The Unbearable Dreamworld of Champa the Driver
The Unbearable Dreamworld of Champa the Driver
Chan Koonchung
It is hard to judge a book one does not understand. Or, rather: the judging comes out naturally, but one remains with a feeling of discomfort. The Unbearable Dreamworld of Champa the Driver is very much like this. Authored by Chan Koonchung, one of the few Chinese writers not censored by the PRC government, Chan writes the story of a Tibetan who becomes a driver for a business woman, Plum, who moves between Beijing and Lasha to close deals. The two also strikes a relationship, one in which Champa alternates between liking her and feeling he is being exploited. After convincing himself he is in love with Plum’s daughter Shell, Champa moves to Beijing and tries to make it work with Shell, unsuccessfully so.
If Chan wanted this to be a book about displacement and the feelings of the Tibetans towards the central government (in the book Champa and his Tibetan friends refer to Beijing as “China”, as if Tibet were not part of it) he is successful but with the wrong target. It is hard to feel any sympathy for Champa, who is as confused as he is oppressing and unpleasant. Throughout the entire book, I felt more sorry for the women and Champa’s friends. In the story, he assaults sexually first Plum then Shell; much of his life is read through the lens of sex and he often recurs to working women to satisfy his reasoning. He mocks two women for their names, calling them “Salad” and “Ricer,” and when driving them around he often thinks it is a relief he is the driver, since women would be no good at maneuvering. In the end, after the relationship with Shell ends, he remains in Beijing working as a security guard in a hotel where dissidents are brought and beaten up. He becomes the assailant, in spite of feeling excluded and assaulted himself in Beijing.
Maybe this is indeed what Chan was going after: how socio-political system can eat a person up in sadly ironic ways. It remains interesting the way in which Chan decided to play this out, if anything because for many readers (I suspect, for many women) this book can only be about sexes. Not about minorities. It was published in 2014, when in China there was more freedom to express one’s dissent than in the last three years or so, and this makes the choice of setting all the more interesting.
Chan Koonchung
It is hard to judge a book one does not understand. Or, rather: the judging comes out naturally, but one remains with a feeling of discomfort. The Unbearable Dreamworld of Champa the Driver is very much like this. Authored by Chan Koonchung, one of the few Chinese writers not censored by the PRC government, Chan writes the story of a Tibetan who becomes a driver for a business woman, Plum, who moves between Beijing and Lasha to close deals. The two also strikes a relationship, one in which Champa alternates between liking her and feeling he is being exploited. After convincing himself he is in love with Plum’s daughter Shell, Champa moves to Beijing and tries to make it work with Shell, unsuccessfully so.
If Chan wanted this to be a book about displacement and the feelings of the Tibetans towards the central government (in the book Champa and his Tibetan friends refer to Beijing as “China”, as if Tibet were not part of it) he is successful but with the wrong target. It is hard to feel any sympathy for Champa, who is as confused as he is oppressing and unpleasant. Throughout the entire book, I felt more sorry for the women and Champa’s friends. In the story, he assaults sexually first Plum then Shell; much of his life is read through the lens of sex and he often recurs to working women to satisfy his reasoning. He mocks two women for their names, calling them “Salad” and “Ricer,” and when driving them around he often thinks it is a relief he is the driver, since women would be no good at maneuvering. In the end, after the relationship with Shell ends, he remains in Beijing working as a security guard in a hotel where dissidents are brought and beaten up. He becomes the assailant, in spite of feeling excluded and assaulted himself in Beijing.
Maybe this is indeed what Chan was going after: how socio-political system can eat a person up in sadly ironic ways. It remains interesting the way in which Chan decided to play this out, if anything because for many readers (I suspect, for many women) this book can only be about sexes. Not about minorities. It was published in 2014, when in China there was more freedom to express one’s dissent than in the last three years or so, and this makes the choice of setting all the more interesting.