Xianliang. Jia Pingwa was a teenager during that period and writes with both the authority of direct experience and the benefit of perspective. The novel is set in the remote village of Old Kiln, known in years past for its excellence in porcelain, but now a poor backwater relying on subsistence communal farming. The story focuses on young Inkcap, who was found in a river and adopted. He lives with his Gran who is considered a 'class enemy' owing to Inkcap's grandfather's ties to the nationalist Kuomintang army. READ MORE Bash is a charismatic local tough who becomes the leader of a violent faction at the vanguard of the Cultural Revolution. He is central to the bloody internecine struggles between rival factions in the village. Contrasting with Bash is Goodman, the village's unofficial spiritual guide and healer, whose world view is steeped in Daoism and Buddhism rather than Maoist ideology. This long novel moves at the slow pace of village life; however, it is brimming with vibrant characters, ribald humour and memorable anecdotes. It offers precision writing that re-creates the experience of living among uneducated people who have become infantilised and bewildered by successive waves of ideological reform. The translation has been split between three talented translators, and it is to their immense credit that the novel retains such unity of style and coherence of tone, without losing any of the comedy and tenderness that makes it so human. Old Kiln is quietly epic in its patient but unforgettable depiction of life in rural China under the tyranny of the Cultural Revolution. It is unquestionably a masterpiece and ought to consolidate Jia Pingwa's reputation as a writer of international importance.
Spectator
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Spectator
Maoist China in microcosm: Old Kiln, by Jia Pingwa, reviewed
Old Kiln is a novel spoken by the muse of memory but carved into shape by the fear of forgetting. Jia Pingwa (b.1952) wrote the first draft in 2009 after visiting his home village. Remembering a prolonged bloody conflict that tore the village apart during the Cultural Revolution, he was disturbed to find all traces of it gone – and the younger generation knowing nothing about either the violence or the Cultural Revolution itself. Old Kiln also confronts a similar amnesia afflicting the entire country. The fictionalised village is China writ small – its kiln that fires porcelain providing the book's title. Jia is superb at marshalling large-scale scenes of chaos and balancing them with quieter interiors. The novel revolves around two characters: the impish orphan boy Inkcap and his grandmother Gran, doddering yet gifted at paper-cutting and all sorts of folk traditions. Although both are considered 'bad elements' in Mao's class categories, Gran's skills make her indispensable, while Inkcap cheerfully runs errands for everyone. This little flunky is a child savant, able to commune with animals and smell the scent of looming death or disaster. Unlike conventional protagonists, however, the duo are mostly tangential to major events, as the novel shifts its focus to other characters. Spring returns at the end of the book and the Cultural Revolution rages on. Leaders on both sides are publicly executed, among them Bash, the handsomest man in the village. His illegitimate child is born; Inkcap survives; and Gran, now completely deaf, remains the old wise woman. When Inkcap's New Year's lantern burns out, she tells him: 'If you have a lantern, you can light the road ahead, but you can still go walking without one.' Inkcap wants to go to school, thinking that with an education he might indeed go walking one day without a lantern. Jia is Inkcap, who has seen too much but has understood little; he's also Gran, 'who used her eyes to take in the world, looking at all kinds of people and pigs and cows and dogs'. With a schoolteacher father persecuted during the Cultural Revolution, Jia has known political injustice firsthand and allows the details to tell the story: smouldering anger over poverty and corruption, ignited by Mao's radicalised anti-establishment politics, bursts into flames of self-destructive violence. Hatred is unleashed and base instincts are stirred, setting neighbour against neighbour and fracturing the community. 'Revolution' often serves as a flimsy pretext for revenge and an opportunity to exploit chaos for power. Old Kiln is not an easy read. It refrains from appealing to emotional sympathy. Details build concrete scenes yet tend to defuse the drama. Still, the vivid imagery, spare prose and sinuous structure are rewarding, and its publication is a small miracle. It's hard to imagine that such a novel could be written, let alone published, in China today. Once an open wound that every writer wanted to tear at (giving rise to the genre of 'scar literature' in the early post-Mao era), the Cultural Revolution is a taboo subject under Xi Jinping. Thanks to the efforts of three highly capable translators, Old Kiln now has the chance of a new lease of life.
