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The Stolen Bicycle
On a quest to explain how and why his father mysteriously disappeared twenty years ago, a writer embarks on an epic journey in search of a stolen bicycle and soon finds himself immersed in the strangely overlapping histories of the Japanese military during World War II, Lin Wang, the oldest elephant who ever lived, and the secret world of antique bicycle collectors in Taiwan. The result is a surprising and moving meditation on memory, loss, and the bonds of family.
Award-winning novelist Wu Ming-Yi is also an artist, designer, photographer, literary professor, butterfly scholar, environmental activist, traveller and blogger, and is widely considered the leading writer of his generation in his native Taiwan.
Award-winning novelist Wu Ming-Yi is also an artist, designer, photographer, literary professor, butterfly scholar, environmental activist, traveller and blogger, and is widely considered the leading writer of his generation in his native Taiwan.
308 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 30, 2015
About the author
Wu Ming-Yi
18 books233 followers Writer, painter, designer, photographer, literary professor, butterfly scholar, environmental activist, traveler and blogger rolled into one, Wu Ming-Yi is very much a modern Renaissance Man. Over the last decade, he has produced an impressive body of work, especially with his fiction and nature writing.
Wu Ming-Yi (b.1971) studied advertising at Fu-Jen Catholic University and has a PhD in Chinese Literature from National Central University. He has been teaching literature and creative writing at Dong Hwa University since 2000 and is now Professor of the Department of Chinese.
Wu’s literary reputation was first established by his nature writing. In THE BOOK OF LOST BUTTERFLIES (2000) and THE WAY OF BUTTERFLIES (2003), he chronicles his lifelong fascination with this beautiful creature and contemplates the invisible bond between man and nature. He wrote, designed, and provided drawings and photographs for the books, as if crafting works of art. Both books made the “Best of the Year” lists, with THE WAY OF BUTTERFLIES winning China Times’ Open Book Award and being chosen as one of the ten most influential books by Kingstore Bookstore.
In 2006, juggling academic life and the need for a period of uninterrupted time for his writing and traveling, Wu decided to resign from his teaching post. This is unheard of in a country where almost no one can make a living writing full-time and many would fight for a stable teaching job. In the end, Dong Hwa University gave Wu a year of sabbatical leave – they didn't want to lose him.
A year later, Wu published two books: his third collection of nature writing, SO MUCH WATER SO CLOSE TO HOME, and his debut novel, ROUTES IN THE DREAM. DREAM re-imagines Taiwan’s complicated history as a Japanese colony and examines the relationship between fathers and sons, memory and dreams. Hailed as a groundbreaking work of literary historical fiction, it was nominated for every major award and was chosen as one of the ten best Chinese-language novels of the year by Asian Weekly magazine (along with Ai Mi’s Hawthorn Tree Forever, Liu Zhenyun’s My Name Is Liu Yuejin, and Dai Sijie’s Once on a Moonless Night) . Wu was the only Taiwanese author on the list.
It is his eco-fantasy novel THE MAN WITH THE COMPOUND EYES (2011), however, that has gained Wu international recognition, with major English and French translations appearing in 2013 and 2014. A “Taiwanese Life of Pi”, it is an ambitious exploration of Taiwan's island identity, the cost of environmental degradation, and how humans make sense of the world around them, at once poetic, philosophical and far-reaching. It has already caught the attention of major writers in the genre such as Ursula K. Le Guin.
Wu Ming-Yi (b.1971) studied advertising at Fu-Jen Catholic University and has a PhD in Chinese Literature from National Central University. He has been teaching literature and creative writing at Dong Hwa University since 2000 and is now Professor of the Department of Chinese.
Wu’s literary reputation was first established by his nature writing. In THE BOOK OF LOST BUTTERFLIES (2000) and THE WAY OF BUTTERFLIES (2003), he chronicles his lifelong fascination with this beautiful creature and contemplates the invisible bond between man and nature. He wrote, designed, and provided drawings and photographs for the books, as if crafting works of art. Both books made the “Best of the Year” lists, with THE WAY OF BUTTERFLIES winning China Times’ Open Book Award and being chosen as one of the ten most influential books by Kingstore Bookstore.
In 2006, juggling academic life and the need for a period of uninterrupted time for his writing and traveling, Wu decided to resign from his teaching post. This is unheard of in a country where almost no one can make a living writing full-time and many would fight for a stable teaching job. In the end, Dong Hwa University gave Wu a year of sabbatical leave – they didn't want to lose him.
A year later, Wu published two books: his third collection of nature writing, SO MUCH WATER SO CLOSE TO HOME, and his debut novel, ROUTES IN THE DREAM. DREAM re-imagines Taiwan’s complicated history as a Japanese colony and examines the relationship between fathers and sons, memory and dreams. Hailed as a groundbreaking work of literary historical fiction, it was nominated for every major award and was chosen as one of the ten best Chinese-language novels of the year by Asian Weekly magazine (along with Ai Mi’s Hawthorn Tree Forever, Liu Zhenyun’s My Name Is Liu Yuejin, and Dai Sijie’s Once on a Moonless Night) . Wu was the only Taiwanese author on the list.
It is his eco-fantasy novel THE MAN WITH THE COMPOUND EYES (2011), however, that has gained Wu international recognition, with major English and French translations appearing in 2013 and 2014. A “Taiwanese Life of Pi”, it is an ambitious exploration of Taiwan's island identity, the cost of environmental degradation, and how humans make sense of the world around them, at once poetic, philosophical and far-reaching. It has already caught the attention of major writers in the genre such as Ursula K. Le Guin.
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September 19, 2017
In 1905 Taiwan, owning a bike was like owning a Mercedes. Simple farmers and fishermen coveted a bicycle to call their own, a thih-be (an iron horse) that would carry their harvest or fish to market. Bikes were precious. The theft of an iron horse was reported in the local newspaper. Religious villagers prayed to the Holy King for the safe return of an iron steed. The narrator, Ch'eng, describes the disappearance of his father and his bike in 1993, the day after Chung-Shan Hall Market was torn down. What happened to Ch'eng's father? No body was recovered, therefore, Ch'eng embarks upon a journey to trace the bike's trajectory, find the bike, and perhaps discover why his father disappeared 20 years ago.
What type of bike did Ch'eng's father own? Rattling off brands to his mother, she seemed to remember the name Lucky, a brand produced in Taiwan. "Ride your way to Luck", as the slogan goes. As a young child, Ch'eng was able to view and feel the imprint of serial number #04886 on the tube of the bike's frame. If it could be located, what a find it would be, to sit upon and ride the last bike owned by his father.
In his quest to find the specific iron horse and map out its ownership, Ch'eng received anecdotal information and stories from bike aficionados and others who came in contact with war bicycles. He learned about the dependence on bikes during World War II, the secret world of butterfly collages, the treatment of jungle and zoo animals, as well as the art of antique bicycle collecting. The bike in question, a Lucky Double Tube War Bike was one that could have been used by the Silverheels, a Special Operations Force that focused on long distance and/or jungle riding. Hooks mounted on the back of the bike were used to mount a rifle. A bike could last fifty years or more. In days of old, a man's most cherished possession was his thih-be (war horse). Ch'eng wanted to find Lucky Bike #04886 and restore it using original parts. Rust would be removed, but the scrapes, scratches and dings on the bike denote its character and help tell its story.
"The Stolen Bicycle" by Wu Ming-yi is a factual story, within a fictional framework, for a lost bicycle. The dependence upon iron horses during World War II is explained in detail. The cost of war on Asian elephants and zoo animals is disturbing. Antique bike collectors and their world come to life as well. Wu has crafted an enlightening tome centering on a Lucky bicycle as a vehicle for trying to find closure for a father's disappearance.
Thank you Text Publishing UK and Net Galley for the opportunity to read and review "The Stolen Bicycle".
What type of bike did Ch'eng's father own? Rattling off brands to his mother, she seemed to remember the name Lucky, a brand produced in Taiwan. "Ride your way to Luck", as the slogan goes. As a young child, Ch'eng was able to view and feel the imprint of serial number #04886 on the tube of the bike's frame. If it could be located, what a find it would be, to sit upon and ride the last bike owned by his father.
In his quest to find the specific iron horse and map out its ownership, Ch'eng received anecdotal information and stories from bike aficionados and others who came in contact with war bicycles. He learned about the dependence on bikes during World War II, the secret world of butterfly collages, the treatment of jungle and zoo animals, as well as the art of antique bicycle collecting. The bike in question, a Lucky Double Tube War Bike was one that could have been used by the Silverheels, a Special Operations Force that focused on long distance and/or jungle riding. Hooks mounted on the back of the bike were used to mount a rifle. A bike could last fifty years or more. In days of old, a man's most cherished possession was his thih-be (war horse). Ch'eng wanted to find Lucky Bike #04886 and restore it using original parts. Rust would be removed, but the scrapes, scratches and dings on the bike denote its character and help tell its story.
"The Stolen Bicycle" by Wu Ming-yi is a factual story, within a fictional framework, for a lost bicycle. The dependence upon iron horses during World War II is explained in detail. The cost of war on Asian elephants and zoo animals is disturbing. Antique bike collectors and their world come to life as well. Wu has crafted an enlightening tome centering on a Lucky bicycle as a vehicle for trying to find closure for a father's disappearance.
Thank you Text Publishing UK and Net Galley for the opportunity to read and review "The Stolen Bicycle".
April 9, 2018
I have rather mixed feelings about this one, which is my third book from the Man Booker International longlist. The history of Taiwan and the experiences of the Taiwanese are not at all familiar and the book covers a wide range of subject matter, so parts of it were very interesting.
It does contain some very interesting stories - a more Japanese perspective on the war in Malaysia, Singapore and Burma, plenty of elephants and butterflies (including their use in making art), and it is clear just from the fact that "iron horses" were bicycles rather than steam trains that there was a lot of poverty and suffering.
However I am not sure the book coalesced as a whole and it did feel like a collection of random if often fascinating anecdotes held together by a cipher narrator and his obsession with bicycles and their history. At the halfway point I was set to rate this higher, but I felt the second half dragged more and a little selective editing could have produced a more powerful book.
The physical book has a very satisfying look and feel.
It does contain some very interesting stories - a more Japanese perspective on the war in Malaysia, Singapore and Burma, plenty of elephants and butterflies (including their use in making art), and it is clear just from the fact that "iron horses" were bicycles rather than steam trains that there was a lot of poverty and suffering.
However I am not sure the book coalesced as a whole and it did feel like a collection of random if often fascinating anecdotes held together by a cipher narrator and his obsession with bicycles and their history. At the halfway point I was set to rate this higher, but I felt the second half dragged more and a little selective editing could have produced a more powerful book.
The physical book has a very satisfying look and feel.
April 10, 2018
Stories exist in the moment when you have no way of knowing how you got from the past to the present. We never know at first why they continue to survive, as if in hibernation, despite the erosive power of time. But as you listen to them, you feel like they have been woken up, and end up breathing them in. Needle-like, they poke along your spine into your brain before stinging you, hot and cold, in the heart.
Book 7/13 of my reading from the Man Booker Interational longlist - and yet another strong contender.
This is an absolutely gorgeous novel, both graphically with the author's own hand-drawn illustrations of bicycles and hand-written Chinese writing opening and closing each of the History of the Bicycle chapters interspersed with the story, and with the prose which draws one in from the opening paragraph:
I must describe that morning for you, because every time something is described anew it becomes meaningful anew. I must start by letting the dawn spread out, the morning light stroll over the land. I have to take the trees, the houses in the village, the local school, the fields with their medleys of colour, and the little fishing boats swaying with the wind at the seashore, and place them one by one like chess pieces in the landscape.
