The Abandon Capital

A detailed Summary of The Abandon Capital

In 1993 China was hit with an "event that caused a great literary and publishing earthquake..." The Abandoned Capital hit bookstores in late July of 1993. This novel is Jia Pingwa's graphic and sexual explicit insight on the contemporary life in Xijing, an ancient Chinese city. The novel never indicates time references but it is understood by readers that it is right after the Cultural Revolution. Jia is a well-known novelist that was famous for writing "pure literature." So it was to everyone's amazement that Jia wrote a novel that was so pornographic. The novel is about a middle-aged writer that engages in sexual immorality, deceit, and corruption. Many critics say it's autobiographical but Jia denies all accusations. The Abandoned Capital was written in a way that Chinese readers have never seen before. During the Cultural Revolution self-indulgence was looked down upon, thus so was sexuality. The result of this was the ignorance of sexuality for the Chinese for years to come. To some, the sixty detailed sex-scenes in the novel were the first time they encountered sex. Jia, a peasant from the ancient capital of Xian, admits that he put the sexual content to keep readers interested but says his novel was really about

may cause a young man to masturbate but "with Lawrence he may feel a but ashamed of himself afterwards, but never with Jia!" And some bluntly say, "there is absolutely nothing perverse in this novel's sex scenes." A friend of Jiang adds that Jia is describing China's current social system. With the "daily transactions of power, how people manipulate at all levels, the bribing, the networking, and the giving and receiving of favors." He further adds that people in the social system "know the invisible rules, and they know they can't beat the system. They also know they can play along with this old game." It is said that no other Chinese novelist has ever illustrated this picture so well as Jia. Another friend of Jiang's is a business lawyer that agrees with the fact that The Abandoned Capital is the Chinese society in a "nutshell." He even describes his encounters with taking advantage of the system.

about sex and 3) he did not offer a happy ending. Jia also said that he chose a writer as the main character because he knew them best. Not too many people see the novel's true statement, which is the clear description of the "Chinese social system from the inside out."

The Cultural Revolution left China with numerous changes. However, as noted earlier, the Cultural Revolution left China as uneducated about sex as a ten-year-old child. In the seventies sex and romance disappeared from Chinese arts and literature. During these times men and women stayed single while displaying interest only in the revolution. The children of the revolution grew up in a vacant environment. They were not taught sexual education like the U.S. Jiang herself had not learned about the birds and the bees until she was nineteen. It was so bad that movies with kissing scenes were censored for children. During the mid-eighties the reform years were in full swing. With it came the market of pornography. Guangdong, Fujian, and Hainan Island were the first mainland provinces to acquire the market.

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Approximate Word count = 1350
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Novels