My Life As Emperor International Edition [Paperback]

Along with Mo Yan and Gao Xingjian, Su Tong is widely regarded as one of mainland China's premier novelists, and with good reason. MY LIFE AS EMPEROR, the third of Su Tong's works to be published in English (after RAISE THE RED LANTERN and RICE), tells a brilliant and compelling tale of fate, decay and decadence, and palace intrigue fueled by the whims of a fourteen-year-old and his manipulating grandmother, a figure strongly reminiscent of China's famous Qing Dynasty dragon empress, Cixi. Yet within this bleak context of impending doom, the author gives us a phoenix tale, the story of an unlikely rebirth into a life of peace and contemplation.

MY LIFE AS EMPEROR is set in an unknown place at an indistinct time, although the author closes by locating the renamed imperial capitol as Changzhou in Jiangsu Province, not far from his own Suzhou birthplace. At the death of his Emperor father, fourteen-year-old Duanbai - the fifth of his father's sons - is unexpectedly called by his grandmother, Madame Huangfu, to assume the throne of the Xie Empire. Sun Xin, an alchemist and his deceased father's attendant - now reduced to madness - proclaims that calamity will soon befall the Empire. And it indeed does as Duanbai's ascendancy sets off a chain of palace intrigues among his half brothers.

Duanbai himself is feckless and capricious, immature and utterly unprepared for his responsibilities. Duanbai's sleep is filled with night demons, and he is given to acts of pettiness and stunning viciousness alternating with acts of deep sympathy and love. The only person he can trust, his mentor Juekong, is banished from the capitol to live out his life as a monk on Bitter Bamboo Mountain. He befriends a palace eunuch named Swallow and falls deeply in love with a concubine, Lady Hui, but his empire is beset by enemies from within and without. He ultimately loses his throne to his oldest brother, Duanwen, and is banished from the capitol to live life as a commoner as his punishment. The balance of the novel tells the story of Duanbai's life after his fall from power.

Written in 1992, MY LIFE AS EMPEROR offers an engrossing story line filled with memorable characters and fascinating insights into imperial life. As in his other works, Su Tong can be brutally cruel and explicit, but wondrously lyrical and richly symbolic. As he suggests in his Preface, this story is a dream from within the dream world in which he lives and writes. It is a dream filled most notably with birds and bird images: the foreboding white herons on the book's opening page, his eunuch Swallow, Lady Hui's Singing Oriole Pavilion, the birdlike feeling of tightrope walking, and the Double Eagle crest of the invading Peng Empire among others.

From young Emperor Duanbai's favorite cricket cages to his escapades with tightroping walking, MY LIFE AS EMPEROR is a tragic story of unasked for imprisonment and deeply sought freedom. In the end, stark military power prevails in the public sphere, but the wisdom of Confucius' ANALECTS provides the one true way to peace. Sadly, the path to Bitter Bamboo Mountain is littered with mistakes, needless suffering, and tragedy. Life is bitter, indeed.

Su Tong made a quick name for himself when his novella _Raise the Red Lantern_ was made into a great film. One might think that such success could spoil an author to continue to write what has already been successful, but his next book, _Rice_, offered its own challenges when Su Tong took on a deeply disturbed and violent man as his protagonist. _Rice_ was a great book, because even through horrific events, Tong looked for the rationale of every character and allowed them to present themselves in honest ways. Now, with _My Life as Emperor_, Su Tong takes the other perspective--rather than focus on a poor crook, his focus is now a young man named emperor of the fictional Xie Empire.

Su Tong has fully confirmed his masterful ability to mix the harsh and cruel realities of social commentary with genuine pathos for the characters within those commentaries. It is a wise and splendid mix--Su Tong addresses the problems of the hierarchies of people while treating the people themselves with compassion and empathy. Duanbai, who ascends to the throne of the Xie Empire at the age of 14 even though he was not the first-born to the dead emperor, is a troublesome narrator, for he is spoiled and gets drunk on his own power quite easily, but still he is someone to sympathize for, for even with the power to have a person's tongue removed at his whim, he is still under the thumb of his grandmother, who will gladly strike out with her longevity cane. The implications of Duanbai's rash ruling are not as clear as they could be to convey the misery the new emperor is inciting in his own empire, but the growth of Duanbai in his friendship with a eunuch named Swallow and of course the problems people find with his claim on the throne, makes this a wise and wonderful book. Even if you find the book a little shallow at first, I would stay stay with it, for the ending is masterful.

Su Tong adds another successful work to his canon, possibly because he works on a very simple yet effective paradigm--even in the most awful situations, people will create their own happiness or misery.

My Life As Emperor by Su Tong is really hard to put down once you start. His writing style just pulls you in as you try to figure out the mind of the protagonist, Duanbai, the fifth emperor of the Xie Empire. The tale starts out with the death of the fourth emperor and the unexpected appointment of his fifth son, Duanbai, as the emperor. Duanbai is only 14 years old, and is completely unprepared for the job. While he wastes his time with his pursuits, the real government is his overbearing grandmother who rules with an iron fist. On commiting his first act of cruelty, he feels regret, but his grandmother tells him that he would do the same, so he goes down the road to being a cruel and thoughtless ruler. His frustration at his powerlessness and his complete inability to rule leads him to strike out at those around him. This tendency is made worse by his poor mental health. As his empire crumbles around him, though, he begins to see some things which offer him some comfort and perhaps a path to a better life.

It may be difficult to imagine the cruelty which the protagonist enjoys, and some may be put off by it. Some may even claim that such cruelty is unimaginable, but I don't think that is true. The world around us is surrounded with cruelty which is just as bad as anything this emperor does. The only difference is that we have come to accept that cutting out prisoners' tongues is unacceptable, while we rationalize the cruelties of our modern age. In reading this book, I hope that you step back from the fictional world of Duanbai's empire, and take a look at our own world. If you do that, reading this book can become a powerful experience.

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