Wu Ming-yi (吳明益) wrote in a 2007 novel 睡眠的航線 (Route in a Dream, albeit as yet untranslated) about his family history and his father who "went to Japan at the age of thirteen to work in the naval weapons factory in Kanagawa Prefecture to make fighter planes". The narrator's father in the novel has a similar history, and, as with Wu's father, the novel ends with his disapperance. But then:
Not long after it was published, a letter from a reader appeared in my inbox. This was out of the ordinary, because there weren’t too many readers writing me emails back then, and I’d never heard from this one before. The reader, who signed off as Meme, asked me something I’d never thought about: At the end of the novel, the narrator’s father, Saburo, rides his bicycle to the Chung-shan Hall and then just disappears into thin air. He doesn’t return to the market, doesn’t go home. Where does he go? A bit messy, isn’t it? Even if I could bring myself to leave the loose thread hanging and stop worrying at it, what about that bicycle? Why would Saburo just ride his bike to the Chung-shan Hall and leave it there? To me, that bicycle is a symbol. It has to be. Fine. But where does that bicycle end up?
This led the author to ponder the difference between fiction and reality:
I found out early in my career as a writer that fiction and reality are so closely intertwined that any textual element is suspect—but treating anything in a novel as true is dangerous. For instance, in the novel Meme wrote to ask me about, the narrator was the son of the owner of an electrical appliances store. But actually my family ran a tailor’s shop, and later sold jeans, too. The truth of a novel does not depend on facts. That’s something any novelist understands. But a novel’s overarching structure is supported by what might be called ‘pillars of truth’.
...
I often feel that a novelist uses three pillars of truth to get the reader to believe in seven pillars of fiction and enter the castle he or she has created in language, whether it is opulent, squalid, fantastical or unreal. In my novel, the Chung-hwa Market was real, and so were the young workers who went to make warplanes in Japan. And my father did have a bicycle that disappeared when he went missing. But many of the story’s details were invented. For instance, though I have sometimes suffered from troubled sleep in real life, I have never experienced the war in my dreams. I did not have a girlfriend called Alice. (My then-girlfriend was called Teresa.) And I have no idea if my father parked his bicycle for the last time at the Chung-shan Hall.
And although he wrote back to the reader pointing out the fictional nature of the story, he did in practice become, as a person, obsessed with the antique bicycles and what might have happened to his father's bike, and as an author, wrote this novel, 單車失竊記 (The Stolen Bicycle) published in the original 2015, fictionalising his quest.
One of the early readers of this novel was Darryl Sterk, translator into English of one of Wu Ming-yi's books, and he does a wonderful job with the translation here.
In terms of the fictionalised story, the narrator (not to be confused 100% with the author) explains:
Twenty years ago, when Father first went missing, it occurred to us that if we could find his bicycle, we might find him. Only then did we discover that his bicycle was gone, too—that Father and his iron steed had left us together.
...
Pa’s last bicycle was a Lucky. The only thing I remember about that bike is that it was unisex: you could adjust the top tube, turning a man’s bike into a woman’s. From then on, wherever this early Lucky unisex model turned up, I would go take a look. And that was how it started: my obsession with antique bicycles flowed from my missing father.
Taiwan is, of course, today known as home of the largest cycle manufacturer in the world, the appropriately named Giant, but the first large scale domestic manufacturer, competiting with the Fuji bikes from Japan and Raleigh from the UK, was Lucky (福) with their slogan: 騎幸福牌腳踏車，踏上幸福之路
Ride Your Way to Luck—that was their slogan. It didn’t matter if you were starting a family or a business, if you were getting hitched or trying to get rich—first you needed a bicycle.
....
Lí Tsìn-ki had a good head for business. He advertised on billboards at train stations island-wide. He commissioned a radio jingle and booked airtime to get the word out. Even more radically, he organised a club that went on weekly rides he led himself. And he did it sixty years before the chairman of Giant Bicycles did.
And incidents involving stolen and lost bicycles are keen to the (fictional) family history, particularly as seen by his mother. Note also the use of Mandarin vs. Taiwanese language in the following, another key to the novel, as are Japanese and also indigenous language (what the author refers to in his afterword as Taiwan’s linguistic polyphony)
‘Iron horses have influenced the fate of our entire family,’ my mother used to say. I would describe my mother as a New Historicist: to her, there are no Great Men, no heroes, no bombing of Pearl Harbor. She only remembers seemingly trivial—but to her fateful—matters like bicycles going missing. The word for fate in Mandarin is ming-yun, literally ‘life-luck’ or ‘command-turn’. But ‘fate’ in my mother’s native tongue of Taiwanese is the other way round: ūn-miā. It belies fatalism, putting luck in front of life, suggesting you can turn the wheel of fate yourself instead of awaiting the commands of Heaven.
Even the term used for a bicycle itself matters - Ma's 'iron horses' being one such word:
In the world I grew up in, the word a person used for ‘bicycle’ told you a lot about them. Jiten-sha (‘self-turn vehicle’) indicated a person had received a Japanese education. Thih-bé (‘iron horse’) meant he was a native speaker of Taiwanese, as did Khóng-bîng-tshia (‘Kung-ming vehicle’), named for an ancient Chinese inventor. Tan-ch’e (‘solo vehicle’), chiao-t’a-ch’e (‘foot-pedalled vehicle’) or tsuhsing-ch’e (‘auto-mobile vehicle’) told you they were from the south of China.
As the narrator becomes an expert on antique bicycles , searching for one type in particular, the bike his father rose, he encounters others, e.g. A-pu:
A-pu was somewhere between an aficionado, a collector and a dealer.
At the end of that cul-de-sac, we talked about all aspects of classic bicycle design, just like literary types talk about Milan Kundera and Italo Calvino or modern art buffs talk about Jasper Johns and Andy Warhol.
The toolkit on the table, which he’d had since he was an apprentice, included a double-headed spanner, a spoke wrench, a set of Torx-type hex wrenches, a pedal spanner and a chain tool, though the master had always referred to them in Japanese: ryōguchi supana, supōku renchi, Torx renchi, pedaru supana, chēn kiri. These tools had been with him for decades. Each was pitted and scarred, and had a distinctive gleam. The master said that of all his tools, these were the handiest. He never seemed to get used to the new tools the sales reps gave him and had carried on using his own instead. A-pu felt the heft of a cast-iron wrench, examined the serial number stamped on its handle, and imagined how bright and shiny it must have been when the young master first picked it up, confident that with it there was no bolt he could not turn.
There is a Seiobo There Below-like element to these and similar passages, the reverence of an expert for their tools and their trade, expressed later on in his father's love for making suits:
Pa had a word for the art or skill a person carried around with him: kang-hu, a homophone in Taiwanese for kung-fu.
Choosing materials was kang-hu, taking measurements was kang-hu, pick-stitching collars by hand was kang-hu, mark-stitching the tailor’s monogram in white thread was kang-hu, pressing with the iron to create line was kang-hu, even serging and buttoning was kang-hu, and not just technique. What was the difference between kang-hu and technique? Pa said that things made with kang-hu have soul.
Kang-hu was consummate technique matched with unusual resolve, and had nothing to do with ethics or morality.
Taiwan was, of course, under Japanese rule from 1895-1945, leading to a complicated history, particularly in the Second World War where people seem to have ended up on both sides - some working or even fighting for the Japanese (as with the narrator's father) and others against them, neither group really fighting for themselves:
During the war, a battle to the death had been fought in the jungle Gunung Yong Belar overlooks to the west—a battle between a strategic force, hungry for the natural resources needed to establish the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, and a defending force, made up of men who had gone willingly east to colonise an ancient empire and the colonised peoples they had drafted. No individual fought in that battle, master of his own fate. Everything—the gun in his hand, the clothes on his back, the boots on his feet, his puttees, even his fingernails, brain and blood—all belonged to the Imperial Army or the British Empire.
Even bicycles can tell us about history:
People who haven’t actually confronted an old iron horse can hardly understand how rust can reveal an era, a geographical environment, the owner’s habits and the industrial artistry that went into its creation.
And in the novel, Wu Ming-yi manages to inform us not just about the Second World War, but also Taiwan's once booming butterfly handicraft industry, zoos, elephants (and the role of elephants - again on both sides - in the War) and the key role played by Japan's fabled Silverwheel Squad of cycle-based soldiers in the campaign in Burma and in the invasion of Singapore.
The story that results can get quite tangled - one point I found myself trying to work out exactly why the narrator is pushing an elderly lady around a zoo while she tells him an involved story of a Japanese bird-watching friend of hers who became lost in the Taiwanese mountains - but never less than fascinating.
As mentioned, language is key to the novel - as the author explains in an afterword:
The first of these was the way I handled . I didn’t want the language to make it difficult for the reader to get into the story, but I also wanted to convey how a specific character thought and talked. To that end, after rendering the sense in Chinese characters, I also often supplied the sound in phonetic symbols or Romanisation—for the reader to linger over, or even, like an incantation, read aloud. I’ve always believed that language is not just a means of communication—that it is fundamentally poetic. Languages are not mere casks for wine; the cask makes the wine. This is a principle I hope you will keep in mind when you drink at the cup of this novel.
How much of this could be preserved in translation is difficult to say - this interview with both author and translator is illuminating http://lindsay-online.com/capturing-t...- but what one can say is that Sterk has done a wonderful job and the resulting work in English is a truly beautiful read.
Highly recommended and thanks to the MBI jury for a wonderful discovery.
Book 7/13 of my reading from the Man Booker Interational longlist - and yet another strong contender.
This is an absolutely gorgeous novel, both graphically with the author's own hand-drawn illustrations of bicycles and hand-written Chinese writing opening and closing each of the History of the Bicycle chapters interspersed with the story, and with the prose which draws one in from the opening paragraph:
I must describe that morning for you, because every time something is described anew it becomes meaningful anew. I must start by letting the dawn spread out, the morning light stroll over the land. I have to take the trees, the houses in the village, the local school, the fields with their medleys of colour, and the little fishing boats swaying with the wind at the seashore, and place them one by one like chess pieces in the landscape.
Wu Ming-yi (吳明益) wrote in a 2007 novel 睡眠的航線 (Route in a Dream, albeit as yet untranslated) about his family history and his father who "went to Japan at the age of thirteen to work in the naval weapons factory in Kanagawa Prefecture to make fighter planes". The narrator's father in the novel has a similar history, and, as with Wu's father, the novel ends with his disapperance. But then:
Not long after it was published, a letter from a reader appeared in my inbox. This was out of the ordinary, because there weren’t too many readers writing me emails back then, and I’d never heard from this one before. The reader, who signed off as Meme, asked me something I’d never thought about: At the end of the novel, the narrator’s father, Saburo, rides his bicycle to the Chung-shan Hall and then just disappears into thin air. He doesn’t return to the market, doesn’t go home. Where does he go? A bit messy, isn’t it? Even if I could bring myself to leave the loose thread hanging and stop worrying at it, what about that bicycle? Why would Saburo just ride his bike to the Chung-shan Hall and leave it there? To me, that bicycle is a symbol. It has to be. Fine. But where does that bicycle end up?