Time of India
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Time of India
SHINee's Onew Redefines K-Pop with Groundbreaking Album 'PERCENT'
SHINee Onew The K-Pop world just witnessed something absolutely insane! SHINee's Onew didn't just drop another album - he literally threw down the gauntlet and challenged the entire industry's soul. "PERCENT" isn't just music; it's a full-blown revolution disguised as an album that's making everyone question what K-Pop even means anymore. The Great Escape_ Breaking Free from the Idol Machine While most K-Pop artists are trapped in this endless cycle of glossy perfection and manufactured personas, Onew said "screw it" and decided to get real - like, uncomfortably real. This isn't your typical dance-heavy, auto-tuned extravaganza. Instead, Onew served us raw vulnerability on a silver platter, and frankly, the industry doesn't know how to handle it. Think about it - here's a guy who's been in the spotlight for over a decade, and instead of playing it safe, he's out here talking about being incomplete, embracing imperfection, and literally howling like an animal. The audacity is absolutely unmatched! Cultural Revolution_ Redefining What It Means to Be a K-Pop Star This album is basically Onew's middle finger to the entertainment industry's impossible standards. In a world where idols are expected to be perfect 24/7, smile constantly, and never show any real emotion, "PERCENT" is like a nuclear bomb of authenticity. The timing couldn't be more perfect. With mental health conversations finally gaining traction among young people, Onew's message of "it's okay to be incomplete" hits different. This isn't just about music anymore - it's about giving an entire generation permission to be human. Onew didn't just participate in songwriting; he basically bled his soul onto every track. That's the kind of artistic integrity that makes other artists sweat nervously. The experimental nature of tracks like "PERCENT (%)" shows that Korean artists are finally ready to push boundaries and challenge Western music dominance. The album features 11 tracks that read like an emotional autobiography - from "Silky" celebrating the art of being lazy (honestly, a whole mood), to "Caffeine" delivering that addictive rush we all know too well. "Marshmallow" captures those butterflies-in-your-stomach moments when you're falling hard for someone, while "Confidence" showcases Onew's inner strength.
LeMonde
7 days ago
- Politics
- LeMonde
Xi: The father, the son and the party
In the spring of 1967, the Cultural Revolution was in full swing in China. At a reeducation center for families of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) cadres, a denunciation session targeted "black" individuals − those labeled as "bad elements" under the Mao era. Six people were targeted that day: five adults and one teenager, the son of Xi Zhongxun (1913-2002), the former propaganda chief and vice-premier who had fallen victim to a brutal purge. The humiliating metal dunce cap he was forced to wear, since his father had been accused of disloyalty to Mao Zedong (1893-1976), was so heavy that the 13-year-old boy had to hold it up with his hands. Facing him, the assembly, fists raised, shouted "Down with Xi Jinping!" and his mother had no choice but to follow suit. The boy was soon sent to a juvenile reeducation center. He had only summer clothes with no lining and slept directly on the freezing floor when winter arrived. He was covered in lice and was sick, later confiding that he wondered if he would survive.
