A review by thisotherbookaccount
China Mountain Zhang by Maureen F. McHugh
2.0
There is a genre of Japanese anime that loosely translates to 'slice of life'. That is to say there are no fantastical creatures, no quests for heroes to fulfil, no dark prophecies that threaten to come true — nothing. The entire narrative is based around a-day-in-the-life of the protagonist as he/she goes about her day — and that is basically what China Mountain Zhang is.
China Mountain Zhang reads like a season of Black Mirror with no climaxes, dark twists and no commentary on the state of humanity. Set in a future world where Communist China is dominant, we see a small cast of characters going about their day, going to work, coming home from work and dealing with minor mundane challenges in life. The stories don't necessarily have a thematic relationship with one another, which means that, as readers, the individual vignettes feel very isolated from one another. The characters in this book are also incredibly flat, which shouldn't come as a surprise in most science fiction books anyway.
My biggest issue with the book are the inaccuracies in the Chinese translations. In this universe, with Communist China as the dominant ideology, Mandarin Chinese is the first or second language of most of the characters. Even Singapore-English makes an appearance, literally, on the first page of the book. As a Singaporean, I am keenly aware of how different Singapore-English is, so it annoyed me even more when the author fails to capture the minor nuances of what makes Singapore-English — or Singlish — unique. And while most of the Chinese-to-English translations are accurate, the inaccurate ones do leap out of the page like sore thumbs. Maybe you can fool non-Chinese speakers into thinking that this is a fully realised, well researched world, but these inaccuracies became real distractions for me as a reader.
In the end, China Mountain Zhang feels more like a failed short story collection, with peeks into the working lives of characters living in a future world. It's not unlike a behind-the-scenes look at, say, the life of a salesman in our current universe. It's just not very interesting.
China Mountain Zhang reads like a season of Black Mirror with no climaxes, dark twists and no commentary on the state of humanity. Set in a future world where Communist China is dominant, we see a small cast of characters going about their day, going to work, coming home from work and dealing with minor mundane challenges in life. The stories don't necessarily have a thematic relationship with one another, which means that, as readers, the individual vignettes feel very isolated from one another. The characters in this book are also incredibly flat, which shouldn't come as a surprise in most science fiction books anyway.
My biggest issue with the book are the inaccuracies in the Chinese translations. In this universe, with Communist China as the dominant ideology, Mandarin Chinese is the first or second language of most of the characters. Even Singapore-English makes an appearance, literally, on the first page of the book. As a Singaporean, I am keenly aware of how different Singapore-English is, so it annoyed me even more when the author fails to capture the minor nuances of what makes Singapore-English — or Singlish — unique. And while most of the Chinese-to-English translations are accurate, the inaccurate ones do leap out of the page like sore thumbs. Maybe you can fool non-Chinese speakers into thinking that this is a fully realised, well researched world, but these inaccuracies became real distractions for me as a reader.
In the end, China Mountain Zhang feels more like a failed short story collection, with peeks into the working lives of characters living in a future world. It's not unlike a behind-the-scenes look at, say, the life of a salesman in our current universe. It's just not very interesting.