This led the author to ponder the difference between fiction and reality:
I found out early in my career as a writer that fiction and reality are so closely intertwined that any textual element is suspect—but treating anything in a novel as true is dangerous. For instance, in the novel Meme wrote to ask me about, the narrator was the son of the owner of an electrical appliances store. But actually my family ran a tailor’s shop, and later sold jeans, too. The truth of a novel does not depend on facts. That’s something any novelist understands. But a novel’s overarching structure is supported by what might be called ‘pillars of truth’.
...
I often feel that a novelist uses three pillars of truth to get the reader to believe in seven pillars of fiction and enter the castle he or she has created in language, whether it is opulent, squalid, fantastical or unreal. In my novel, the Chung-hwa Market was real, and so were the young workers who went to make warplanes in Japan. And my father did have a bicycle that disappeared when he went missing. But many of the story’s details were invented. For instance, though I have sometimes suffered from troubled sleep in real life, I have never experienced the war in my dreams. I did not have a girlfriend called Alice. (My then-girlfriend was called Teresa.) And I have no idea if my father parked his bicycle for the last time at the Chung-shan Hall.
And although he wrote back to the reader pointing out the fictional nature of the story, he did in practice become, as a person, obsessed with the antique bicycles and what might have happened to his father's bike, and as an author, wrote this novel, 單車失竊記 (The Stolen Bicycle) published in the original 2015, fictionalising his quest.
One of the early readers of this novel was Darryl Sterk, translator into English of one of Wu Ming-yi's books, and he does a wonderful job with the translation here.
In terms of the fictionalised story, the narrator (not to be confused 100% with the author) explains:
Twenty years ago, when Father first went missing, it occurred to us that if we could find his bicycle, we might find him. Only then did we discover that his bicycle was gone, too—that Father and his iron steed had left us together.
...
Pa’s last bicycle was a Lucky. The only thing I remember about that bike is that it was unisex: you could adjust the top tube, turning a man’s bike into a woman’s. From then on, wherever this early Lucky unisex model turned up, I would go take a look. And that was how it started: my obsession with antique bicycles flowed from my missing father.
Taiwan is, of course, today known as home of the largest cycle manufacturer in the world, the appropriately named Giant, but the first large scale domestic manufacturer, competiting with the Fuji bikes from Japan and Raleigh from the UK, was Lucky (福) with their slogan: 騎幸福牌腳踏車，踏上幸福之路
Ride Your Way to Luck—that was their slogan. It didn’t matter if you were starting a family or a business, if you were getting hitched or trying to get rich—first you needed a bicycle.
....
Lí Tsìn-ki had a good head for business. He advertised on billboards at train stations island-wide. He commissioned a radio jingle and booked airtime to get the word out. Even more radically, he organised a club that went on weekly rides he led himself. And he did it sixty years before the chairman of Giant Bicycles did.
And incidents involving stolen and lost bicycles are keen to the (fictional) family history, particularly as seen by his mother. Note also the use of Mandarin vs. Taiwanese language in the following, another key to the novel, as are Japanese and also indigenous language (what the author refers to in his afterword as Taiwan’s linguistic polyphony)
‘Iron horses have influenced the fate of our entire family,’ my mother used to say. I would describe my mother as a New Historicist: to her, there are no Great Men, no heroes, no bombing of Pearl Harbor. She only remembers seemingly trivial—but to her fateful—matters like bicycles going missing. The word for fate in Mandarin is ming-yun, literally ‘life-luck’ or ‘command-turn’. But ‘fate’ in my mother’s native tongue of Taiwanese is the other way round: ūn-miā. It belies fatalism, putting luck in front of life, suggesting you can turn the wheel of fate yourself instead of awaiting the commands of Heaven.
Even the term used for a bicycle itself matters - Ma's 'iron horses' being one such word:
In the world I grew up in, the word a person used for ‘bicycle’ told you a lot about them. Jiten-sha (‘self-turn vehicle’) indicated a person had received a Japanese education. Thih-bé (‘iron horse’) meant he was a native speaker of Taiwanese, as did Khóng-bîng-tshia (‘Kung-ming vehicle’), named for an ancient Chinese inventor. Tan-ch’e (‘solo vehicle’), chiao-t’a-ch’e (‘foot-pedalled vehicle’) or tsuhsing-ch’e (‘auto-mobile vehicle’) told you they were from the south of China.
As the narrator becomes an expert on antique bicycles , searching for one type in particular, the bike his father rose, he encounters others, e.g. A-pu:
A-pu was somewhere between an aficionado, a collector and a dealer.
At the end of that cul-de-sac, we talked about all aspects of classic bicycle design, just like literary types talk about Milan Kundera and Italo Calvino or modern art buffs talk about Jasper Johns and Andy Warhol.
The toolkit on the table, which he’d had since he was an apprentice, included a double-headed spanner, a spoke wrench, a set of Torx-type hex wrenches, a pedal spanner and a chain tool, though the master had always referred to them in Japanese: ryōguchi supana, supōku renchi, Torx renchi, pedaru supana, chēn kiri. These tools had been with him for decades. Each was pitted and scarred, and had a distinctive gleam. The master said that of all his tools, these were the handiest. He never seemed to get used to the new tools the sales reps gave him and had carried on using his own instead. A-pu felt the heft of a cast-iron wrench, examined the serial number stamped on its handle, and imagined how bright and shiny it must have been when the young master first picked it up, confident that with it there was no bolt he could not turn.
There is a Seiobo There Below-like element to these and similar passages, the reverence of an expert for their tools and their trade, expressed later on in his father's love for making suits:
Pa had a word for the art or skill a person carried around with him: kang-hu, a homophone in Taiwanese for kung-fu.
Choosing materials was kang-hu, taking measurements was kang-hu, pick-stitching collars by hand was kang-hu, mark-stitching the tailor’s monogram in white thread was kang-hu, pressing with the iron to create line was kang-hu, even serging and buttoning was kang-hu, and not just technique. What was the difference between kang-hu and technique? Pa said that things made with kang-hu have soul.
Kang-hu was consummate technique matched with unusual resolve, and had nothing to do with ethics or morality.
Taiwan was, of course, under Japanese rule from 1895-1945, leading to a complicated history, particularly in the Second World War where people seem to have ended up on both sides - some working or even fighting for the Japanese (as with the narrator's father) and others against them, neither group really fighting for themselves:
During the war, a battle to the death had been fought in the jungle Gunung Yong Belar overlooks to the west—a battle between a strategic force, hungry for the natural resources needed to establish the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, and a defending force, made up of men who had gone willingly east to colonise an ancient empire and the colonised peoples they had drafted. No individual fought in that battle, master of his own fate. Everything—the gun in his hand, the clothes on his back, the boots on his feet, his puttees, even his fingernails, brain and blood—all belonged to the Imperial Army or the British Empire.
Even bicycles can tell us about history:
People who haven’t actually confronted an old iron horse can hardly understand how rust can reveal an era, a geographical environment, the owner’s habits and the industrial artistry that went into its creation.
And in the novel, Wu Ming-yi manages to inform us not just about the Second World War, but also Taiwan's once booming butterfly handicraft industry, zoos, elephants (and the role of elephants - again on both sides - in the War) and the key role played by Japan's fabled Silverwheel Squad of cycle-based soldiers in the campaign in Burma and in the invasion of Singapore.
The story that results can get quite tangled - one point I found myself trying to work out exactly why the narrator is pushing an elderly lady around a zoo while she tells him an involved story of a Japanese bird-watching friend of hers who became lost in the Taiwanese mountains - but never less than fascinating.
As mentioned, language is key to the novel - as the author explains in an afterword:
The first of these was the way I handled . I didn’t want the language to make it difficult for the reader to get into the story, but I also wanted to convey how a specific character thought and talked. To that end, after rendering the sense in Chinese characters, I also often supplied the sound in phonetic symbols or Romanisation—for the reader to linger over, or even, like an incantation, read aloud. I’ve always believed that language is not just a means of communication—that it is fundamentally poetic. Languages are not mere casks for wine; the cask makes the wine. This is a principle I hope you will keep in mind when you drink at the cup of this novel.
How much of this could be preserved in translation is difficult to say - this interview with both author and translator is illuminating http://lindsay-online.com/capturing-t...- but what one can say is that Sterk has done a wonderful job and the resulting work in English is a truly beautiful read.
Highly recommended and thanks to the MBI jury for a wonderful discovery.
March 26, 2018
This was a wonderful, lyrical, and fascinating book - bicycles and elephants do not often play a major role in the same book. This book indirectly provides a lot of information about Taiwan, its subservience to Japan in the years up to and during WWII, and the diversity of Taiwan's citizens and languages spoken.
I am a bicycle lover and very much enjoyed the history of bicycles in Taiwan and the many stories of stolen bicycles. I also very much enjoyed hearing about the elephants in the zoos and those that served to carry supplies for Japanese troops during WWII, although the elephants' stories were quite sad. There is much here about WWII in Asia and it is an area of history that I am not very familiar with. I found it sad but fascinating.
The characters in this book were very interesting. I enjoyed how the author used them to convey the history as well as the emotional impact of the war on those who endured it.
I am a bicycle lover and very much enjoyed the history of bicycles in Taiwan and the many stories of stolen bicycles. I also very much enjoyed hearing about the elephants in the zoos and those that served to carry supplies for Japanese troops during WWII, although the elephants' stories were quite sad. There is much here about WWII in Asia and it is an area of history that I am not very familiar with. I found it sad but fascinating.
The characters in this book were very interesting. I enjoyed how the author used them to convey the history as well as the emotional impact of the war on those who endured it.
March 24, 2018
I really wanted to enjoy this book. It is a thing of beauty to look at and to hold. Simply seeing the physical book makes you want to love it.
Our narrator, Ch’eng (not named until very late in the book) is an author who is prompted by a letter from a reader to investigate the history of his father’s bicycle which disappeared at the same time as his father many years previously. This book is, amongst many other things, the story of that search. Along the way, it takes many, many detours. One of those detours (more about this in a minute) is into the history of the “butterfly collages” produced by putting down layer upon layer of butterfly wings to build an overall picture. This book is rather like that: it builds up layers of historical facts, mundane details and human emotions and memory in order to create an overall picture of Taiwan (and wider) through a period of time.
For that, I admire the book. But, and here I acknowledge that “it is not you, it’s me”, I found I simply could not engage properly with it. About 3-4 years ago, I read “The Man With The Compound Eyes” by the same author and I had the same problem then. In fact, I had forgotten I had read that book until about halfway through this one when I looked up something about the author and was reminded of the earlier book I read. Both books are ones where I can appreciate why others have loved them but I simply didn’t get it. Perhaps it is the continual jumping from topic to topic, but I don’t think so as I’ve read plenty of other books that do that and enjoyed them. I think it is maybe more a case of there being some authors that just don’t hit the right notes for some readers (I have the same issue with Coetzee and he also wins prizes and is highly rated by many others).
Fundamentally, whilst I know that this book is about a lot more than what I am about to say, I know that the two memories that will stay with me from this book will be of mutilated butterflies (I am a member of the UK Butterfly Conservation society, so I found that chapter very hard to read) and mistreated elephants. I appreciate that I am ignoring a lot of other things and I am rating this slightly above what I want to because I can see that it is a good book.
