Opinion: Fictional memoir presents poignant revelations about how on a regular basis individuals have tried to navigate China’s bleak regime. They usually fail.
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I didn’t understand George Lee had a outstanding life the primary few occasions I interviewed him.
However now the Metro Vancouver lawyer is beginning to share his saga of rising up below the relentless conformity of Chinese language dictator Mao Zedong throughout the Cultural Revolution. His is a harrowing, however usually candy, story of resilience.
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I first knew Lee professionally, since he’s an immigration lawyer based mostly in Burnaby who’s keen to share frank insights into Canada’s ever-changing immigration business. Via Lee, Postmedia readers have realized about migration consultants promoting false goals to international college students, about employers creating faux jobs for would-be immigrants and about how a number of the 9 million individuals who join Canada’s 10-year visas, that are usually helpful, abuse them.
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Solely not too long ago, nonetheless, I realized simply 20 per cent of Lee’s busy legislation follow is dedicated to immigration. A bigger chunk focuses on divorce legislation, by which he presents household mediation.
Most surprisingly, it seems Lee is a formidable writer. He not too long ago acquired Canada’s Guernica Prize for his wonderful e-book, Dancing within the River: A Novel.
It’s a fictional memoir, stunning and lyrical. Quietly devastating. It’s based mostly on his expertise of surviving the brutal world Mao imposed on his individuals from 1966 to his loss of life in 1976. In that horror present of chaos and repression, as much as two million Chinese language individuals have been killed. Throughout all of it, from ages 4 to 14, Lee was dwelling in Wuhan.
With its poetic, allegorical tone, Dancing within the River presents poignant revelations about how on a regular basis individuals tried to navigate China’s bleak regime. They usually failed. Lee barely knew his mother and father since they have been detained in camps as political prisoners, ceaselessly broken. The novel describes the younger important character, named Little Vivid, being publicly humiliated in entrance of his friends by Communist authorities.
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Over lunch at a restaurant in Burnaby’s Metrotown highrise workplace district, Lee, 61, regarded youthful and slight, conveying seriousness and dignity.
He described when Mao’s regime “managed every thing you may learn.” Folks have been skilled to have the identical ideas. Brainwashing and distortion have been the norm. Books have been banned.
Like Little Vivid within the novel, younger Lee discovered a sort of liberation in going to the native recycling centre and grabbing some forbidden books earlier than they have been thrown out or burned. Two works of fiction that captured his consideration have been Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe’s novel a couple of castaway, and The Arabian Nights, a set of Arab people tales.
The second part of Lee’s three-part novel, which he says is 50 per cent truth and 50 per cent poetic licence, describes how the emergence of President Deng Xiaoping in 1978 “modified every thing.”
Deng opened up the nation, then of 800 million individuals, to the surface world. After being dismantled for greater than a decade, faculties and universities have been re-established. Lee managed to get into one.
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He studied English literature and the English language, each of which he reveres. Whereas studying concerning the West, Lee mentioned he absolutely realized Deng’s intention was for China’s residents to take action within the title of turning their data right into a weapon towards the West, significantly in regard to politics, science and expertise.
Particularly animated by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s novels about detective Sherlock Holmes, nonetheless, Lee got down to rationally unravel the puzzle of which cultures have been higher: Chinese language or Western.
Benefiting from Deng’s relative openness, Lee ended up making use of to the College of Calgary to review English literature. He acquired a full scholarship. It was 1992. He was 30.
“My thoughts was crowded with questions.” Though quickly reworked by the likes of Shakespeare and Charles Dickens, he transferred to legislation faculty in Canada, specializing in surviving. His ambitions as an writer started a decade in the past.
Lee has step by step got here to the conclusion that China’s society, then and at this time, has three main shortcomings.
One is an absence of creativeness. One other shortcoming is a dearth of enlightened inquiry. “There’s a black gap within the tradition by way of free thought and rationality.”
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A 3rd failing, he mentioned, is an absence of variety. “All minds are skilled to be one thoughts.”
Lee’s mother and father are lifeless. And so is the grandmother who continues to be his hero, together with in his novel, regardless of being completely disabled as a toddler by having her ft certain, ostensibly to make her extra engaging to males.
Nonetheless, Lee has relations who dwell in China. And so does his spouse. He is aware of what can occur if one is just too outspoken. “I’m not fascinated by politics,” he says, “however I’m very eager on advancing human freedom and the most effective of human nature.”
He hopes his novel, which has been warmly reviewed within the West, will probably be translated into Chinese language.
China is “a completely completely different world” from Canada, he says.
“Many imagine Chinese language tradition may be very superior to each different tradition on the earth. Many individuals in China suppose they’re dwelling in heaven, however they’re dwelling in jail. And the easiest way to maintain you in jail is to not let you realize you’re in jail.”
Lee is aware of many well-off members of the Chinese language Communist Get together in Metro Vancouver. And he finds they’re usually essential of the celebration, but in addition benefit from the privileges of membership.
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It has been therapeutic to write down a novel based mostly on the primary half of his life, Lee says. Whereas engaged on it, he usually cried and had bother sleeping.
“However my coronary heart feels gentle, like a heavy stone has been lifted. I can transfer ahead.”
To that finish, along with voracious studying, significantly philosophy and metaphysics, Lee is getting ready a self-help e-book for Chinese language mother and father. He believes some Chinese language traditions, like training by memorization, are usually not useful. He hopes Chinese language individuals department out.
He’s additionally gathering ideas for a brand new historic novel. It will likely be set in B.C.’s gold rush period, based mostly on the expertise of the dozen or so ailing Chinese language males who have been marooned on tiny D’Arcy Island, a leper colony.
It’s unsurprising it’s going to revolve round their resilience.
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