In 1941, in Moscow, Sun Yomei, a bright student at the Russian Institute of Theatre Arts, confessed to her girlfriend Lily, after turning down a marriage proposal from Lin Biao, who was regarded as the most capable general of the Chinese Communist Party, that she only loved art and wanted to be an artist and that “as a woman, I wanted to live a life in pursuit of beauty”.
Twenty-five years later, in the throes of the Cultural Revolution, Sun, now the eminent artistic director of the Central Experimental Theatre in Beijing, appended her pronouncement before eventually being incarcerated and murdered following a covert order from Yeh Qun, Lin Biao’s wife. Sun reaffirmed that nobody could destroy beauty because “beauty is truth and truth is beauty”.
In The Woman Back from Moscow, Ha Jin’s tenth novel, the Chinese-American writer sets out to uncover the truth. Following the phenomenal journey of Sun Yomei (aka Sun Weishi), the adopted daughter of China’s first premier Zhou Enlai, Ha resurrects effaced stories and recounts the early history of the Chinese Communist Party and China from a central yet lesser-known vantage point.
At a brisk and zestful pace, the novel traverses spectacular landscapes and monumental events, spanning from 1930s Yan’an to 1940s Moscow, from Gorky City to Ufa, Harbin and Beijing. It is also studded with prominent names such as those of Zhu Deh, Liu Shaoqi and Mao Zedong – the most powerful men of the time, whose ambition and compulsion not only dominate the pages but also dictated the lives of those around them, especially the women, some of whom, injured in battle and depleted by childbirth and miscarriages, ended up being confined in mental asylums and deemed “odd”, “crazed” and “dangerous”.
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The heroine, on the other hand, seemed to be able to break free from the patriarchy and take hold of her own destiny. In Yan’an, when Sun’s appeal to embark with Zhou Enlai on an aircraft to Moscow was rejected by him, instead of giving in, she leapt on a bay horse, dashed to Chairman Mao’s residence, and eventually returned with the great leader’s approval when “the plane’s propellers were already spinning” – procuring for herself, among the children of communist leaders, the opportunity to study in Russia.
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The most evocative and arresting chapters take place in Moscow, where Sun formed her lifelong sisterhood with Lily. When German air attacks forced the powerful Chinese men to retreat behind the red curtains of Yan’an, Sun and Lily were left on their own to seek refuge in various cities in western Russia before returning to Moscow in 1942, composed and adept, ready to take centre stage. Having earned the role of Masha in Three Sisters by Chekhov and triumphed as the only Chinese actor in the cast, Sun jotted down in elation: “Love and passion – the essence of life.” Later, following the counsel of her teacher Gorchakov, she resolved to be a director, someone who could not only illuminate a stage but “bring new light to the field”.
Having graduated as an accomplished student, Sun returned to China in 1946, eager to start her career as a spoken drama director and to propagate the Stanislavski method in China’s theatre. To her perturbation, upon arrival at her first stop in China, Harbin, she encountered Lin Biao, the chief commander of the Communist Northeast Military, who, although now married to Yeh Qun, was still obsessed with the beauteous red princess back from Moscow.
The narrative is interspersed, now and again, with anecdotes and orations of Communist leaders
Later, when she accompanied Chairman Mao as his interpreter to attend Stalin’s 75th birthday celebration, Sun found herself in a greater calamity. Her homecoming resulted in the baleful return of influential men in her life and she had to assiduously negotiate her way through their sinister and megalomaniacal agendas, keeping her head down and biting her tongue while being used, subjugated, slandered, humiliated, betrayed and raped.
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Nevertheless, Sun Yomei strived against tumultuous times and prevailed as the first female director of modern spoken drama in Chinese history. Evidently, her talent and achievements incentivised Ha Jin to crown her as the protagonist of his 700-page historical saga, aspiring to delineate the ascent and demise of a woman in the red era.
However, the novelist’s chronicling of Sun is often hurried and superficial, lacking immersive complexity and emotional depth. The narrative is interspersed, now and again, with anecdotes and orations of communist leaders, as if, even posthumously, the titular heroine must still give way to the formidable men of her time.
Or perhaps what Ha Jin and his omniscient narrator have felicitously done is the authentic representation of a woman, who, despite her genius and ardour, could only reside on the periphery in a male-dominated world.
