May is Asian Heritage Month and we are honoured to be sharing an excerpt from the award-winning novel, Dancing in the River (Guernica Editions) by Vancouver lawyer and author George Lee.
Dancing in the River, won the Guernica Prize, and draws on Lee’s own life experiences growing up in China. It tells the coming-of-age story of a young boy during Mao’s Cultural Revolution—a boy named Little Bright living in a small, riverside town who is heavily indoctrinated by the anti-Western sentiment of the time and place. The perspectives afforded in this stunning novel—the insights into culture, politics, and personal experience—are crucial to a national and global understanding of Chinese history.
George Lee was born and raised in China. He earned an M.A. in English literature from University of Calgary, and a Juris Doctor degree from University of Victoria. Dancing in the River, won the 2021 Guernica Prize for Literary Fiction. He practices law in Vancouver, Canada.
Dancing in the River by George Lee (Guernica Editions).
Prologue
“What’s the best early training for a writer?” a young writer once asked Ernest Hemingway.
“An unhappy childhood,” Hemingway famously replied.
I grew up in a mountain village on the Yangtze River in China. For a long time, I had been pondering whether to pen the story of my early life as a coming-of-age tale like David Copperfield.
Before long, though, I discovered that I’m no Charles Dickens. As I recall, my writing journey began on my third birthday when I was given a fountain pen, which I’ve kept to this day. After a pair of tiny hands gingerly uncapped the pen, I tried, for the first time in my life, to draw an “I” (我), which, however, looked like a “search” (找). Seeing my error, my father added the last stroke on the top of the latter character to make “me” complete. To my young eyes, the two Chinese words looked identical. (Chinese characters are very complicated, as are Chinese minds.)
Late at night, in our home in Canada, I would imagine that I— now very old—was reading my own novel to my grandchildren lying beside me on the comfy couch, mentally rehearsing this dialogue:
“Is this a true story, Grandpa?” A pair of young, curious eyes fixed on mine.
“Surely it is,” I replied, looking down at him from above my reading glasses.
“Is the Yangtze a long river?”
“Yes, it’s very, very long. That’s why it’s also called the Long River.”
“Are you the boy in the novel, Grandpa?”
I paused for a moment, unsure how to reply. “Sort of. But he’s like every other boy in China in those days.”
From time to time I felt called to write about my early life through the lens of my blended cultural sensibilities. At one point I even attempted to write the book in my mother tongue; however, my tongue refused to agree with my thoughts. I was stunned when words failed to flow out, as if clogged in the underwater channel.
For some reason my audacious goal was stalled for many years. I invented alibis, as many of us do when facing confession of a task too challenging. However, every day I devoted time to mental con- struction of the plot. By this time, I had learned that a plot is dif- ferent from a story. For me, a plot is synchronicity, karma, fate.
Looking back, I realized my life stories had unfolded themselves, not from the outside, but from the inside. No coincidences in life. For me, this is a multi-dimensional book.
In it, I am both the author and reader, the experiencer and the experienced, the thinker and watcher, the dreamer and the dream, the father and the son. Most importantly, between the two ends of the spectrum, I am a silent witness as well. To that end, the characters in this book walked into my life both literally and symbolically. Some of them represent the unfathomable depth of reality. My grand- mother is such a character; so are some of my childhood friends.
This book carries an allegorical burden: to unearth the truth about the mystery of life and of myself. My journey began at the river, travelling from body to mind, then to soul, from learning to becoming, from the visible to the invisible.
Over the years, in the deep corners of my mind I kept hearing the waves of the river crashing against every cell of my inner being until, one day, I could no longer ignore them when my mind was thrown into a swirl of great tides as the memories flooded back.
To my surprise, I discovered that my memory is like a multi- layered onion. As I peeled it layer after layer, tears welled up at the hurts deeply buried in the corners. But soon after I embarked on this journey, the healing process had also begun.
Most of the events in this book occurred in my early life. My memory knows what I have remembered, and it agrees with me.
As green as I was about the world, I stood, still and alone, on the edge of the river, observing myself with a young, distanced eye, listening to the solemn whisper of the waves, attempting to catch a glimpse of light hidden behind the clotted clouds. The sentences rattled in my brain and banged on the door of my heart. Finally, the pages opened in the wind and carried this tale far and wide.
As I was writing this book, I felt as though a mighty hand was guiding my thoughts and my pen. The mind is like a river flowing through human consciousness into a deep ocean. Upon entering the depth of my soul, I found a stream as it trickled down toward a long river. And when I waded into the river, currents of dreams and emotions flooded wordlessly through my consciousness.
I use English words to bridge the gap.