Can Xue

Can Xue has excellent ominous moody short fiction. I felt I did a disservice to a few of these by reading them in the summer with my office lights on and they would be much better enjoyed someplace a little dimmer and gloomier. But still several others the mood still broke through and managed to really dig its roots in. At first I thought this collection would be entirely told from non-human POVs since the collection starts out with several just like that: the first story seems to be told by a dog-like creature (it's called Rat and Snake among other things but treated like a stray dog), the second one was told by a magpie, and the third is about an old cicada (tho not told from its strict POV) but then we go back to largely human-centric POVs although with a great one about Shadow People and another told from the perspective of a tree.… (more)

Barefoot Doctor turned out to be the perfect choice after the apocalyptic horror of Craig Harrison's The Quiet Earth. It's a quiet homage to the barefoot doctors who provided healthcare during the Cultural Revolution in China, but it's not realism as we know it.

Can Xue is the pen name of Deng Xiaohua. Born in 1953 four years after the establishment of the People's Republic of China, she is a Chinese writer of experimental fiction and a literary critic. Michael Orthofer, in the section about Chinese Fiction in his The Complete Review's Guide to Contemporary World Fiction (2016) explains the post-Mao transition from strictly realistic fiction extolling the ideology and slogans of the Maoist era, including that long-inculcated concern for the greater good with individual desires and needs, and notes Can Xue as the leading avant-garde author, describing her work as 'challenging'.

Her work clearly stands apart from most of the available Chinese fiction and, with its detailed focus on the individual, frequently veers into the surreal and feels closer to Western literary traditions. (p.340)

Can Xue's page at Wikipedia tells us that 'can xue' can be interpreted either as the stubborn, dirty snow left at the end of winter or the remaining snow at the peak of a mountain after the rest has melted, and these two meanings take on extra resonance when we learn that her family was persecuted and her education was severely disrupted during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). Both stubborn determination and joy in beauty feature in her tenth novel Barefoot Doctor.

The concept of a 'barefoot doctor' is not uncommon in developing countries. Some of the aid organisations to which I donate recognise that limited resources can have more impact if women in local communities are given basic training in rudimentary preventative health care and midwifery. While the Chinese Communists had ideological reasons for distrusting 'intellectuals' such as doctors trained in Western medicine, their 'barefoot doctor' program meant that many more people could access health care from local people for much less than the cost of educating and training doctors. Especially for the peasantry in rural areas across China's vast territory. (See note below).

(The term 'barefoot doctor' comes from the south of China, where farmers who worked barefoot in the rice paddies were also 'doctors' trained under the scheme.)

Can Xue was a barefoot doctor herself for a while and her novel celebrates the life and work of Mrs Yi, whose practice is based on Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). Thankfully, she doesn't seem to use the more contentious TCM ingredients gleaned from endangered species**, but confines herself to an extensive collection of herbs which she grows on her farm from seeds and cuttings from the nearby mountain.

The limitations of the barefoot doctor initiative are shown but not dwelt on. Mrs Yi's only child dies because she doesn't have the expertise to save him, and she has patients with terminal illness such as cancer for whom she can offer only herbal pain relief. (Though there is an instance of morphine being used, and also a flu vaccine.) But she is loved and respected in the village because everybody knows she is doing her best, and her best is better than the medical care they had before, which was mostly non-existent.

The novel doesn't seem very experimental at first but its surreal elements gather force as the story progresses.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2024/08/28/barefoot-doctor-2019-by-can-xue-translated-b...… (more)

Calling this a surreal psychological novel seems accurate yet also wildly inadequate. Can Xue in her preface notes that the characters are made stronger through enduring suffering, which seems arguable to me. They are clearly unhappy and miserable while riding this mystery train of life, aside from brief moments of respite, and live with a death wish which they all ultimately fulfill as the wolves of the world tear the life from them. Maybe a lesson in enduring suffering until the grateful release of death comes for you. Kinda dark!

So while it’s not really my kind of book then, Can Xue’s writing, as I read through interpretations into English of course, I still find charming as I read along. Her writing is a unique and likable character. And actually, charmingly goth is an aesthetic I do tend to enjoy.

3.5… (more)