If you want to read an excellent and positive review of this book that covers it is far more detail than I have done, look at Paul’s: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Our narrator, Ch’eng (not named until very late in the book) is an author who is prompted by a letter from a reader to investigate the history of his father’s bicycle which disappeared at the same time as his father many years previously. This book is, amongst many other things, the story of that search. Along the way, it takes many, many detours. One of those detours (more about this in a minute) is into the history of the “butterfly collages” produced by putting down layer upon layer of butterfly wings to build an overall picture. This book is rather like that: it builds up layers of historical facts, mundane details and human emotions and memory in order to create an overall picture of Taiwan (and wider) through a period of time.
For that, I admire the book. But, and here I acknowledge that “it is not you, it’s me”, I found I simply could not engage properly with it. About 3-4 years ago, I read “The Man With The Compound Eyes” by the same author and I had the same problem then. In fact, I had forgotten I had read that book until about halfway through this one when I looked up something about the author and was reminded of the earlier book I read. Both books are ones where I can appreciate why others have loved them but I simply didn’t get it. Perhaps it is the continual jumping from topic to topic, but I don’t think so as I’ve read plenty of other books that do that and enjoyed them. I think it is maybe more a case of there being some authors that just don’t hit the right notes for some readers (I have the same issue with Coetzee and he also wins prizes and is highly rated by many others).
Fundamentally, whilst I know that this book is about a lot more than what I am about to say, I know that the two memories that will stay with me from this book will be of mutilated butterflies (I am a member of the UK Butterfly Conservation society, so I found that chapter very hard to read) and mistreated elephants. I appreciate that I am ignoring a lot of other things and I am rating this slightly above what I want to because I can see that it is a good book.
If you want to read an excellent and positive review of this book that covers it is far more detail than I have done, look at Paul’s: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
June 5, 2018
2 stars
I think this was a story about many stolen bicycles, bicycle history in Taiwan and lots of little stories that had nothing whatsoever to do with bicycles. My ebook expired before I finished but I am certainly in no hurry to borrow this book again. I offer the 2 stars for the snippets of information about cruelty to butterflies which were made to suffer by having their wings cut off in the name of art while their bodies were tossed, alive, into buckets in each workers station. I really hope this form of artwork is no longer being produced. These images will stay with me.
I think this was a story about many stolen bicycles, bicycle history in Taiwan and lots of little stories that had nothing whatsoever to do with bicycles. My ebook expired before I finished but I am certainly in no hurry to borrow this book again. I offer the 2 stars for the snippets of information about cruelty to butterflies which were made to suffer by having their wings cut off in the name of art while their bodies were tossed, alive, into buckets in each workers station. I really hope this form of artwork is no longer being produced. These images will stay with me.
June 17, 2018
Narrator's parents wanting a male child named their fifth daughter A-muáh (enough! enough!!) - that kind of names, I thought, were an Indian specialty. Kafi (enough - same implication), Mafi (forgiveness - to god for having given the parents another daughter) etc.
That is almost the only striking thing I discovered in this book. Wu Ming-Yi's novel has a very loose plot and prose, though beautiful in beginning, falls mostly short of stimulating for the most part. It is about narrator's quest for his father's stolen bicycle (who also went missing at the same time, but the narrator doesn't hold the same kind of curiosity for whereabouts of his father) while telling stories of each person who happened to be in possession of the bicycle. And thus we hear stories about a war-torn Korea, the importance of bicycle in it (both in war logistics and as a luxury for people); bicycle collectors and their values, lives of elephants and mahouts, war photographers, industries using butterfly wings for ornamentation of clothes etc. It is a lot of Discovery channel and National Geography Channel stuff which is beautiful in its own way; just not my kink.
That is almost the only striking thing I discovered in this book. Wu Ming-Yi's novel has a very loose plot and prose, though beautiful in beginning, falls mostly short of stimulating for the most part. It is about narrator's quest for his father's stolen bicycle (who also went missing at the same time, but the narrator doesn't hold the same kind of curiosity for whereabouts of his father) while telling stories of each person who happened to be in possession of the bicycle. And thus we hear stories about a war-torn Korea, the importance of bicycle in it (both in war logistics and as a luxury for people); bicycle collectors and their values, lives of elephants and mahouts, war photographers, industries using butterfly wings for ornamentation of clothes etc. It is a lot of Discovery channel and National Geography Channel stuff which is beautiful in its own way; just not my kink.
August 17, 2020
đọc lại bản tiếng Việt thì thấy gần gũi hơn rất nhiều, viết giỏi phết nhờ chịu khó làm nghiên cứu
June 27, 2022
คล้ายกับการเล่าชีวประวัติของบุคคลไม่สำคัญ
ไม่ได้เล่าด้วยวิธีตรงไปตรงมา
แต่หงายจิ๊กซอว์ทีละชิ้น
ค่อยๆ ประกอบลงบนตำแหน่งต่างๆ ของภาพ
จักรยานคันหนึ่ง ถูกส่งมอบจากคนคนหนึ่ง
ไปยังอีกคน และอีกคน
แต่ละครั้งที่เปลี่ยนเจ้าของ
มันได้นำพาเรื่องราวต่างๆ ของพวกเขาติดไปกับมันด้วย
จักรยานมีเรื่องเล่า
และจักรยานที่เป็นของคนหลายคนจึงเต็มไปด้วยเรื่องราว
ซึ่งทั้งหมดนั้นถูกถ่ายทอดออกมาเป็นหนังสือเล่มนี้
จุดมุ่งหมายของเรื่องนี้ ไม่ได้อยู่ที่การตอบคำถามว่า
สุดท้ายแล้ว เสี่ยวเฉิงเจอพ่อของเขาหรือเปล่า
แต่อยู่ที่ความต้องการที่จะถ่ายทอดประวัติศาสตร์ชุมชน
รวมทั้งประวัติศาสตร์ในช่วงสงครามโลกครั้งที่สอง ของไต้หวัน
มันไม่ใช่หนังสือแบบที่อ่านแล้วเราจะรักมันในทันที
มันเป็นหนังสือแบบที่อ่านแล้ว เราจะค่อยๆ รักมัน
คงต้องใช้เวลาละเลียดรอบแล้วรอบเล่า
ก่อนจะตัดสินใจได้ว่าชอบมันหรือไม่
เป็นหนังสือที่อ่านจบแล้ว ยากที่จะเล่า
อันที่จริงเราก็อยากอ่านรีวิวจากคนอื่นที่อ่านจบแล้วเหมือนกัน
เราเชื่อว่า ต่อให้คนอื่นเล่า ก็จะออกมาไม่เหมือนกัน
มันเป็นหนังสือที่มีแง่มุมอื่นๆ อีกมากมาย
เป็นหนังสือที่แปลกและเล่ายากนั่นแหละ
ไม่ได้เล่าด้วยวิธีตรงไปตรงมา
แต่หงายจิ๊กซอว์ทีละชิ้น
ค่อยๆ ประกอบลงบนตำแหน่งต่างๆ ของภาพ
จักรยานคันหนึ่ง ถูกส่งมอบจากคนคนหนึ่ง
ไปยังอีกคน และอีกคน
แต่ละครั้งที่เปลี่ยนเจ้าของ
มันได้นำพาเรื่องราวต่างๆ ของพวกเขาติดไปกับมันด้วย
จักรยานมีเรื่องเล่า
และจักรยานที่เป็นของคนหลายคนจึงเต็มไปด้วยเรื่องราว
ซึ่งทั้งหมดนั้นถูกถ่ายทอดออกมาเป็นหนังสือเล่มนี้
จุดมุ่งหมายของเรื่องนี้ ไม่ได้อยู่ที่การตอบคำถามว่า
สุดท้ายแล้ว เสี่ยวเฉิงเจอพ่อของเขาหรือเปล่า
แต่อยู่ที่ความต้องการที่จะถ่ายทอดประวัติศาสตร์ชุมชน
รวมทั้งประวัติศาสตร์ในช่วงสงครามโลกครั้งที่สอง ของไต้หวัน
มันไม่ใช่หนังสือแบบที่อ่านแล้วเราจะรักมันในทันที
มันเป็นหนังสือแบบที่อ่านแล้ว เราจะค่อยๆ รักมัน
คงต้องใช้เวลาละเลียดรอบแล้วรอบเล่า
ก่อนจะตัดสินใจได้ว่าชอบมันหรือไม่
เป็นหนังสือที่อ่านจบแล้ว ยากที่จะเล่า
อันที่จริงเราก็อยากอ่านรีวิวจากคนอื่นที่อ่านจบแล้วเหมือนกัน
เราเชื่อว่า ต่อให้คนอื่นเล่า ก็จะออกมาไม่เหมือนกัน
มันเป็นหนังสือที่มีแง่มุมอื่นๆ อีกมากมาย
เป็นหนังสือที่แปลกและเล่ายากนั่นแหละ
September 27, 2020
Chắc đây là cuốn tiểu thuyết hay nhất năm nay được đọc. Mà nếu có cuốn nào hay hơn thế này của năm chắc hẳn tôi phải may mắn lắm.
Một văn phong giản dị lúc cần giản dị, bay bổng lúc cần bay bổng cùng những câu chuyện lồng trong câu chuyện. Từ chiến tranh, xác thịt, động vật đến quê hương, gia đình đều có cả trong cuốn sách này.
Ngô Minh Ích thật sự đã làm rạng danh văn học Đài Loan. Xuất sắc ở nhiều mặt.
Một văn phong giản dị lúc cần giản dị, bay bổng lúc cần bay bổng cùng những câu chuyện lồng trong câu chuyện. Từ chiến tranh, xác thịt, động vật đến quê hương, gia đình đều có cả trong cuốn sách này.
Ngô Minh Ích thật sự đã làm rạng danh văn học Đài Loan. Xuất sắc ở nhiều mặt.
January 6, 2024
Phew! I enjoyed 75% of this book but the last quarter was a struggle. It was just too long. There are 5 areas of historical background with one diverse but connected storyline:
1. The history of Taiwan’s bicycle industry
2. The history of Taiwan in WWII
3. Japanese warfare, use of bicycles, and battles with the Aliies in WWII
4. What happened to animals in the wild and in zoos in wartime
5. Taiwan’s butterfly handicrafts industry
The narrator, like the author, is a collector and restorer of old bicycles. He has always wondered what happened to his father, who disappeared when the narrator was still young, and his bicycle. His father had more than one bicycle stolen over the years as bicycle theft was rife in Taiwan but it is this last one that intrigues him most. On his journey to find answers, he meets other bicycle collectors who have their own stories to tell, makes new friends, and reconnects with his family.
The historical elements were really interesting, even the history of the bicycle industry despite my minimal interest in it. The story just went on and on, however. It often lacked direction as we were taken up blind alleys and down dead ends. I grew weary with this rambling style and finally couldn’t wait for the end to come. Never a good sign! I found much of the translated dialogue annoying as it was written in American slang but a helpful note from the translator at the end explains many of his decisions.
In summary, I’m mostly glad I read it but I’m more relieved than satisfied to be finished!
1. The history of Taiwan’s bicycle industry
2. The history of Taiwan in WWII
3. Japanese warfare, use of bicycles, and battles with the Aliies in WWII
4. What happened to animals in the wild and in zoos in wartime
5. Taiwan’s butterfly handicrafts industry
The narrator, like the author, is a collector and restorer of old bicycles. He has always wondered what happened to his father, who disappeared when the narrator was still young, and his bicycle. His father had more than one bicycle stolen over the years as bicycle theft was rife in Taiwan but it is this last one that intrigues him most. On his journey to find answers, he meets other bicycle collectors who have their own stories to tell, makes new friends, and reconnects with his family.
