{"product_id":"a-memoir-of-misfortune-isbn-9780375709197","title":"A Memoir of Misfortune","description":"Su Xiaokang had faced calamity before: in 1989, after the Tiananmen Square massacre, he became the object of a government manhunt and was forced to flee China, leaving behind his wife and young son. Eventually his family was allowed to join him in exile in the United States, and he believed the worst was behind him. Then a terrible automobile accident left his wife, Fu Li, unable to move or speak.\u003cbr\u003eIn this remarkably honest account, Su, who blamed himself for his family's disaster, writes wrenchingly of his inner torment and despair. He describes the pain of living in exile, his desperate search for a miracle cure for Fu Li, and his bemusement at his teenage son's increasing Americanization. Above all, Su's moving memoir invites us along on a deeply personal odyssey, as a man who had once been at the center of an international political drama dedicates himself to the far more demanding task of remaking an emotional world for his wife and son.“Su…has given us new insight into the human condition by virtue of the melancholy voyage he was forced to take.” \u003ci\u003e--The New York Times\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\"Achingly beautiful. . . .  A record of intense soul-searching, of a reevaluation of the self's role in the family, and of the impossibility of understanding and mastering one's (mis)fortune. Su Xiaokang writes with candor, feeling, and intelligence.\" --Ha Jin, National Book Award-winning author of \u003ci\u003eWaiting\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“Filled to the brim with bitter rapture and auspicious musings about the varieties of love, stages of life and tactics for braving misfortune. These pages simmer with eloquent vitality.”  --\u003ci\u003eThe Commercial Appeal\u003c\/i\u003e (Memphis)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Su Xiaokang reminds us all of the agonizing consequences exile can have: loss of purpose, loss of language, loss of country, loss of familiar audience. But faced with the greatest potential loss of all, his wife's death, Su comes back from the edge to create an astonishing work of love and compassion, one that reaffirms the triumph of life.\" --Jonathan Spence, Yale University\u003cbr\u003eTranslated from the Chinese by Zhu HongSu Xiaokang was born in 1949 in China’s Zhejiang province. An investigative reporter who made a name for himself during the 1980s for tackling many sensitive subjects, he is best known as co-author of a six-part television series, \u003ci\u003eRiver Elegy\u003c\/i\u003e (1988), which caused widespread debate about political reform and China's future. It was this brief period  of intellectual effervescence that ultimately led to the Tiananmen Square Massacre on June 4, 1989. Named number five on the government's wanted list, Su Xiaokang was smuggled to Hong Kong and then Paris before settling in 1990 in Princeton, New Jersey.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eABOUT THE TRANSLATOR\u003cbr\u003eZhu Hong, formerly of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, is currently Visiting Professor at Boston University.Chapter One\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ea black hole\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFu Li and I, with our son Su Dan squeezed between us, were in the\u003cbr\u003eback seat of a '93 Dodge rental. I was dozing, thanks to a bunch of\u003cbr\u003eChinese students in Buffalo who had kept me up the night before. It\u003cbr\u003ewas my own damn fault, of course, with my \"elegy\" of the \"yellow\u003cbr\u003ecivilization\" and all the rest of it. I had been badgered with\u003cbr\u003equestions on the subject all the way from one end of the world to the\u003cbr\u003eother, and in Buffalo, the night before, the discussion had lasted\u003cbr\u003einto the small hours. Mind you, to bemoan the fate of the \"yellow\u003cbr\u003ecivilization\" under the night skies of North America-that in itself\u003cbr\u003ewas a form of self-indulgence, an exercise in words-at least until Fu\u003cbr\u003eLi walked into the room.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Su Xiaokang, you are driving tomorrow. Time to break it up.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThat was Fu Li's style: no mincing of words, no room for saving face.\u003cbr\u003eHer goal in life had always been clear-cut-to be a doctor. But in\u003cbr\u003eChina even the unenviable job of seeing a hundred patients every day\u003cbr\u003ehad been taken away from her as one of the side effects of my being\u003cbr\u003eon the wanted list. In the United States, she had struggled through\u003cbr\u003ethe exams needed to qualify as a registered nurse. The exams were now\u003cbr\u003eover, and I was dragging her off to see the country.