SYNOPSIS:

Prominent Chinese writer eloquently describes the oppression of intellectuals in his country between 1950s and 1970s in these twelve autobiographical novellas and short stories. Many of the stories are so shocking and heart-wrenching that one cannot but feel suffocated.

In "A Glass of Water," neighbors ignore a feverish old woman's pleas for water because her son has been denounced as counter-revolutionary. In "The Fossil," a wife does not speak to her writer husband for three years, because he is under suspicion. The title story portrays the absurdity of the period in which flowers seemed so alien to the oppressive political atmosphere that they evoked a sense of terror in people's minds and hearts.

PRAISES for Flower Terror: Suffocating Stories of China

"Pu, one of China's most influential writers, writes of his embittering experiences clearly and fluently, without sentimentality or self-pity."
-- Publishers Weekly

"The stories in this work are well written."
-- Library Journal

"The twelve novellas and short stories reveal an articulate power of narration?"
-- Midwest Book Review

THE AUTHOR:

• Author: Pu Ning

  Acclaimed as "the Solzhenitsyn of China," Pu Ning is one of the most controversial, influential and admired writers in modern Chinese literature. In a space of thirty years (1949 to 1979) during which he was many times put into police custody, labor camp and prison, Pu Ning secretly wrote 2.6 million words of fiction. He managed to smuggle these manuscripts overseas in over 4,000 disguised letters where they were published.

An extraordinary man experiencing extraordinary marriages, Pu Ning was forced into a traumatic political divorce during the Cultural Revolution, but new lives peacefully in Taiwan with his current wife who is forty-one years his junior.

EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK: THE FOSSIL, PART ONE

The Fossil

I

Night. Like an ebony dye, spreading out on a canvas to form an enormous bear's paw. It was as if Walt Disney's brush was at work.

The steamy darkness weighed heavily upon me and made me pant as if out of breath. I had to lie down, to stretch out and embrace sleep in my five-foot long, coir-rope bed. My sleeping place was my refuge in an overly large universe that revealed itself every evening.

It was summer. At this time every evening, I had to recline at the side of a large fossil which emanated a cold that permeated my body. The petrified object I refer to is a woman. This woman is my--wife. When I wrote this word, I felt compelled to first draw a long dash. But I hesitated as my pen formed the line. Should I have written it this way?

It was the two-year anniversary of her fossilization.

There was no special celebration. In fact, my own commemo-ration was the result of beginning to view my wife in this way, a realization that has battered my subconscious mind like a violent surf. She had not spoken one word to me in the past two years, not even a "Hmm" of acknowledgement. She had achieved a level of silence more complete than what existed at the bottom of the Dead Sea that brushed past the shores of Palestine. A stillness more complete than that portrayed in Arnold Bocklin's famous painting "Dead Island." It was as if she wished to use this muteness to smother me, to stop the irritating sound of my breathing.

Women who are both attractive and compulsively clean are sometimes the most subtle of snares. You do not dare to disturb their rigidly imposed order, like a fly fearing to alight on a peony, or a mosquito recoiling before a lotus. Those who aggressively maintain silent surroundings are no different. You are unwilling to break the pristine quiet for fear of fatally wounding them. My wife's silence, however, was not pathological. It was an incredible act that became real with the passage of time. The palpable silence was what frightened me. This is when I began to feel that she had become a fossil, like those of the Triassic dinosaurs and their aquatic predecessors.

This fossil was quite different from the "Husband-Watching Rock" in Hubei Province, which has passed into Chinese folklore. The latter represents a hallowed object, a testament to the endurance of love. The former, something utterly inimical.

This was no fiction. For two whole years, it seemed like the family had been a captive audience at the openings of innumerable exhibitions of petrified curiosities.

Faced with gallery upon gallery of sights at these exhibitions, I was forced to develop a particular skill. Before long, I was the most experienced of collectors. Not of antiques, but of sufferings. To each of these was attached the image of a particular fossil, the ghost of something that was once alive. And I hid them deeply-deep enough so that no one else would discover them.

That night, the exhibition of the human fossils was celebra-ting its two-year anniversary.

I should have had some way of memorializing the event. It just so happened that it was the seventh day of the seventh month according to the Lunar Calendar-Chinese Valentine's Day. The day when the constellations formed the legendary magpie bridge, allowing the spinning maid and the cowherd to spend their one precious night together. This cowherd was lying next to his gelid spinning maid. Her wintry aura was my only indulgence. Even in her deepest sleep she continued to emanate a benumbing chill. It was little wonder that I awoke frequently, awash in her vapors.

It was a torrid night. The autumn tiger (a spell of hot weather after the beginning of autumn) had chased back the cooler weather. Summer would not pass very easily. The fossil's presence, however, created an atmosphere which covered me in cold sweat. About an hour earlier, that giant bear's paw had penetrated the room and pressed down on me until I convulsed for lack of air. I could stand it no longer! I reached over and turned the light on. A dim light shone on her fine, pale face, and her breasts which rose slowly with each breath. I glared at her with increasing anger. The light disturbed her sleep and I could see that she had awoken. Like so many times before, however, she just lay there with her eyes shut. My fury had passed the point of tolerance. I tore at the porcelain buttons on her silken undershirt and exposed the two large persimmons that lay beneath, and then pulled off her panties. I quickly shed my own clothing and climbed on to her body, like some kind of feral beast.

History was repeating itself. I cannot count the times that we had reenacted this primeval mating dance. She was always like an automaton, her only movements being those that I created. Even if bedewed at the approach of a climax, she would lie there like a stone, as still as I was frenzied. She made only one voluntary movement: no matter how wildly I kissed her, she would clamp her teeth and lips tightly together, never allowing my tongue to touch her own.

I was not yielding to sensual pleasures. It was just a means of releasing the built-up pain, a means of revenge.

Every time I lay on her body I felt like a lecher, as if I were raping a recently expired body.

I wanted revenge.

Maybe this vengeful episode was my pleasure. Maybe it was my way of commemorating our time together. All my actions to this point, however, appeared to be just fruitless attempts at assailing the enemy's fortifications, like Don Quixote attacking his windmills.

Her soft body and my virility. They did not complement each other. We were both covered with sweat and she was panting faintly. This was the first and only sound she emitted for me. Only at this particular moment did she reveal a glimpse of her humanity.

Damn it! The rock had finally emitted a sound!

All this time I had been waiting for a sound.

I continued my actions with renewed fervor. That night, I was incensed.

My body was surging with adrenaline. I was like a stallion bolting into an open field. I climaxed three times that night. I wanted to commemorate that damn anniversary-that damn rendezvous on the magpie bridge.

I had to retaliate.

I had ridden the crests of the waves and was soon washed ashore. I finally collapsed on her and lay silently, as silently as she. I, too, was fossilized. My heart felt as if it had been consumed in a fire.

Suddenly, I burst out in tears.