The historical elements were really interesting, even the history of the bicycle industry despite my minimal interest in it. The story just went on and on, however. It often lacked direction as we were taken up blind alleys and down dead ends. I grew weary with this rambling style and finally couldn’t wait for the end to come. Never a good sign! I found much of the translated dialogue annoying as it was written in American slang but a helpful note from the translator at the end explains many of his decisions.
In summary, I’m mostly glad I read it but I’m more relieved than satisfied to be finished!
November 6, 2024
Автор тобі одразу вказує, що книга є частково автобіографічною і це підкупає з перших же сторінок. Те, що спочатку може здатись звичайною розповіддю про пошуки батькового велосипеда згодом стає лише тлом, щоб розказати нелегку історію Тайваню. І те з якою повагою і любов'ю до рідного краю це зроблено, заслуговує окремої зірочки, можливо і всіх чотирьох. Звичайно ж автор не намагається детально розказати історію цілої країни за 380 сторінок, тому багато чого доведеться досліджувати самостійно, але це чудовий стимул щоб діз��атись багато нового, а я таке люблю.
Структура книги досить цікава і це для мене виявилось головною родзинкою (ненавиджу родзинки) книги. Хоча ці розділи і можна сприймати як окремі історії, але автор майстерно їх пов'язує однією ниточкою, яка проходить через весь текст.
З мінусів, то я досить довго не міг спіймати вайб книги і навіть думав дропнути на 150-й сторінці. Але з часом якось проникнувся історією і після прочитання книга лишила дуже класний післясмак. Та й стиль автора мені видався досить тривіальним. Я чомусь очікував від азійської літ��ратури якогось нового рівня чутливості, щось типу як в латиноамериканців, але можливо не такої емоційної, а більш стилістично вивіреної і точної. Тут я цього не бачив, але це особисто мої проблеми очікувань не заснованих ні на чому.
Структура книги досить цікава і це для мене виявилось головною родзинкою (ненавиджу родзинки) книги. Хоча ці розділи і можна сприймати як окремі історії, але автор майстерно їх пов'язує однією ниточкою, яка проходить через весь текст.
З мінусів, то я досить довго не міг спіймати вайб книги і навіть думав дропнути на 150-й сторінці. Але з часом якось проникнувся історією і після прочитання книга лишила дуже класний післясмак. Та й стиль автора мені видався досить тривіальним. Я чомусь очікував від азійської літ��ратури якогось нового рівня чутливості, щось типу як в латиноамериканців, але можливо не такої емоційної, а більш стилістично вивіреної і точної. Тут я цього не бачив, але це особисто мої проблеми очікувань не заснованих ні на чому.
March 20, 2018
Stories exist in the moment when you have no way of knowing how you got from the past to the present. We never know at first why they continue to survive, as it in hibernation, despite the erosive power of time. But as you listen to them, you feel like they have been woken up, and up breathing them in. Needle-like, they poke along your spine into your brain before stinging you, hot and cold, in the heart.
I read this book after seeing its longlisting for the 2018 Man Booker International – the combination of literature from (for me) a new literary country but one I encounter in my day to day work, and the history of bicycles seemed irresistible.
The book itself is both beautifully produced (an evocative cover, and inside illustrations which were produced by the author himself) and beautifully written.
Part family memoire, part biography, part novel, part homage to the key role of the bicycle in Taiwanese society, part cultural history of the 20th century in Taiwan, part an unfamiliar geographical and cultural slant on World War II.
Highly recommended.
Behold I ride before you on an antique bike built up with body parts stripped from meat bikes or bought from collections. I’m just a lonely rider who set out alone on this road, on the journey that became this story; but if, when you open this novel, you are willing to come along for the ride, you will meet many others riding down unfamiliar roads, all alone but all pulled by an invisible force that gathers them into the massive and mysterious flows of history.
I didn’t write this novel but of nostalgia but out of respect for an era I did not experience, and reverence for the unrepeatability of life ……a quest for a bicycle that ends up involving the history of an epoch.
Read
December 31, 2023200/392 pages
Life is too short to finish a bad book🤷♀️ 👎
Life is too short to finish a bad book🤷♀️ 👎
Shelved as 'dnf-abandoned'
April 8, 2020I would have enjoyed reading some of this as separate stories, but because I found it so disjointed, running off on long tangets about different topics, I didn’t finish it. The writing and translation are good, although I had trouble with the names, which is my problem, not the author’s I hasten to say!
I admit to getting confused about whose story was whose and whether the author was speaking about himself or actually relating someone else’s story. This takes place in Taiwan, formerly Formosa, and having a bicycle was something a family saved for. It was also a status symbol and used for everything, work, freight, shopping, taking family to the doctor.
The narrator’s father left the family years ago and took the bicycle, so he gets a notion to track it down. When he thinks he has, he then considers tracing its history, maybe leading back to some explanation about his father’s disappearance.
“Maybe you can’t trace your way from a river back to the rain or reconstruct a house from a heap of rubble, but after seeing that bicycle I couldn’t help thinking that if it had a buyer, it must have had a seller. It must have had an owner, and a previous owner. This idea was like a tiny flame that flickered in the wind but did not go out.”
The characters he meets on his quest are interesting, and the descriptions of family life and relationships were very enjoyable. I also got some idea of what it must have been like coming out from under Japanese rule. Everything considered to be of quality, including bikes, is Japanese.
One of the main characters is Abbas, and we hear an amazing tale of his exploits with an old man called old Tsou, which is also the name of a region of Taiwan and also the name of a language. No wonder I got confused.
But there are so many lengthy, involved discussions about bicycle development and culture and others about butterflies and butterfly collage, that I started skimming. Some of these came from a long, peculiar email exchange with a woman. Then there were some older stories supposedly found and transcribed from old tapes that were recorded in a mix of languages.
All in all, it would be a treat for someone interested in Taiwan and the culture, and if they had a passion for old bikes, even better!
For me, it ended up as too much of a probably-good thing, but a Did Not Finish after reading about a third. I thank NetGalley and Text Publishing for providing a review copy from which I’ve quoted.
I admit to getting confused about whose story was whose and whether the author was speaking about himself or actually relating someone else’s story. This takes place in Taiwan, formerly Formosa, and having a bicycle was something a family saved for. It was also a status symbol and used for everything, work, freight, shopping, taking family to the doctor.
The narrator’s father left the family years ago and took the bicycle, so he gets a notion to track it down. When he thinks he has, he then considers tracing its history, maybe leading back to some explanation about his father’s disappearance.
“Maybe you can’t trace your way from a river back to the rain or reconstruct a house from a heap of rubble, but after seeing that bicycle I couldn’t help thinking that if it had a buyer, it must have had a seller. It must have had an owner, and a previous owner. This idea was like a tiny flame that flickered in the wind but did not go out.”
The characters he meets on his quest are interesting, and the descriptions of family life and relationships were very enjoyable. I also got some idea of what it must have been like coming out from under Japanese rule. Everything considered to be of quality, including bikes, is Japanese.
One of the main characters is Abbas, and we hear an amazing tale of his exploits with an old man called old Tsou, which is also the name of a region of Taiwan and also the name of a language. No wonder I got confused.
But there are so many lengthy, involved discussions about bicycle development and culture and others about butterflies and butterfly collage, that I started skimming. Some of these came from a long, peculiar email exchange with a woman. Then there were some older stories supposedly found and transcribed from old tapes that were recorded in a mix of languages.
All in all, it would be a treat for someone interested in Taiwan and the culture, and if they had a passion for old bikes, even better!
For me, it ended up as too much of a probably-good thing, but a Did Not Finish after reading about a third. I thank NetGalley and Text Publishing for providing a review copy from which I’ve quoted.
August 6, 2021
Tulajdonképpen ez is ugyanolyan izgalmas, okos kötet, mint A rovarszemű ember, ám nagyon más. Sokrétegű, szerteágazó, gyakorlatilag úgy szól mindenről, hogy konkrétan nem is szól semmiről. A vezérfonal egy eltűnt apának és vele veszett biciklijének a megtalálása lenne, de ha nem is megtalálása, legalább kiderítése annak, hogy tulajdonképpen mi is lett vele. Ezen az úton azonban annyi minden történik, annyira sok sors feslik fel menet közben, hogy az apáé voltaképpen eltörpül a történetben. Egymásra rétegződnek a történetek szendvics gyanánt, a töltelék azonban mindig a második világháború és annak európai szemmel nézve gyakorlatilag teljesen ismeretlen maláj-japán-kínai-brit harcai. Az összekötő elem emellett a bicikli. Biciklik vesznek el és kerülnek meg, harci verzióik gurulnak háborúba és rozsdáznak a dzsungelben, cserélnek gazdát és csücsülnek kávézóban vgy csak egyszerűen ottfelejtődnek valahol. Ismét hangsúlyosan jelen vannak az állatok a könyv második felében, az állat-ember kapcsolatok és kötődések erőteljesek. A szabadság elvesztése, a talajvesztettség, a kiszolgáltatottság, a traumák és azok feldolgozhatatlansága, a meg-nem-értettség, a sérülések elmondhatatlansága majd az, hogy mennyire fontos (lenne) mégis beszélni róluk és/vagy meghallgatni őket, attól függően, hogy a skála melyik végén helyezkedünk el, adja a könyv gerincét.
A konklúzió az, hogy a biciklik néha hazatalálnak, ám nem minden rejtély deríthető fel, s az is, hogy a szeretet soha el nem múlik, mindegy, hogy milyen formában botlasz bele és ki/mi a tárgya: gyönyörű elefánt vagy egy bicikli, fotózás vagy történetek, út vagy emberek, esetleg egy rettegő orángután.
A konklúzió az, hogy a biciklik néha hazatalálnak, ám nem minden rejtély deríthető fel, s az is, hogy a szeretet soha el nem múlik, mindegy, hogy milyen formában botlasz bele és ki/mi a tárgya: gyönyörű elefánt vagy egy bicikli, fotózás vagy történetek, út vagy emberek, esetleg egy rettegő orángután.
June 29, 2022
Hay quá. Đọc Wu Ming-Yi giống như đọc Haruki Murakami thời kỳ đầu. Cuốn này gợi nhớ tới Biên niên ký chim vặn dây cót nhưng ít yếu tố ảo hơn.