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFu Li was dressed in a loose-fitting cotton top and shorts, but she\u003cbr\u003ewas not relaxed. Even half asleep, I could feel the tension in her as\u003cbr\u003eshe sat on the other side of Su Dan. She had always lived life as if\u003cbr\u003eit were filled with pitfalls, while I was perfectly relaxed. For a\u003cbr\u003eperiod of several years I had actually let fame and fortune go to my\u003cbr\u003ehead, which Fu Li had found intolerable. Fu Li is the sort of person\u003cbr\u003ethat folks in her home province of Henan refer to as \"women with\u003cbr\u003eheads held high and men with downcast eyes\"-that is, people who do\u003cbr\u003enot conform to their prescribed roles. Fu Li always held herself\u003cbr\u003eupright, the expression on her face calm and collected. My own\u003cbr\u003einfantile attempts at sophistication, added to my general inability\u003cbr\u003eto say no-what is called the \"amiable ear\"-had always roused in her a\u003cbr\u003ekind of loving resentment, and she would call me a good-for-nothing.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI had taken my wife and son on this kind of aimless roving several\u003cbr\u003etimes before. Once, with a group of five or six people, we drove down\u003cbr\u003eto Virginia to see where the early English colonists first landed.\u003cbr\u003eWhen we stopped at a restaurant on our way, I picked up my courage\u003cbr\u003eand tried to order in English. One young woman giggled, and Fu Li\u003cbr\u003eexploded. \"What's so funny? His English is not as good as yours? So\u003cbr\u003ewhat? Isn't it just a matter of your being a few years younger?\" She\u003cbr\u003egot up and walked out, leaving the girl, Chai Ling, with a flea in\u003cbr\u003eher ear.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOn another occasion, we went up north to Montreal and then to Toronto\u003cbr\u003eand saw Niagara Falls from the Canadian side. Now we had been to see\u003cbr\u003eNiagara Falls again, but from the American side, as if there were\u003cbr\u003esome strange affinity between its raging turbulence and something in\u003cbr\u003eourselves.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWithin the Falls area, Route 90 on the U.S.-Canadian border, though\u003cbr\u003enot wide, is neatly divided down the middle by grass dividers. It has\u003cbr\u003ean air of tranquillity typical of the East Coast, nothing like the\u003cbr\u003esuperhighways of the West Coast, where, rather than driving, one\u003cbr\u003eseems helplessly propelled forward by a frenzy of speed. Anyway,\u003cbr\u003ethere we were. It was three or four o'clock in the afternoon and\u003cbr\u003ethere was very little traffic on the road. The sky was a wash of blue\u003cbr\u003eand I dozed off and on, oblivious to Fu Li's tenseness.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI knew Fu Li had doubts about the driver. This was one of the\u003cbr\u003edifferences between us. Ever since landing in this nation of cars, I\u003cbr\u003ehad never hesitated to entrust this hundred-plus pounds of whatever\u003cbr\u003eI'm made of to whomever it might be at the wheel, driving at whatever\u003cbr\u003echosen speed. I was like one of the eight hundred million Chinese who\u003cbr\u003eput themselves into the hands of Mao Zedong to be experimented with\u003cbr\u003eduring the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, without\u003cbr\u003ebothering their heads about possible disastrous consequences.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMy trust had always been given cheaply: I would gladly entrust my\u003cbr\u003esafety, my reputation, and my honor to my friends to do with what\u003cbr\u003ethey liked, as if they were honoring me and giving me \"face.\" Fu Li\u003cbr\u003ecould never stand this side of me, and we had had many rows about it\u003cbr\u003eafter we got married. She had never stayed in the West before, but\u003cbr\u003eshe was by nature a very private person and always drew a line\u003cbr\u003ebetween herself and the rest of the world. During our aimless driving\u003cbr\u003eabout after her arrival here, she always avoided riding in other\u003cbr\u003epeople's cars. She did not trust other people's driving, just as she\u003cbr\u003edid not trust other people's morals or other people's consciences.\u003cbr\u003eBut on this occasion she had no choice. I had spent the previous\u003cbr\u003enight holding forth and had driven all morning; in the afternoon I\u003cbr\u003ewas burnt out and had given the wheel to someone else. Fu Li probably\u003cbr\u003ehad been worrying about this since the night before.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRoute 90 was so smooth and the traffic so light, it seemed the Dodge\u003cbr\u003ehad the road to itself. The Falls area was immersed in the serenity\u003cbr\u003eof the summer afternoon. The world had never been so genial. On these\u003cbr\u003eopen roads, driving was child's play. What was there to worry about?\u003cbr\u003eI finally fell sound asleep. The last thing I felt before I departed\u003cbr\u003einto slumberland was eleven-year-old Su Dan's little head resting on\u003cbr\u003emy shoulder. I now say \"departed\" because at the time I did not\u003cbr\u003erealize that this interval in slumberland (I am not even sure for how\u003cbr\u003elong) was a threshold, an entry into another world. Fu Li took leave\u003cbr\u003eof me across this threshold, and I did not even give her a parting\u003cbr\u003eglance. She had not slept and had not gotten over her tension. Later\u003cbr\u003eI realized that people who can sleep through a high-speed car trip\u003cbr\u003emust be people like me who are incorrigibly credulous and trusting.