Shortly after the end of the Cultural Revolution, I found myself in a girls’ dormitory of Beijing university. It was a small drab room of eight wooden bunks. The students wore shapeless Mao jackets over hand-knitted jerseys and their hair in plaits. It was very cold. I had asked about their love life.
The girls looked puzzled. The Cultural Revolution had promoted puritanism between the sexes. What preoccupied them was not love but hot water. Each day they received one thermos. That was their lot. ‘So if we wash our hair, we can’t have tea,’ one explained, gazing wistfully at my clean head.
It is such girls, modest, virginal if a little grubby, that Mr Muo, the hero of Dai Sijie’s latest novel, is in search of. But the China of today is a very different one from that of 25 years ago.
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