Introduction

From the author of the 2007 Orange Prize finalist A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers comes a wholly original and thoroughly captivating coming-of-age story that follows a bright, impassioned young woman as she rushes headlong into the maelstrom of a rapidly changing Beijing to chase her dreams. Twenty-one year old Fenfang Wang has traveled one thousand eight hundred miles to seek her fortune in contemporary urban Beijing, and has no desire to return to the drudgery of the sweet potato fields back home. However, Fenfang is ill-prepared for what greets her: a Communist regime that has outworn its welcome, a city under rampant destruction and slap-dash development, and a sexist attitude seemingly more in keeping with her peasant upbringing than the country’s progressive capital. Yet Fenfang is determined to live a modern life. With courage and purpose, she forges ahead, and soon lands a job as a film extra. While playing roles like woman-walking-over-the bridge and waitress-wiping-a-table help her eke out a meager living, Fenfang comes under the spell of two unsuitable young men, keeps her cupboard stocked with UFO noodles, and after mastering the fever and tumult of the city, ultimately finds her true independence in the one place she never expected. At once wry and moving, Twenty Fragments of a Ravenous Youth gives us a clear-eyed glimpse into the precarious and fragile state of China’s new identity and asserts Xiaolu Guo as her generation’s voice of modern China.

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Excerpt

fragment 1

FENFANG'S ATTRIBUTES, AS RECORDED ON A PIECE

OF PAPER

My youth began when I was twenty-one. At least, that's when I decided it began. That was when I started to think that all those shiny things in life--some of them might possibly be for me.

If you think twenty-one sounds a bit late for youth to start, just think about the average Chinese peasant, who leaps straight from childhood to middle age with nothing in between. If I was going to miss out on anything, it was middle age. Be young or die. That was my plan.

Anyway, when I was twenty-one, my life changed just by filling out this application form. Before then, I was just an ignorant country girl who didn't know how to do anything except dig up sweet potatoes, clean toilets and pull levers in a factory. Okay, I'd been in Beijing a few years, but I was still a peasant.

My momentous transformation took place at the Beijing Film Studios. It was a boiling hot afternoon. The walls of the recruitment office were still messy with the slogans of Chairman Mao: "Serve the People!" Green-headed flies buzzed over a lunchbox of leftover noodles. Behind the lunchbox, a hero of the people was dozing away on his chair. He was supposed to be supervising the registration of film extras. It had obviously worn him out. He paid no attention to us. We were flies too.

There were three other girls filling out forms. They looked much cooler than me: dyed hair, tattooed arms, fake leather handbags, jeans with holes, the whole lot. They chatted and giggled like geese. But I could tell that, underneath their fully armed appearance, they were just brown-skinned peasant girls from yellow sandy provinces, like me.

I picked up a pen from the desk, a Hero fountain pen. Only old communists still use Hero pens. I've never liked them. They're lousy. As I wrote, the Hero started to leak. The ink ruined my application form. My fingers turned black, and my palm too. My mother used to say a black palm would cause your house to catch fire. So I started to worry my inky palm would bring me bad luck.

The office was totally full of application forms. CVs were piled from floor to ceiling. Dust hung in the air like the milky-way. As I attached my photo to the top-right-hand corner of the sheet, the hero of the people dozing behind the lunchbox woke up. The first thing he did, he stood up and swung a fly-swatter around his lunch to exterminate the flies. The three girls stopped filling out their forms and looked frightened by this sudden violence. Bam, one fly. Bam, a second. He sat down again, two dead bodies on the desk in front of him.

I handed over my fifteen-Yuan registration fee. Without looking at me, he took a bunch of keys from his belt and, leaning forward, opened an old squeaky drawer. He found a big stamp, adjusted some numbers, and pressed it into a red ink pad. Then he raised his arm and slammed it down on my form. Extra No. 6787.

So, I was the 6,787th person in Beijing wanting a job in the film and TV industry. Between me and a role stood 6,786 other people--young and beautiful, old and ugly. I felt the competition, but compared with the 1.5 billion people in China, 6,786 wasn't such a daunting number. It was only the population of my village. I felt an urge to conquer this new village.

Still without looking at me, the fly-swatting hero of the people started to study my photo on the stained form.

"Not bad, young girl. Compared to other parts of your face, your forehead has something: it's nearly as broad as Tiananmen Square. And your jaw's not bad, either. It will bring you good fortune, believe me. Square jaws do. As for your earlobes--fat as Buddha's. The fatter the luckier, did you know that? Mmm . . . you're not that ugly. You can't imagine how many ugly people come to this place every day. I don't get it. Don't they look at themselves in the mirror first?"

I listened patiently and then thanked him. Leaving Extras No. 6788, 6789, 6790 behind, I walked back out into the street. The noon sun hit the top of my head so heavily it immediately fried my hair. The summer heat and dust of the city rose up from the concrete pavement. I was caught in the middle of this heat fight. I almost fainted in the noisy street. Maybe I really fainted, I can't remember, it doesn't matter anyway. The important thing was: I had been given a number. From this day on I would never again live like a forgotten sweet potato under the dark soil. Never. view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

1. The novel is divided, as the title suggests, into twenty short chapters with small black and white photographs scattered throughout the text. Why do you think the author chose this structure to relate her heroine's story? Discuss what you think the purpose of the photographs might be.

2. Fenfang Wang leaves her rural home in hopes of capturing “bright, shiny things” in the big city. How is her journey similar or dissimilar to that of a young American woman who moves from the countryside to the city in hopes of making it big? Do you know people who have followed the same journey? In what ways do you think the cultural differences between China and America impact upon their individual experiences?

3. What is the significance of “ravenous” of the title? How does Fenfang go about satiating those needs?

4. When Fenfang arrives in Beijing, she has little money and nowhere to go. She finds herself outside a small house of a woman and her daughter, whom we see run out of the house only to get run over by a truck. Fenfang moves into their empty home. Do you find that shocking? Do you believe she's an aggressive opportunist or do you think there is something more subtle happening - an underlying will to survive? Do you think her attitudes are universal?

5. As a child Fenfang watched her mother toil in the sweet potato fields day after day; by the age of seventeen, she knows that that is not the life she wants for herself. Do you think she is sympathetic to her mother's fate? How does her view of her mother change by the end of the book?

6. Both Fenfang and Beijing are trying to come of age extremely quickly. Yet Fenfang seems overwhelmed navigating the chaos of the capital city. In what ways does her sorrow come out in the story? Why do you think a woman of Fenfang's determination finds the city so challenging?

7. Fenfang devours western films and literature. Discuss why you believe her passion for French films and American literature could be more than a reflection of the widespread popularity of western culture abroad.

8. Fenfang's boyfriend from Boston says that “China is better at being American than America.” What do you think he means by that? What are the examples in the novel that support his statement?

9. Fenfang says: “You can check any Chinese dictionary, there's no word for 'romance.' We say 'Lo Man,' copying the English pronunciation.” Did you find this observation surprising? In which ways do you think this fundamental difference in language may have contributed to Fenfang's difficulties with men and with love in general?

10. The final words of the novel are spoken by Fenfang addressing herself: “You must take care of your life.” In what ways do they sum up what the novel is about? Do you think she will take care of herself or do you see her continuing her headstrong approach to living?

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