\u003cbr\u003eSo far, the world had treated me well. I do not understand why\u003cbr\u003esuddenly, on a quiet highway near Niagara Falls, it changed face\u003cbr\u003ewithout warning.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSeven days and seven nights later, I woke up to a gray misty world\u003cbr\u003esimilar to one I had woken up in after a raging fever during my early\u003cbr\u003echildhood in the city of Hangzhou: a gray mist accompanied by the\u003cbr\u003esmell of antiseptic. Shadowy human shapes flitted before me. They\u003cbr\u003esaid, \"You were in a coma for three days, and then you were raving\u003cbr\u003efor three days.\" Their voices seemed to come from some cavernous\u003cbr\u003edepth and made a buzzing sound. Could I walk? I couldn't feel my\u003cbr\u003eright leg, and my hipbone hurt excruciatingly.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhat happened? Where were Fu Li and Su Dan?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe car had flipped over a short distance west of Buffalo, and all\u003cbr\u003ethree of us were found unconscious. Fu Li and I were taken to Lake\u003cbr\u003eErie County Hospital, while Su Dan was taken to Children's Hospital\u003cbr\u003ein Buffalo. He had regained consciousness the next day and was safe\u003cbr\u003ein Princeton with a friend.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSomebody came for me and put a pair of crutches in my hands, and I\u003cbr\u003ehobbled after him into another room. There was a single bed in the\u003cbr\u003eroom, surrounded by a network of colorful tubes and gadgets. A figure\u003cbr\u003elay on the bed, hair spread untidily on the pillow, mouth covered by\u003cbr\u003ea strange-looking mask. This was not an apparition. The shape under\u003cbr\u003ethe white cotton sheet was unmistakable. I would know it if it were\u003cbr\u003eburnt to ashes: Fu Li. I had a dim memory of her all tensed up in the\u003cbr\u003ecar when my world was still intact. Now she was lying here, not only\u003cbr\u003etotally relaxed but not knowing where her soul was hovering.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI realized that something bad had happened to my beloved. It is a\u003cbr\u003edreadful thing, this unbearable shock of realization that flashes\u003cbr\u003ethrough the brain and drains it. The brain breathes, and it can\u003cbr\u003easphyxiate. The world had given me three such shocks during my life\u003cbr\u003ethus far. First, when I was sixteen years old, Father stood with his\u003cbr\u003eback against the light of the window. I could not see his face. I\u003cbr\u003eonly heard his voice tell me, \"Your maternal grandfather has been\u003cbr\u003eexecuted by the government.\" This meant I was a \"damned cur\" one\u003cbr\u003egeneration removed, not one of the five categories of \"red\u003cbr\u003eoffspring.\" The second time, I was forty years old. In a darkened\u003cbr\u003eroom, poring over a pencil scrawl on a piece of paper, I made out the\u003cbr\u003ewords saying that I was fifth on the government's most-wanted list.\u003cbr\u003eThe third shock came when I was overseas. My cousin called and sobbed\u003cbr\u003eover the phone, \"Second Aunt has passed away.\" Her second aunt was my\u003cbr\u003emother. Always during those moments my mind would at first go blank\u003cbr\u003eand then realize in a flash that my world had changed. But July 19,\u003cbr\u003e1993, was different. This time my world collapsed.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI had fallen asleep and, asleep, had passed through a disaster, the\u003cbr\u003edetails of which I will never know. It was a dream without memory,\u003cbr\u003eblacking out the most fateful moment of my life, leaving me nothing\u003cbr\u003ewith which to go on. I had no choice but to accept other people's\u003cbr\u003eversions of what happened. The car flipped over because the driver, a\u003cbr\u003ewoman, was fumbling for the windshield wiper. Did it rain? How can\u003cbr\u003eone be thrown off the highway for lack of a windshield wiper? The\u003cbr\u003epolice report stated that when the car went off the highway and\u003cbr\u003eflipped over, it landed on its right side, where Fu Li was sitting.\u003cbr\u003eAnother version had it that both Fu Li and I were thrown out of the\u003cbr\u003ecar and knocked unconscious. I was sleeping and did not wake up even\u003cbr\u003ewhen my world crashed. Yet a third version held that Fu Li, awake,\u003cbr\u003estretched over from the back seat to help the driver control the car,\u003cbr\u003ewhich had gone insane; that she was struggling in an upright\u003cbr\u003eposition, and when the crash came her head hit the windshield. This\u003cbr\u003ewas the cruelest version, and I could not bear to hear it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLying in my hospital bed, I tried but could not piece together\u003cbr\u003eanything that had occurred in the hours after the crash. I felt\u003cbr\u003efrustrated, having my life described to me by others. I felt as if\u003cbr\u003ethe day of my birth as told by my mother was the only kind of\u003cbr\u003einformation that was trustworthy.