When 19th century French critic and historian Hippolyte Taine said, “I have studied many philosophers and many cats. The wisdom of cats is infinitely superior,” he clearly knew what he was talking about. A cat, even when it is basking in the soft winter sun with its eyes closed, is more aware of the goings on around it than any human. So, it’s not surprising that Pallavi Aiyar should draw upon this intuitive awareness of the cat to lead us into the enigma called China.
Through the eyes of two cats — Soyabean and Tofu — Aiyar’s latest book, Chinese Whiskers, takes us beyond the China the rise of which the world is watching cautiously, and into the lives of its ordinary people and its multi-layered society. It’s a China where luck (or yunqi as they say in Chinese) can change overnight. Soyabean and Tofu realise this quite early in the book when the two kittens from humble beginnings — Soyabean is born in a poor neighbourhood while Tofu is a dustbin cat — are adopted by a doting foreign (waiguo) couple, Mr and Mrs A. It’s a China where the Old stands in conflict with the New. Where tradition, represented by the elderly Nai Nai (paternal grandmother), watches in pain as an unfamiliar, materialistic China, symbolised by her grandson Xiao Xu, takes shape.
For Soyabean and Tofu, but for the agony of being plucked away from their respective mothers in their “kittenhood”, life in their new home is cushy and screened from the World where these conflicts play out. Until the dreadful virus (bing du) breaks out and groups of men begin to hunt and eliminate cats that are being held responsible for it. Around the same time, the gorgeously golden Soyabean gets an offer to star in an advertisement for Chinese cat food, Maomi Deluxe. What he doesn’t realise is that Maomi Deluxe is a scam to sell poisoned pet-food.
The fable, with its animal characters and moral lessons that uphold goodness and the ideals of traditional life, is set in the imperial Beijing’s hutongs (narrow alleys formed by joining one siheyuan, or courtyard house, with another). It’s a place which the young want to move out of but the elderly want to hold on to. Where life is a symphony (not always a perfect one, though) of cats, dogs and people of both Chinese and foreign origin.
The story, narrated in the voices of the two cats, gives a glimpse into the events that shaped the China of today. Like the communist revolution, which Tofu’s mother blames for their dustbin existence. “Your great grandmother had a master who was a rich merchant trading silks and tea. But then there was a communist revolution and suddenly the World became a bad place for wealthy Ren (people),” she tells her kittens. Or when Tofu, who has escaped from the hands of the animal-hunting groups, lands near Beijing Olympic stadium, Bird’s Nest, which is still being built. A construction worker in whose hut she spends the days before she is reunited with her family, speaks of the time “the great Chairman Mao” ordered everybody to give up farming and make steel. The famine that followed forced families to eat dirt mixed with water, and even their pets, he recalls.
The narrative throws light on another side of the glamorous Games that had the world rivetted — the life of the thousands of construction workers who came from villages across China and lived around the stadium in makeshift huts that reeked of the stench of poverty. The inequalities within the Chinese society are also evident when Tofu and Soyabean’s housekeeper, Auntie Li, who comes from a province in southern China, complains about the way Beijing-dwellers consider migrant workers from the countryside as “dirty and uncultured”.
With real events and episodes like the SARS virus and the Beijing Olympics as the backdrop, Chinese Whiskers dwells on the relationship between man and man, and man and animal. In a world where cats and dogs can be both pets and food, nuggets of wisdom, often coming from cats, nudge you to think. While explaining to her kittens the need to be careful while scavenging for food in dustbins, Tofu’s mother says, “Ren discard what they no longer want, yet seem to resent our taking it.” At another time, she says, “Ren are as the wind. Who can say why they blow this way or that?”
There’s also a light-hearted commentary on China’s unique policies, its laws and law-enforcers. When Nai Nai comes to pet Soyabean, who is the lone kitten in the litter, she says, “You are a model cat for the new China and your Ma a model citizen. Look how she has obeyed the one-child policy.” At another time, when a policeman comes beating down Mrs A’s door on a stormy night to tell her that foreigners must register with the local police once a year, he announces, “Madam, the rain is no obstacle for the Chinese police. No weather can stop us from carrying out our duties.” The suspicion with which information coming from Chinese authorities is viewed is also brought out in one sentence when, while discussing the virus, Mrs A remarks, “Can we believe anything this government says?”
Unlike Aiyar’s 2008 book, Smoke and Mirrors: An Experience of China, which was more of a memoir and a journalistic account, Chinese Whiskers is an endearing story of how a dynamic China is affecting the lives of its people and animals. Interspersed with illustrations by Gerolf Van de Perre, the story of the two cats deals with a serious subject in a manner that even a 10-year-old can enjoy it. That Aiyar herself has two cats (one of them named Tofu) and has lived in a hutong home in Beijing for six years only adds to the narrative.
CHINESE WHISKERS
Pallavi Aiyar
HarperCollins
viii+224 pages; Rs 399