January 30, 2018
「人類有一天會知道，象和他們一樣理解黑夜、雨季、星象與傷心。當長老母象倒地時，其他的象完全停步，圍繞著牠。牠們用長鼻摩挲著彼此的背，發出不可思議的輕柔低哼聲。夜晚氣溫逆轉，較接近地面處形成較佳的傳音層，那低哼聲因此得以傳到遠方的山谷，而後又嗡嗡迴響回營地。那被放大的、多層次的音響讓一旁的士兵感到悽愴而溫暖，他們體會到了象的傷心，因此也為自己傷心起來。他們想起了遠方的情人與親族、死去的同僚、曾經握著陽具與槍的斷臂，以及不可能再長出來的眼珠。」
我跟朋友說，讀吳明益的小說，心要很靜。他問為什麼，我回答，因為他的書很安靜。安靜在，他是如此平白、寬宥地，寫了一部深情的、盪氣迴腸的巨構小說。我對於任何書寫家族史、部落族人、二戰、物事博物誌（這裡是台灣的腳踏車史和捕蝶通史）、庶民面貌、魔幻現實的小說都沒有任何抵抗力。族人的話語，他們對自然的尊崇與感通、森林的遺落的魂靈，與大象不能被其他人聽見的低鳴，都是迷人的故事，虛虛實實，重構再想像，一切源自他的家遺失的一輛幸福牌腳踏車。失去的腳踏車，走過的路，都滿佈泥濘與血。它們肩負的歷史，比我們要多。象也懂得悲傷。牠們和我們一樣，會抬頭看著高掛在夜空的銀輪之月，這樣活著。戰爭的傷，後真相時代的疏離，在吳明益的如夢囈般的喃喃中，溫柔得像一根針一樣，輕刺著。然後我不知不覺地，多多少少像瞭解了一點。吳明益的《單車失竊記》，感傷又浪漫，一部了不起的小說。
August 5, 2018
Here is a passage from toward the end of the book:
Here is another passage, from more toward the end of the book:
These two passages suggest the purpose of The Stolen Bicycle: to recapture, before it’s too late, the “grotesque, mournful, scandalous past,” which has already been erased from view but which yet lingers in memory. Using the protagonist’s father’s lost and found bicycle as a device, Wu Ming-yi embarks on an odyssey through a hundred years of Taiwanese history. His footsteps take us through the provinces of culture, including material culture, language, psychology, and family. The subtle implication of his narrative is that Taiwan is no mere subset of China but is a unique mélange of aboriginal, Fujianese, Japanese, postwar Chinese, and Western influences.
Despite the overarching melancholic nostalgia, the tone of The Stolen Bicycle is actually rather positive. Absent is the entitled, cosmic angst of Western literature, and the element of conflict is likewise missing. Instead, Wu’s narrator copes with bleak reality by cultivating private enthusiasms such as antique collecting and bicycle restoration. Often this sort of occupation leads to comaraderie (say, with fellow junk collectors), creating a sense of fellow travelers if not intimate friendship. Obviously, the attention given to junk collecting in the story points to the larger task of the writer, as he forages through Taiwan’s past; but the feeling of wandering souls coming together stands in contrast to the strife for its own sake that one often finds in Western novels. (I wonder if some generalizations along these lines might be food for thought.) The passage describing a somewhat paranormal scuba dive in the basement of an old building made it especially difficult not to think of Haruki Murakami. Perhaps Wu’s Taiwan, like Murakami’s Japan, is an outwardly peaceful but historically troubled land, compelling its literary types to become detectives of the past, as a sort of therapy.
I have made a study of Taiwanese literature in recent months and can report that The Stolen Bicycle may be the most accessible recent work to have been translated into English and therefore the most pleasant to read. Many other recent Taiwanese books have been written using experimental methods, like stream of consciousness. The Stolen Bicycle, by contrast, follows a straightforward first person narration, and it is, again, a lot like a detective story. I previewed this book in electronic form, which I don’t generally enjoy, but I found it nearly impossible to stop reading, even on a computer screen. It is jarring, about two-thirds of the way through, when the narrative device switches briefly from bicycles to elephants; but that is a minor complaint. The Stolen Bicycle is a fascinating book about a very special place.
I rode around [Taipei] but felt I didn’t know her anymore. She keeps on getting renewed, over and over again, as if in a rush to shed some sort of shell, the grotesque, mournful, scandalous past. With each renewal, so many things that shine with an incredible radiance in many people’s memories disappear. I felt a bit sorry and lonely. ‘Yes, this is gone, and that too!’ I could say that on practically every street. (p. 334)
Here is another passage, from more toward the end of the book:
I rode circles around the city, ring upon ring. As the slowest vehicle on the road, I was able to appreciate scenes the others left behind. (p. 359)
These two passages suggest the purpose of The Stolen Bicycle: to recapture, before it’s too late, the “grotesque, mournful, scandalous past,” which has already been erased from view but which yet lingers in memory. Using the protagonist’s father’s lost and found bicycle as a device, Wu Ming-yi embarks on an odyssey through a hundred years of Taiwanese history. His footsteps take us through the provinces of culture, including material culture, language, psychology, and family. The subtle implication of his narrative is that Taiwan is no mere subset of China but is a unique mélange of aboriginal, Fujianese, Japanese, postwar Chinese, and Western influences.
Despite the overarching melancholic nostalgia, the tone of The Stolen Bicycle is actually rather positive. Absent is the entitled, cosmic angst of Western literature, and the element of conflict is likewise missing. Instead, Wu’s narrator copes with bleak reality by cultivating private enthusiasms such as antique collecting and bicycle restoration. Often this sort of occupation leads to comaraderie (say, with fellow junk collectors), creating a sense of fellow travelers if not intimate friendship. Obviously, the attention given to junk collecting in the story points to the larger task of the writer, as he forages through Taiwan’s past; but the feeling of wandering souls coming together stands in contrast to the strife for its own sake that one often finds in Western novels. (I wonder if some generalizations along these lines might be food for thought.) The passage describing a somewhat paranormal scuba dive in the basement of an old building made it especially difficult not to think of Haruki Murakami. Perhaps Wu’s Taiwan, like Murakami’s Japan, is an outwardly peaceful but historically troubled land, compelling its literary types to become detectives of the past, as a sort of therapy.
I have made a study of Taiwanese literature in recent months and can report that The Stolen Bicycle may be the most accessible recent work to have been translated into English and therefore the most pleasant to read. Many other recent Taiwanese books have been written using experimental methods, like stream of consciousness. The Stolen Bicycle, by contrast, follows a straightforward first person narration, and it is, again, a lot like a detective story. I previewed this book in electronic form, which I don’t generally enjoy, but I found it nearly impossible to stop reading, even on a computer screen. It is jarring, about two-thirds of the way through, when the narrative device switches briefly from bicycles to elephants; but that is a minor complaint. The Stolen Bicycle is a fascinating book about a very special place.
October 30, 2021
Дивна книга. Вона мала шанс бути класною, із сюжетом пошука батька крізь історію загублених велосипедів, історичний екскурс Тайваню та історію становлення головного героя. І всі частини опису його життя, сім’ї, страхів, захоплення велосипедами + короткі детальні нотатки про велосипеди розпорошені книгою + ідеальна кільцьова історія про маму яка врятувалась від японського бомбардування завдяки роверу, з якої починається книга, і якою закінчується книга коли мати в лікарні побіля дітей (і виявляється історія таки і про маму теж і не тільки про батька який зник без вісти зі своїм ровером). АЛЕ. Але, книга рушиться, структура вмирає, через затяглість епізодів, мільйони вставок про якісь лєві речі типу зоопарків, слонів, війну, які дуже не органічно вливаються і нагадували мені постійно скетч Фрая і Лорі, де Лорі час від часу говорить в камеру «ну а тепер ми говоримо про мови» «ну а тепер ми говоримо п��о ...» і так до безкінечності. І дуже жаль, бо роман міг бути першокласним, але я не можу його радити, хіба ви повернуті на велосипедах або сучасній історії Азії.
April 22, 2018
Part of this book were charming (including the lovely illustrations of vintage bicycles) and parts were very interesting. However, I'm not entirely sure it all held together as an actual story, although I have enjoyed learning more about Taiwan's history and about old bicycles and butterfly collages and a myriad of other things!
March 6, 2021
เล่มนี้เหมือนอ่านสารคดีโศกนาฏกรรมสงครามและเส้นทางการตามหาจักรยานที่หายไป
เป็นเล่มที่อ่านได้ช้า เริ่มแรกต้องปรับตัวกับวิธีเล่าเรื่อง หลังจากนั้นต้องค่อยๆ อ่านอย่างละเมียดละไม ซึมซับความรู้สึกและบรรยากาศที่ผุดขึ้นมา มีช่วงที่เราไม่ชอบบ้างตรงรายละเอียดจักรยาน มากเกินไปหน่อย สำหรับคนที่ไม่ได้สนใจ
การออกตามหาจักรยานและพ่อที่หายไป พา ‘ผม’ ไปพบเจอกับเรื่องราวต่างๆมากมาย ย้อนอดีตไปตั้งแต่สงครามโลกครั้งที่สองสมัยไต้หวันยังเป็นเมืองขึ้นของญี่ปุ่น หลายคนมีความทรงจำกับม้าเหล็กคู่ใจควบคู่ไปกับความทุกข์ยากของสงคราม
เมื่อได้ผ่านสงคราม เสียงปืน ระเบิด ความอดอยาก การพลัดพราก ผู้คนเหล่านั้นไม่สามารถกลับเป็นคนเดิมได้อีก บางคนจิตใจกลับผูกติดกับสงครามจนไม่อาจดำเนินชีวิตต่อได้
มีเพียงม้าเหล็กเท่านั้นที่ยังคงอยู่ ส่งต่อความทรงจำรุ่นสู่รุ่น ม้าเหล็กเป็นสะพานเชื่อมให้ครอบครัวและผู้คนต่อติดกันได้ท่ามกลางความอ้างว้างมากมาย
สุดท้าย “จักรยานที่หายไปยังตามหากลับมาได้ แต่ตัวตนที่สูญหายไป ไปแล้วไม่หวนคืน”
เป็นเล่มที่อ่านได้ช้า เริ่มแรกต้องปรับตัวกับวิธีเล่าเรื่อง หลังจากนั้นต้องค่อยๆ อ่านอย่างละเมียดละไม ซึมซับความรู้สึกและบรรยากาศที่ผุดขึ้นมา มีช่วงที่เราไม่ชอบบ้างตรงรายละเอียดจักรยาน มากเกินไปหน่อย สำหรับคนที่ไม่ได้สนใจ
การออกตามหาจักรยานและพ่อที่หายไป พา ‘ผม’ ไปพบเจอกับเรื่องราวต่างๆมากมาย ย้อนอดีตไปตั้งแต่สงครามโลกครั้งที่สองสมัยไต้หวันยังเป็นเมืองขึ้นของญี่ปุ่น หลายคนมีความทรงจำกับม้าเหล็กคู่ใจควบคู่ไปกับความทุกข์ยากของสงคราม
เมื่อได้ผ่านสงคราม เสียงปืน ระเบิด ความอดอยาก การพลัดพราก ผู้คนเหล่านั้นไม่สามารถกลับเป็นคนเดิมได้อีก บางคนจิตใจกลับผูกติดกับสงครามจนไม่อาจดำเนินชีวิตต่อได้
มีเพียงม้าเหล็กเท่านั้นที่ยังคงอยู่ ส่งต่อความทรงจำรุ่นสู่รุ่น ม้าเหล็กเป็นสะพานเชื่อมให้ครอบครัวและผู้คนต่อติดกันได้ท่ามกลางความอ้างว้างมากมาย
สุดท้าย “จักรยานที่หายไปยังตามหากลับมาได้ แต่ตัวตนที่สูญหายไป ไปแล้วไม่หวนคืน”
April 4, 2018
The narrator is the second son of a family, who desperately wanted a boy and finally had one after 5 girls. When the first son was born, the father decided there were too many girls, and almost adopted one out to a family member, events that lead up to the theft of his first bike.
But the bike that would send the narrator off on a mission to follow all leads and meet all kinds of people and discover many aspects of his own culture and some of the history, in trying track it down, was the 'Lucky' branded bike that disappeared along with its rider, his father.
Each new encounter takes us on a new journey, as that person reveals something of their past and their knowledge of these 'iron horses', in fact much of the book is written as Bike Notes 1, Bike Notes II complete with illustrations of the different bicycles, including the famous Japanese war bike, the 'Silverwheel' and the notorious 'Silverwheel Squad'.