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCome to think of it, however, isn't it true that the Chinese are\u003cbr\u003ealways having the \"unexpected\" in their lives interpreted for them by\u003cbr\u003eothers, and isn't this especially true of my generation, which seems\u003cbr\u003eto have grown up through a series of \"unexpected\" events? For\u003cbr\u003einstance, in 1971 Lin Biao tried to \"defect\" and his plane crashed in\u003cbr\u003ethe desert.1 At the time the whole country seemed to have gone into a\u003cbr\u003estate of shock, and everyone waited for Premier Zhou Enlai and\u003cbr\u003ecompany to offer a proper version of what had happened. At the same\u003cbr\u003etime, we did not trust this official version and were always hungry\u003cbr\u003efor alternate ones. Again, in 1989 in Tiananmen, there was another\u003cbr\u003ecrash. How many died? Who gave the orders to shoot? The world would\u003cbr\u003enot accept the version offered by the Chinese leadership but could\u003cbr\u003enot come up with a version of its own. Why didn't the students\u003cbr\u003eretreat? one might ask. The so-called student leaders at Tiananmen\u003cbr\u003eSquare each have their own versions. Whom should we believe?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAbout the car crash of July 19, I accepted only two facts. One was\u003cbr\u003ethat Fu Li was in a coma. The other was that the police report stated\u003cbr\u003ethe driver could not drive. By then I had lost even the capacity for\u003cbr\u003eanger. From that day onward, the world turned upside down and\u003cbr\u003eswallowed me up.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"In a Land Far Far Away\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOn August 12, 1993, Fu Li opened her eyes. From then on, she stared\u003cbr\u003esilently at nothing for days on end.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHad she lost the power of speech? Was she brain-damaged? Paralyzed?\u003cbr\u003eWould she become a vegetable? The moment she opened her eyes, she had\u003cbr\u003eto fit into one or another of these categories. It seemed there is a\u003cbr\u003ewide range of definitions for the state of existence between\u003cbr\u003enon-living and non-dying.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe did not appear to notice the people who came to see her. However,\u003cbr\u003ewhen our son was brought to the hospital from Princeton one\u003cbr\u003eafternoon, the minute his loud voice was heard from the corridor, a\u003cbr\u003eshiver went through her whole body and her eyes turned this way and\u003cbr\u003ethat, trying to locate the sound. Yet when our son entered the room\u003cbr\u003eand bent over her, calling \"Mummy!\" she looked at him dumbly, without\u003cbr\u003euttering a word.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI marked this day as the day of her awakening and wrote in my diary,\u003cbr\u003e\"Fu Li has regained consciousness.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI wondered if she recognized me. My one way of checking was to hold\u003cbr\u003eher tremulous right hand every day and try to register its every\u003cbr\u003esqueeze, as well as each twitch of her leg. I firmly believe that it\u003cbr\u003ewas her way of responding to me, the only way she could.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSuddenly one day, a tear welled up in her right eye and lingered over\u003cbr\u003eher cheek. I wiped her cheek and cried uncontrollably, turning to the\u003cbr\u003ewindow to hide my tears. Suddenly I felt a tapping of her right hand\u003cbr\u003eon my left. I turned around and saw her face contorted intensely. In\u003cbr\u003edesperation she tried to tap me again. I suddenly understood what she\u003cbr\u003ewas saying: \"You mustn't cry, mustn't cry.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOnly when vocal communication failed did I realize the importance of\u003cbr\u003espeech. I tried another kind of language and whispered a song into\u003cbr\u003eher ear. I remembered a lullaby, \"Little Swallow,\" that she used to\u003cbr\u003esing our son to sleep. Now I was singing it to wake her up.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHere is a woman with whom I shared life for more than a decade, and\u003cbr\u003enow I have to see her reduced to this. Was this kind of life worth\u003cbr\u003eliving? I had thrust this life upon her. These days, during changing\u003cbr\u003etime, when I saw her limp body being turned this way and that by the\u003cbr\u003enurse, all I could do was stand aside and weep. \"I am a\u003cbr\u003egood-for-nothing,\" I would tell her, over and over again. This was\u003cbr\u003ethe first time I ever saw myself in this way.","brand":"Vintage","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46304159269093,"sku":"NP9780375709197","price":22.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780375709197.jpg?v=1767720642","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/a-memoir-of-misfortune-isbn-9780375709197","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}