Emma Deplores Goodreads Censorship's Reviews > Strange Beasts of China

A unique, translated work of fantasy/magic realism—either a collection of mystery stories with a common narrator, or a highly episodic novel. In a fictional city in contemporary China, a zoology-student-turned-journalist/romance writer researches different species of “beasts,” which each appear mostly human but with a couple of key differences. Each of the nine chapters focuses on a different beast, with some mystery about their true nature. Continuity is provided by the narrator, who learns more about herself and the people around her, as well as the secondary cast.

This is a well-written book, which seems to have caught the attention of a lot of people—endorsements from major newspapers, and there’s a fair amount of lit crit out there about it as well. Interestingly, it was first translated into English 14 years after its initial publication in Mandarin/Sichuanese. The author is from Sichuan but based in England.

However, while appreciating that the book clearly has a lot of merit in terms of themes, social commentary, etc., I struggled with it, which I think is largely due to the cultural gap. Speculative fiction is often difficult in translation, reliant on tropes as it is; it was interesting to see how things work out differently than you’d expect in a work written in English (the beasts are generally assumed to be benign but turn out to be violent or dangerous, whereas in English you’d expect the opposite), and there are places where I was pretty sure I was getting the commentary, as in a chapter involving a government crackdown in response to uprisings in Southeast Asia. It was certainly interesting to see a fantasy that seems to be a meditation on regional differences and rootlessness in modern China, the way newly-built cities are populated almost entirely by people from far-flung provinces (for which I’m guessing the beasts are a metaphor). But often I found the resolutions to chapters difficult to understand, and I wasn’t always sure how to interpret particular elements.

Like many English-language readers, I also found the story hard to connect with on an emotional level, which after reading a whole book on cultural influences on emotion, I suspect is because my expectations are different from the original audience’s. The narrator has strong emotions but they tend to be shown entirely through external actions, without building up to that through descriptions of how the emotion feels in the body or checking in on her feelings when they aren’t being enacted. So it can feel strange and abrupt when she, say, collapses in tears. The writing style is quite spare, and perhaps the emotion would have been implicit for a Chinese audience in a way it was not for me.

At any rate, the book is well-written, unique, and fairly short, so I don’t regret giving it a try. But I don’t typically enjoy episodic novels, so starting fresh in each chapter and the way previously mentioned beasts never come up again was a hurdle for me, in addition to the issues mentioned above. Overall I struggled more than I enjoyed it, and might not have finished but for a book club and my desire to try more works of translated fantasy. Worth a look though if it piques your interest.