In this way, the story meanders and diverges and then hooks into a subject and follows it a long way down its tributary, only to return and take another turn, meet another collector, owner, person who knows or might have known the owner, whom the narrator will meet and unfold their story before being revealed the connection with the bike he wishes to ascertain might have belonged to his father.
In the beginning these diversions are interesting and promising and somewhat intriguing, they are also historically interesting as they reveal something of the life and influences of the era in which they occurred, especially around the time of the war, but seeing it from the perspective of Taiwan and Japan, especially as war involved bicycle strategy and elephants, and we learn something about the work habits of a woman creating butterfly handicrafts.
However, I became somewhat fatigued by the never-ending meandering, the prolonged encounters and diversions, to the point where I began to lose interest, despite avidly not wishing to. That could have been due to the length of the book, or perhaps that it is indeed a book of obsession, not quite to the same degree as Orhan Pamuk's The Museum of Innocence, but with something of a similar feel, in the way the reader is pulled along on the journey.
It's clear that the author very much enjoyed putting this novel together, so much so he shares some of his writing philosophy at the end of the book, and I find myself somewhat forgiving him for having drawn out his story so, although I also see how he lost some readers along the way.
And his final words, appreciated all the more having made it to the end.
With an extra mouth to feed, the family could barely scrape a living, and my father, who now had the son he'd always wanted, decided that five girls in the house was one too many, one more than had been allotted by fate.
But the bike that would send the narrator off on a mission to follow all leads and meet all kinds of people and discover many aspects of his own culture and some of the history, in trying track it down, was the 'Lucky' branded bike that disappeared along with its rider, his father.
And that was how it started: my obsession with antique bicycles flowed from my missing father.
Each new encounter takes us on a new journey, as that person reveals something of their past and their knowledge of these 'iron horses', in fact much of the book is written as Bike Notes 1, Bike Notes II complete with illustrations of the different bicycles, including the famous Japanese war bike, the 'Silverwheel' and the notorious 'Silverwheel Squad'.
The worst headache was the Silverwheel Squad. The Silverwheels traced the upper reaches of rivers and rode down into the jungle to launch one surprise attack after another.
In this way, the story meanders and diverges and then hooks into a subject and follows it a long way down its tributary, only to return and take another turn, meet another collector, owner, person who knows or might have known the owner, whom the narrator will meet and unfold their story before being revealed the connection with the bike he wishes to ascertain might have belonged to his father.
In the beginning these diversions are interesting and promising and somewhat intriguing, they are also historically interesting as they reveal something of the life and influences of the era in which they occurred, especially around the time of the war, but seeing it from the perspective of Taiwan and Japan, especially as war involved bicycle strategy and elephants, and we learn something about the work habits of a woman creating butterfly handicrafts.
However, I became somewhat fatigued by the never-ending meandering, the prolonged encounters and diversions, to the point where I began to lose interest, despite avidly not wishing to. That could have been due to the length of the book, or perhaps that it is indeed a book of obsession, not quite to the same degree as Orhan Pamuk's The Museum of Innocence, but with something of a similar feel, in the way the reader is pulled along on the journey.
It's clear that the author very much enjoyed putting this novel together, so much so he shares some of his writing philosophy at the end of the book, and I find myself somewhat forgiving him for having drawn out his story so, although I also see how he lost some readers along the way.
For some, life experiences drive the writing process. But for me writing novels is a way of getting to know, and of thinking about, human existence. I'm just a regular guy who has, through writing, come to understand things I couldn't have before, concerning human nature and emotion. I write because I don't see the world clearly. I write out of my own unease and ignorance. The ancient Greek historian Polybius put it thus: 'The most instructive thing is remembering other people's calamities. To stoically accept the vagaries of fate, this is the only way.' I write novels to know how to stoically accept the vagaries of fate.
And his final words, appreciated all the more having made it to the end.
The only necessity is to keep pedalling - quietly, composedly, no matter how thirsty you are or how difficult it may be.
December 18, 2023
4.25
Một lần nữa Wu Ming-Yi lại cho mình thấy như tác phẩm 天橋上的魔術師 của ông ấy mình đã đọc trước đó, khác với tác phẩm trước, Chiếc Xe Đạp Mất Cắp không chỉ là câu chuyện nhiều cảm xúc về vận mệnh, mà còn là câu chuyện mang tính dòng chảy lịch sử, vạn vật và thiên nhiên mà tác giả đã bỏ công sức tìm tòi và viết nên nó.
Chiếc Xe Đạp Mất Cắp là câu chuyện trải dài 20 năm trên hành trình của nhân vật chính - anh Trình, trong việc tìm kiếm "chiếc xe đạp mất cắp" thứ đã biến mất cùng người cha của anh ta. Với niềm tin chỉ cần tìm thấy chiếc xe đạp thì đồng nghĩa có thể biết những nơi mà cha đã đi qua.
Trong cuốn sách này Wu Ming-Yi nhiều lần nhắc đến khu thương mại (cũng là nơi ông ấy sinh ra và lớn lên) từng là chủ đề trong tác phẩm 天橋上的魔術師, điều nhắc mình rằng tác giả có sự thương nhớ dành cho vạn vật khi thời gian cứ trôi dần. Lịch sử Đài Loan, Chiến tranh thế giới lần hai, lịch sử phát triển xe đạp Đài Loan, ngành nghề thủ công mỹ nghệ bươm bướm v.v... được tác giả tìm hiểu và viết rất đầy tâm huyết. Chỉ với quá trình phát triển xe đạp cũng khiến mình ngưỡng mộ những kiến thức mà tác giả đã tìm hiểu.
Hành trinh của nhân vật chính là một bánh xe vận mệnh, không chỉ với "ngựa sắt" mà những món đồ cổ xưa, vạn vật như voi, khỉ v.v... đưa anh ta đến với những con người giống nhau đến kỳ lạ, họ được gắn kết như được định sẵn từ lâu. Chỉ nhìn thì chưa chắc đã đủ và hiểu, những câu chuyện, ký ức nâng tầm mọi giác quan được miêu tả đẹp, nó chất chứa sự luyến tiếc và thương cảm cho mọi thứ bị lấy đi bởi thời gian. Rất nhiều thứ và con người trong Chiếc Xe Đạp Mất Cắp đã biến mất, nhưng có những con người nào đó vẫn sẽ luôn nhớ, tìm kiếm và giao lại những thứ quan trọng cho những ai muốn biết, gìn giữ chúng.
Nhưng thế giới này chính là vậy đấy, đôi khi có những điều đẹp đẽ hơn hẳn những điều khác mà vẫn cứ bị những điều khác thay thế.
Một lần nữa Wu Ming-Yi lại cho mình thấy như tác phẩm 天橋上的魔術師 của ông ấy mình đã đọc trước đó, khác với tác phẩm trước, Chiếc Xe Đạp Mất Cắp không chỉ là câu chuyện nhiều cảm xúc về vận mệnh, mà còn là câu chuyện mang tính dòng chảy lịch sử, vạn vật và thiên nhiên mà tác giả đã bỏ công sức tìm tòi và viết nên nó.
Tôi viết cuốn tiểu thuyết này không bắt nguồn từ nỗi niềm thương cảm hoài cổ, mà xuất phát từ sự tôn trọng dành cho thời đại tôi chưa từng trải qua, và tấm lòng dành cho những trải nghiệm không thể lặp lại trong cuộc đời. Thông qua câu chuyện bắt đầu từ việc tìm xe đạp, vô tình bước vào dòng chảy của một quãng thời gian nào đó này, tôi hy vọng người đọc và nhân vật trong sách có thể cảm nhận được tình cảm, nhịp độ khi nhấn bàn đạp, mùi mồ hôi và hơi thở hổn hển, nỗi đau rơi nước mắt và không rơi nước mắt của nhau.
Chiếc Xe Đạp Mất Cắp là câu chuyện trải dài 20 năm trên hành trình của nhân vật chính - anh Trình, trong việc tìm kiếm "chiếc xe đạp mất cắp" thứ đã biến mất cùng người cha của anh ta. Với niềm tin chỉ cần tìm thấy chiếc xe đạp thì đồng nghĩa có thể biết những nơi mà cha đã đi qua.
tôi vẫn luôn muốn tìm lại chiếc xe đạp ấy, nhưng nó nhất định đã bị lấy mất hoặc bị dọn đi từ rất lâu rồi. Tôi muốn tới khu kinh doanh tìm các bác các cô mở hiệu đặc sản, nhưng khu kinh doanh cũng đã bị dỡ bỏ. Chuyện lúc nào cũng vậy, khi đồ vật vẫn còn bên mình, người ta sẽ không thấy nó có ý nghĩa gì lớn. Nhưng hễ nó mất đi, người ta lại thấy như cơ thể mình thiếu mất gì đó, trở nên hụt hẫng trống trải.
Trong cuốn sách này Wu Ming-Yi nhiều lần nhắc đến khu thương mại (cũng là nơi ông ấy sinh ra và lớn lên) từng là chủ đề trong tác phẩm 天橋上的魔術師, điều nhắc mình rằng tác giả có sự thương nhớ dành cho vạn vật khi thời gian cứ trôi dần. Lịch sử Đài Loan, Chiến tranh thế giới lần hai, lịch sử phát triển xe đạp Đài Loan, ngành nghề thủ công mỹ nghệ bươm bướm v.v... được tác giả tìm hiểu và viết rất đầy tâm huyết. Chỉ với quá trình phát triển xe đạp cũng khiến mình ngưỡng mộ những kiến thức mà tác giả đã tìm hiểu.
Tôi vòng vèo trong thành phố, cảm giác mình dường như không còn nhận ra nó nữa. Nó đổi mới rồi tiếp tục đổi mới, như thể gấp gáp trút bỏ xác thịt nào đó, những quá khứ đau thương, quái gở, chẳng lấy gì làm vẻ vang. Thành phố sau khi đổi mới, những thứ từng tỏa hào quang kỳ lạ trong ký ức biết bao người, đã không biết biến đi đằng nào. Tôi cảm thấy có phần hối tiếc, có phần trống vắng, “Ừm, cái đó và cái đó đã biến mất rồi”, câu này dường như có thể thốt lên ở bất cứ con đường nào.
Hành trinh của nhân vật chính là một bánh xe vận mệnh, không chỉ với "ngựa sắt" mà những món đồ cổ xưa, vạn vật như voi, khỉ v.v... đưa anh ta đến với những con người giống nhau đến kỳ lạ, họ được gắn kết như được định sẵn từ lâu. Chỉ nhìn thì chưa chắc đã đủ và hiểu, những câu chuyện, ký ức nâng tầm mọi giác quan được miêu tả đẹp, nó chất chứa sự luyến tiếc và thương cảm cho mọi thứ bị lấy đi bởi thời gian. Rất nhiều thứ và con người trong Chiếc Xe Đạp Mất Cắp đã biến mất, nhưng có những con người nào đó vẫn sẽ luôn nhớ, tìm kiếm và giao lại những thứ quan trọng cho những ai muốn biết, gìn giữ chúng.
January 22, 2018
This is an unusual, but fascinating story - a mix of fact and fiction beautifully woven together by the author as the search for his father, who disappeared 20 years ago, through the medium of the bicycle his father disappeared on. He thinks that if he can track down the bicycle, he might be able to find out why his father upped and left the family so long ago.