15-07-2025
- Business
East Asia Crashing: Dynamism Undone by Demographics
Japan is falling rapidly through the ranks of the world's top economies. According to the International Monetary Fund, it will drop to number five in 2025, behind the United States, China, Germany, and India, the new number four. But Japan is not alone in its plight. Just as it spearheaded the East Asian boom that began in the 1960s, it has set the pace for the bust now gripping South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong—with China almost certain to follow. At the heart of this shift are the inexorable forces of demographic aging and population decline. East Asia's Economic Relay For many years East Asia was the world's key growth center, and Japan was the main engine behind that growth. During the era of the 'Japanese miracle,' from the mid-1950s to the early 1970s, the Japanese economy's growth rate was the envy of the world. In 1968, Japan shot past what was then West Germany to become the world's second largest economic power, after the United States. Beginning in the mid-1960s, South Korea followed with the 'miracle on the Han River.' It was soon joined by Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore to form a dynamic group dubbed the Four Little Dragons. The rise of the 'big dragon,' China, began in the late 1970s under the 'reform and opening up' policies of Deng Xiaoping. Emerging from the devastation of the Cultural Revolution (1966–76), China needed only about 30 years to overtake Japan, becoming the world's second-largest economy in 2010. By that time, Japan was already on a different trajectory. Following the collapse of the 1980s asset price bubble, it entered the 'lost decade,' which dragged on for another 20-odd years, allowing China to take over as the growth center of Asia and the world. In 2024, the Japanese economy fell to fourth place, behind Germany. As a portion of global economic output, Japan's nominal GDP has fallen from 17.5% in 1995 to around 4% today. Demographic Destiny? This growth trajectory closely tracks demographic trends. Japan's population peaked in 2008 at 128.08 million, and it has been contracting continuously since 2011. In 2024, the number of live births fell below 700,000 for the first time since the government launched its annual vital statistics survey in 1899. Moreover, Japan's neighbors, after following us on the road to growth and prosperity, are experiencing the same demographic transition. South Korea's population fell for two consecutive years after reaching 51.76 million in 2020. In 2023, the country's total population grew slightly thanks to an influx in foreign workers, but with one of the world's lowest fertility rates, South Korea is unlikely to stem its long-term demographic decline. Taiwan's population contracted for three years running after hitting 23.60 million in 2019. It bounced back slightly in 2023—again, thanks to immigration—but started shrinking again in 2024. Finally, we come to China, long the world's most populous country. Population decline here had an artificial component in the form of the one-child policy adopted in 1979. But the birthrate remained lackluster even after the policy was scrapped in 2015. As a result, China's population has been shrinking ever since 2021, when it peaked at 1.264 billion. In 2023, according to UN statistics, India overtook China as the world's most populous nation. The key indicator of future demographic trends is total fertility rate (TFR), the number of children the average woman is expected to bear in her lifetime. In developed countries, replacement-level fertility—the rate at which the population stays constant—is about 2.1. In the World Bank's TFR ranking of 218 countries and territories, Japan ranks at number 199 with a TFR of 1.20, China at 211 (1.00), Taiwan at 215 (0.87), Hong Kong at 216 (0.75), and South Korea at 217 (0.72). If fertility continues at these levels, the region's population will fall by at least half before the century is out. What was once the world's growth center is facing depopulation. Westward Shift In addition to having fewer children, people in East Asia are living longer, resulting in rapid demographic aging. This means that the productive population (those aged 15–64) is dwindling as a percentage of the whole. This naturally drags down economic activity and blunts growth, and that is exactly what we have seen in East Asia in recent years. Japan's growth rate has languished between 0% and 1% and South Korea's between 1% and 2%, while Taiwan's has ranged from 1% to 4%. The Chinese government announced a growth rate of 5% for 2024, but that figure strains credibility. Domestic demand has remained sluggish amid the prolonged real estate crisis, and deflationary pressures have been mounting over the past two years. On top of that, China is experiencing an exodus of foreign capital owing to multiple factors, including the tightening of regulations in response to friction with the United States. China has been issuing special treasury bonds and injecting capital into its major banks. All these circumstances suggest that the actual growth rate may be less than half the figure published by the government. China still has the world's second largest economy, but its share of global GDP has dropped to less than 17% from the 2021 peak of 18.3%. Meanwhile, Vietnam's population surpassed 100 million in 2023, and the country's economy grew by 7% in 2024. In India, which has replaced China as the world's biggest country, GDP growth has held between 6% and 9% since 2021. The growth center of Asia, and of the world, is shifting westward. (Originally published in Japanese. Banner photo: Children receive instruction in first aid during a civil defense drill held in central Seoul, May 2023. © AFP/Jiji.)
