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Kit Gillet

Home Remedies: Stories
by Xuan Juliana Wang
Hogarth Press
4/5 stars
Tutu was a short, sickly child “with skin the colour of peeling eucalyptus bark” who spent his youth in a forgotten industrial city in China. Unhappy with his mediocrity, and the bleak years stretching out before him, a few days before his 18th birthday he reinvents himself as a Falun Gong grandmaster. “Tutu could be an ordinary boy. He could get a job at the local factory and be like one of those men who walk out of the doors each night with a small bottle of liquor knocking against his chest pocket.” Instead, he sets about creating a myth of the extraordinary, proven through feats such as eating glass, then travels to America to try to forge a different future for himself.
Tutu is just one of the many unmoored characters who occupy the pages of Home Remedies, the powerful debut collection of short stories by Xuan Juliana Wang, an author born in China’s northern Heilongjiang province but who moved to Los Angeles as a child.
For many young Chinese, finding a place in the world is not straightforward. Whereas their parents struggled through the Cultural Revolution, and their older friends and colleagues the pro-democracy movements in the 1980s, those who came of age in the 2000s and 2010s have lived through economic growth as well as times of increasing personal freedom and connections to the West. No mass trauma yet plenty of uncertainty as well as a growing gulf between themselves and those who came before. They can love who they want, travel, choose their own careers, depending on their economic situation, though in many ways they remain trapped by tradition and expectations.

This is the world in which Home Remedies exists. The collection is filled with lost characters, drifting through life disconnected from older generations and unsure where they belong. In one story, a group of 20-somethings live a hipster life in an old factory space in Beijing’s 798 Art District, trawling bars and clubs and spending their days shooting subversive music videos for local bands. In another, a synchronised diver struggles with his sexuality and feelings for his diving partner in the lead up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Another story features a Chinese immigrant father living in New York who is unable to connect with his American-born daughter and retreats into a world of algorithms to try to explain their estrangement.
Each of the 12 stories delves into the uncertainties and anxieties suffered by contemporary Chinese youth, or second-generation Chinese immigrants. They capture the worlds of these protagonists in rich detail, right from the first moment, when, in “Mott Street in July”, we meet Lucy, the 12-year-old daughter of immigrants struggling to get by in New York’s Chinatown.
After the drudgery of a hand-to-mouth existence crammed into a one-bed apart­ment, Lucy and her brothers are abandoned by parents who are overwhelmed by their sad lives and daily struggles. The father leaves first, quickly followed by the mother, with the children left to fend for themselves. Wang captures the sights and sounds, not to mention the smells, of the family’s cramped home and the surrounding neighbourhoods, a world seem­ingly at odds with the better life the parents had sought for them in the West. “Old bricks held onto the nails that carried their washcloths, flyswatters, and supermarket calendars, as well as the antenna that allowed the television to see all the way to China.” The reader catches only a pass­ing glimpse of the family’s existence, one hot summer, before the author’s focus moves on to other fertile ground – all the same, it is a glance that leaves a potent impression.

Wang’s work has been published in The Atlantic, The Best American Nonrequired Reading and the Pushcart Prize Anthology, and she has an empathetic touch to her prose, engendering sympathy even for those characters who do little to endear themselves to us.
The protagonists of Wang’s stories come from all walks of life, from rural villages and factories to the booming metropolises of Beijing and Los Angeles. Some are pampered rich kids, others those left behind by China’s economic boom. Even the wealthy – or perhaps especially the wealthy – seem to be lost souls.
In “Fuerdai to the Max”, a pair of fuerdai (second-generation rich kids), after a lifetime of privilege and actions-without-con­sequences, finally go too far and are forced to flee back to China from studying in the United States, fearful of what comes next for both themselves and their families.
Conversely, “For Our Children and for Ourselves” sees a well-mannered 25-year-old factory worker in China accept a blind marriage to a rich girl with Down syndrome living in the US, exchanging the chance of love and a family life for material comfort and ease. He is acutely aware of what he is sacrificing.
Some of the stories take place over months or years, but the strongest are those that capture the fleeting moment when a decision is being arrived at
There is a weary sadness to many of Wang’s stories. One protagonist is told by her father: “You’re so lucky. You have everything we didn’t have. Now you must go and do something spectacular with your life.” Yet even as he says this, he cradles his new child, born to his new wife, and his relationship with his older daughter fractures a little more.
Wang captures the essence of a place or person, and while some stories don’t hit their mark, ventur­ing too far into the abstract, the vivid imagery and strong characters leave a lasting impression. The stories are populated with MacBooks and WeChat, social media influencers and other trap­pings of modern life.
Beijing is particularly well drawn: “At any given moment, people are feasting on the streets, studying for exams, or singing ballads in KTVs. Somewhere a woman with a modest salary is buying ten-thousand-yuan pants from Chloé to prove her worth.”
The lasting impression is of a generation caught at a cross­roads. Some of the stories take place over months or years, but the strongest are those that capture the fleeting moment when a decision is being arrived at.
Among the English-language fiction that in recent years has come out of China, or been written about the country, it’s hard to think of much that has succeeded so well in capturing the lives of the young and listless, or those struggling to navigate the challenges of being a second-generation Chinese immigrant.



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[24FEBRUARY2019 FEATURE]

Handout image shows book  The Unwinding of the Miracle by author Julie Yip-Williams.   Born in Vietnam, Julie Yip-Williams was a writer, mother, wife and lawyer who grew up in California and graduated from Harvard Law School. In July 2013 she was diagnosed with Stage Four colon cancer. She died in March 2018, aged forty-two, and leaves behind her husband, Josh, and their daughters, Mia and Isabelle.

[24FEBRUARY2019 FEATURE]

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Xuan Juliana Wang’s well-crafted tales frame the uncertainties and disconnect felt by widely disparate characters
Writer’s debut collection gives voice to those who came of age in the 2000s and 2010s, and feel a growing gulf between themselves and their elders


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Review | Home Remedies: stories of China’s young and listless, and of challenges of being a second-generation immigrant

Xuan Juliana Wang’s well-crafted tales frame the uncertainties and disconnect felt by widely disparate characters Writer’s debut collection gives voice to those who came of age in the 2000s and 2010s, and feel a growing gulf between themselves and their elders

Xuan Juliana Wang’s well-crafted tales frame the uncertainties and disconnect felt by widely disparate characters

Writer’s debut collection gives voice to those who came of age in the 2000s and 2010s, and feel a growing gulf between themselves and their elders