What follows is a highly detailed book describing the family, their upbringing and the importance of the humble bicycle 'the iron horse' to many families - how it helped in day to day life, the use of bikes during the war and the connection people attached to such items.
The author uses so many engrossing layers to his story, through people he meets on his search and how the stories they told showed connections to bikes and their own journeys. It looks back at life during wars, the power of photography, the importance of elephants to name a few - and my favourite being a focus on the Karen tribe! A lot of stories could have felt very 'wordy' or overdone with so many topics introduced throughout, but as this is such a gentle book the story never feels bogged down and flows beautifully.
It's a story of overcoming loss, of how we attach great importance to simple objects and looks back at some shocking childhood memories and how the quest in searching for his father allows him to start questioning so much he encounters and allows him to learn and fill that void that is missing.
It is no surprise to see how central the use of bicycles were and are to so many, especially in this part of the world and I loved reading the touching stories from the surrounding characters who would open up to him when he tried to trace a certain bike and showed the importance of connecting with people one on one to hear the stories which would have otherwise gone untold.
Definitely something a little out of the ordinary and a truly captivating story that I'm very glad to have read.
thank you to netgalley and the publishers for the e-copy in return for a fair and honest review.
What follows is a highly detailed book describing the family, their upbringing and the importance of the humble bicycle 'the iron horse' to many families - how it helped in day to day life, the use of bikes during the war and the connection people attached to such items.
The author uses so many engrossing layers to his story, through people he meets on his search and how the stories they told showed connections to bikes and their own journeys. It looks back at life during wars, the power of photography, the importance of elephants to name a few - and my favourite being a focus on the Karen tribe! A lot of stories could have felt very 'wordy' or overdone with so many topics introduced throughout, but as this is such a gentle book the story never feels bogged down and flows beautifully.
It's a story of overcoming loss, of how we attach great importance to simple objects and looks back at some shocking childhood memories and how the quest in searching for his father allows him to start questioning so much he encounters and allows him to learn and fill that void that is missing.
It is no surprise to see how central the use of bicycles were and are to so many, especially in this part of the world and I loved reading the touching stories from the surrounding characters who would open up to him when he tried to trace a certain bike and showed the importance of connecting with people one on one to hear the stories which would have otherwise gone untold.
Definitely something a little out of the ordinary and a truly captivating story that I'm very glad to have read.
thank you to netgalley and the publishers for the e-copy in return for a fair and honest review.
May 24, 2018
‘This is a very strange novel, and a very beautiful one…Over and above all else, this book is poetic.’
Taipei Times
‘The authors uses conversation, flashbacks of memory, war diaries, memoir and voice recordings to create a network of literary tributaries in bringing together this ambitious, far-reaching narrative that touches so many unique aspects of Taiwan’s history, culture, development and influences.’
Word by Word
‘Unusual insights and vividly observed detail abound in this witty and sensitive story.’
Toowoomba Chronicle
‘A work of astonishing energy, in which Wu beautifully touches on loss, life and death, fate and destiny, establishing emotional connections between memory and objects, and between the natural world and war...a novel that provides comfort and reconciliation from a wounded past.’
Thinking Taiwan
‘The novel, inspired by his love for bicycles and Taiwanese history, brings readers back to a simpler time when life moved more slowly and people spent more time face-to-face with friends and neighbors. Riding a bike allowed people to appreciate and digest the details of the world around them.’
Taipei Times
‘A profoundly moving novel, such is the power of words and depth of feeling by Taiwanese author Wu Ming-Yi…He turns events into linguistic gold with his poetic, dreamlike language.’
Good Reading
‘A visionary ride through flame-scorched lands and machine-clutching trees and metamorphoses into metal and earth…“World is crazier and more of it than we think,/Incorrigibly plural”, Louis MacNeice wrote…Multiply that by 10 or so and you get some sense of Wu’s astonishing, often-affecting kaleidoscope.’
NZ Listener
Taipei Times
‘The authors uses conversation, flashbacks of memory, war diaries, memoir and voice recordings to create a network of literary tributaries in bringing together this ambitious, far-reaching narrative that touches so many unique aspects of Taiwan’s history, culture, development and influences.’
Word by Word
‘Unusual insights and vividly observed detail abound in this witty and sensitive story.’
Toowoomba Chronicle
‘A work of astonishing energy, in which Wu beautifully touches on loss, life and death, fate and destiny, establishing emotional connections between memory and objects, and between the natural world and war...a novel that provides comfort and reconciliation from a wounded past.’
Thinking Taiwan
‘The novel, inspired by his love for bicycles and Taiwanese history, brings readers back to a simpler time when life moved more slowly and people spent more time face-to-face with friends and neighbors. Riding a bike allowed people to appreciate and digest the details of the world around them.’
Taipei Times
‘A profoundly moving novel, such is the power of words and depth of feeling by Taiwanese author Wu Ming-Yi…He turns events into linguistic gold with his poetic, dreamlike language.’
Good Reading
‘A visionary ride through flame-scorched lands and machine-clutching trees and metamorphoses into metal and earth…“World is crazier and more of it than we think,/Incorrigibly plural”, Louis MacNeice wrote…Multiply that by 10 or so and you get some sense of Wu’s astonishing, often-affecting kaleidoscope.’
NZ Listener
September 6, 2020
Câu chuyện bắt đầu từ việc đi tìm lại chiếc xe đạp của người Cha đã mất tích 20 năm. Tác giả được dẫn dắt đi ngược dòng chảy thời gian, về lại một thời đại mà "bạn không thể nào yêu thương một người cho đủ, tiếc thương một người cho đủ." Đây có thể nói là một tiểu thuyết lịch sử, với chủ nghĩa hiện thực sắc nét được truyện lồng truyện song song với những yếu tố kỷ ảo; có lẽ vì thế mà nhiều hơn một lần người đọc không phân biệt được đâu là đời đâu là mơ. Đây là tác phẩm đầu tiên mình đọc của một nhà văn Đài Loan, có thể nói tâm hồn khẽ chạm bởi nhiều đồng điệu, từ chủ nghĩa duy lịch sử, lòng tôn trọng thời gian, và hơn cả là một trái tim sống với hoài niệm thương cảm. Có lẽ câu chuyện nào của thời đại ta chưa từng trải qua đều mang lại một nỗi buồn bàng bạc không lý giải nổi như thế?
Một điểm cộng của tiểu thuyết này chính là tác giả có vẻ rất tôn trọng thiên chức của mình, dành rất nhiều tâm huyết khảo cứu. Độc giả vì thế cũng may mắn lĩnh hội thêm được vô vàn kiến thức, từ lịch sử, chính trị, đời sống văn hóa lẫn mạch ngầm tình cảm của hòn đảo từng một thời day dứt nỗi đau chiến tranh. Bản dịch cũng rất uyển chuyển; văn vì thếdẫu dài vẫn cảm thấy thân thuộc.
Một điểm cộng của tiểu thuyết này chính là tác giả có vẻ rất tôn trọng thiên chức của mình, dành rất nhiều tâm huyết khảo cứu. Độc giả vì thế cũng may mắn lĩnh hội thêm được vô vàn kiến thức, từ lịch sử, chính trị, đời sống văn hóa lẫn mạch ngầm tình cảm của hòn đảo từng một thời day dứt nỗi đau chiến tranh. Bản dịch cũng rất uyển chuyển; văn vì thếdẫu dài vẫn cảm thấy thân thuộc.
December 12, 2021
Як не крути (педалі), ровер не може вповні об*єднати всі історії Південно-Східної Азії, розказані у цій книжці. Я, як людина яка не надто сильно цікавиться велосипедами, не прогледів у цьому романі якоїсь суцільної велосипедної концептуальності, особливо в тих частинах твору, де розповідалось про долі тяглових слонів у Другій Світовій війні. Проте я дуже радий що ця книжка з*явилась в українському перекладі. Таких свіжих вливань у сучасну культуру я дуже потребую.
July 13, 2024
Мені завжди цікаво читати книги авторів з якихось умовно екзотичних (в розумінні українця) країн. Тому побачивши книгу тайванського автора я одразу зацікавився. Тим більше ще й про ровери тут.
По факту книга і справді непогана, але дуже сумбурна. Автор напхав сюди дуже багато тем, які в рамках саме роману між собою взаємодіють так собі, а більше скоріш виглядають як набір коротеньких оповідань, пов'язаних спільною темою. Втім, мені дуже сподобались окремі частини. Також тут є дуже трагічна глава про слонів - оце прям важко було читати. Багато військової рефлексії й саме військової історії Тайваню.
Одним словом - дуже непогано і мабуть, треба почитати у Ву Мін'ї щось ще, є там якась відома антиутопія в нього.
По факту книга і справді непогана, але дуже сумбурна. Автор напхав сюди дуже багато тем, які в рамках саме роману між собою взаємодіють так собі, а більше скоріш виглядають як набір коротеньких оповідань, пов'язаних спільною темою. Втім, мені дуже сподобались окремі частини. Також тут є дуже трагічна глава про слонів - оце прям важко було читати. Багато військової рефлексії й саме військової історії Тайваню.
Одним словом - дуже непогано і мабуть, треба почитати у Ву Мін'ї щось ще, є там якась відома антиутопія в нього.
January 18, 2020
For Wu Ming-Yi, we are each other's consequences
A story built upon the stories of its characters, we are transported back-and-forth from the present day to decades past, to generations past, as well as across and around the South China Sea. What starts out as the narrator's search for his father's bicycle becomes a weave of the different milieus who made Taipei, and Taiwan, what it is today.
Wu Ming-yi meditates on language, loss, memory - how individuals give meaning to otherwise discarded objects, and how these meanings ultimately create an invisible but nonetheless palpable community. The everyday, the mundane isn't, wasn't, and won't be always so.
Each character speaks with their own voice, unique to the communities and eras they belonged to, as the imagery is at turns surreal, the overall effect of the prose is like a song where you appreciate the bass notes because of the tenor notes in a previous measure. The themes that emerge tend towards the mystical: the interconnection of individual lives and doing things with an intentionality and attention to detail that border on the spiritual.
If this is your kind of book, you'll be disappointed at how soon the story comes to an end.
A final note:
I don't speak Mandarin, Taiwanese, nor Japanese, so I can't have much of a say on how it is as a translation. But I did note some minor English errors which don't derail from the reading experience as a whole.
A story built upon the stories of its characters, we are transported back-and-forth from the present day to decades past, to generations past, as well as across and around the South China Sea. What starts out as the narrator's search for his father's bicycle becomes a weave of the different milieus who made Taipei, and Taiwan, what it is today.
Wu Ming-yi meditates on language, loss, memory - how individuals give meaning to otherwise discarded objects, and how these meanings ultimately create an invisible but nonetheless palpable community. The everyday, the mundane isn't, wasn't, and won't be always so.
Each character speaks with their own voice, unique to the communities and eras they belonged to, as the imagery is at turns surreal, the overall effect of the prose is like a song where you appreciate the bass notes because of the tenor notes in a previous measure. The themes that emerge tend towards the mystical: the interconnection of individual lives and doing things with an intentionality and attention to detail that border on the spiritual.
If this is your kind of book, you'll be disappointed at how soon the story comes to an end.
A final note:
I don't speak Mandarin, Taiwanese, nor Japanese, so I can't have much of a say on how it is as a translation. But I did note some minor English errors which don't derail from the reading experience as a whole.
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