The Dark Road, by Ma Jian – review

If you are considering adopting — that is, buying — a Chinese baby girl, recycling a television or computer, or buying a Vuiton bag, think again. Ma Jian, author of the startling Beijing Coma, prepared for this evocative and sometimes horrifying novel by travelling through Chinese regions few tourists see. There he encountered some of the millions of women who had just given birth to babies declared illegal by the one-child family laws, which were taken away and sold by corrupt officials to rich foreigners eager to adopt. He saw, too, the effects on the poor migrants who disassemble our unwanted televisions and computers and poison themselves by handling the toxic parts. And he saw the shops manufacturing fake Western luxury goods and pasting ‘Made in France’ labels on them.

But this is a novel, set about the year 2000 and eloquently translated by Flora Drew, and there is much to learn about China from the story of Meili and her husband Kongzi, the 76th descendant of Confucius, on the run with their daughter to save their next child from the state’s baby-snatchers.