Golden Age is a Chinese bestseller by cult writer Wang Xiaobo that now appears in a new translation and charts the story of Wang’s work and sex life, beginning with the Cultural Revolution. The novel opens with a 21-year-old Wang working in a remote commune and starting an affair with the 26-year-old “old shoe” Chen Qingyang. What follows is some of the funniest writing on sex I have encountered, written in the form of “confessions” to the Communist party. Wang’s tone is that of an “intellectual youth” turned peasant diligently explaining his sexuality to party officials.
Ten years later, Wang becomes a biology lecturer and a fully functioning cog in the well-oiled machine that is Chinese communism. We learn of the grime, the discipline, and the beatings. “Life is but a slow, drawn-out process of getting your balls crushed.” Public humiliation is “criticism sessions”. Harsh punishment is “struggle sessions”. Sex and women are his only relief, and it is under this haze of relief, I think, that Wang commits to sentences such as: “Her two itty-bitty breasts were like flower buds that only appeared seasonally” and “She wore a blissful, Socratic innocence”.
Through a colourful cast of characters – his school friend Line, who was once happy about the Cultural Revolution as it meant she didn’t have to do her exams; his mentor Mr Liu, who suspects he won’t survive it, and doesn’t; and his Trotskyite boss Mr Li, who witnesses a murder from endless beating – the writer satirises a society in which the Cultural Revolution continued to shape behaviour for decades. But despite all the “struggle sessions”, Wang and his pals are never quite pacified. If the characters do show obedience to the regime, it is merely in service to comedy.
