Like a Dickens or Dostoevsky novel, tale of Beijing hutong life The Wedding Party, by Liu Xinwu, conceals drama and trauma beneath the seemingly inconsequential

In a Beijing alleyway community Auntie Xue is preparing a wedding celebration for her son. Outside the hutong, China is changing in Deng Xiaoping’s reform era

So begins Liu Xinwu’s newly translated 1984 novel, in which, as in tales by Dickens and Dostoevsky, jealousies and resentments swirl beneath a mundane surface

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A hutong in Beijing. Liu Xinwu sets his 1984 novel The Wedding Party in one such alleyway community, and beneath his descriptions of mundane events and interactions swirl resentments and trauma. Photo: Getty Images

Paul French

Published: 4:45pm, 9 Jan 2022

The Wedding Party by Liu Xinwu, translated by Jeremy Tiang, pub. Amazon Crossing

A happy winter scene, a smiling close-knit community, good food and a little alcohol. The cover of the first English translation of Liu Xinwu’s 1984 novel The Wedding Party might have you thinking this 400-page novel is a piece of light nostalgia set amid the old hutong alleyway communities of Beijing’s ancient Drum and Bell Towers district (Gulou).

Liu also dangles the lure of easy entertainment in the first few pages, telling readers the novel will deal with “the mundane aspects of life”. And in many ways it does – a wedding surrounded by fractious and often comical relations among neighbours, parents, children and in-laws.

But these events and interactions are ultimately “mundane” in a similar vein to a Dickens or a Dostoevsky novel: beneath the seemingly inconsequential swirl jealousies, resentments and trauma.

Wedding photos in colour were all the rage in China in 1982, the year in which The Wedding Party is set. Photo: Getty Images

It is 7am, Sunday, December 12, 1982. Auntie Xue is busy preparing a wedding celebration for her youngest son. Outside the hutong, life is changing in China: the Cultural Revolution is over, though its myriad reverberations echo through the alleyways. We are in the earliest days of Deng Xiaoping’s reform era and witnesses to an interregnum, glimpsing what might imminently prove to be the best of times for ordinary people finally able to leave the worst behind.

Ten years previously a hutong wedding would have meant “handing out some candy and then calling it a day”. Now we are in a rapidly evolving world of opportunities. Think colour portraits from the China Photo Studio on Wangfujing, a hired car and chauffeur, an imported Swiss watch for the groom.