化　境　神　似

THE PROMOTIONAL copy on the cover reads "An outstanding textbook for key national kindergartens, and recommended reading material for mental institutions around the globe." Apparently people took this at face value and assumed that this book had been selected to replace the traditional classics in the middle-school curriculum. In the face of an hysterical reaction on the part of parents and educators, the Yunnan Bureau of News and Publishing has taken the unusual step of ordering the publisher, Yunnan People's Press, to cease publication, essentially banning a book of humor for daring to treat classics with juvenile irreverence.

   The stories in Q Reader are updated reinterpretations of the classics typically assigned to elementary and junior-high students, and resemble the Fractured Fairy Tales and similar books popular in the US a few years back. In fact, the first "lesson" in the book is the story of the Three Little Pigs, and The Emperor's New Clothes and The Ugly Duckling get the treatment as well. Any beginning Chinese language learner who's struggled through Lu Xun's Kong Yiji (孔乙己) or Zhu Ziqing's Retreating Figure (背影) will get a chuckle from the idea of a good-for-nothing Kong Yiji pirating software or Zhu's narrator telling his father off.

Continuing the textbook pretense, each chapter ends with a question section including:

• multiple-choice comprehension questions for which the answers are all non-sequiturs.  Like many web bios, that for Huffing Wolf in The Three Little Pigs lists his QQ number. The question is: "What does Huffing Wolf use his QQ number for? (A) to troll for chicks, (B) trick small animals into coming outside and then eating them, (C) contact the writer for convenient contracting of articles (D), spread rumors on the internet."
• thought questions "If you were a cute, delicate little pig and your mother kicked you out, how would go about getting a house?"
• activities "Practical Exercise: With your parent's assistance, construct a pigpen on your balcony and raise cats inside. Observe the cats' reaction," and "Doodle Question: In the body of the pig below, write the name of your enemy. Find some pins and stick them in."

   Author Lin Changzhi first rose to public attention with Sandy's Diary 《沙僧日记》, a humorous take on Journey to the West from the point of view of the oft-neglected fourth monk. This was naturally followed by an explosion of imitators who wrote the diaries of the other members. Lin was hailed as the "Stephen Chow (周星驰)of the publishing world" for his combination of clever wordplay, irreverence, and gutter humor that resembles Chow's moleitau (无厘头) movies. Chow did much the same thing with his 《大话西游》 (A Chinese Odyssey), a comic adaptation of Journey to the West that borrowed the characters (but not much else) and placed them in increasingly absurd situations.

   It is hard to say which has people more bothered: the irreverence or the low humor. By mistreating the classics in this way, some say, the book is contributing to the development of a distorted worldview on the part of students who read it. Deep lessons they should be learning are exchanged for cheap laughs and a callous disregard for culture. More importantly, they may confuse the parody with the original when taking those important tests in the future.

   Others are more worried about the language. The Pigs story, for example, uses a well-worn joke to call the littlest pig "Dogshit". Snow White wears a "high-cut swimsuit," the Little Match Girl is a sales promotion girl, and references to underwear, butts, and PLMM abound amidst a liberal sprinkling of English and web-speak. In short, what junior-high students normally talk about.

   There are some in the media who blame the current state of the media itself for the ban. Certainly there's the hype factor, in which a few people's objections to a slow-selling book were blown up into a national argument. But perhaps there is a more fundamental trend in Chinese publishing toward using shocking titles and subject matter to attract readers: Outlaws of the Marsh 《水浒传》, for example, sold in a version with nearly-naked beauties on the cover entitled The Story of Three Women and 105 Men, or a book called The Four Most Attractive Men about Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin.

Lin Changzhi, for his part, says he doesn't want to corrupt youth, that the book was written "for those who are stressed out because of studies or work, so they can relax their minds and bodies when they are not working or studying." He says the book "can improve people's creativity and imagination, and help them actively think up new strategies...[there is] nothing wrong with the book." Usually at this point I'd be inclined to cite the axiom that "no publicity is bad publicity," but with his book only available in pirate editions once the legit stock runs out, I'd wonder if Lin agrees.

I've provided below a short excerpt from Kong Jiayi 《孔甲乙》 to provide a feel for the flavor of the book. Lu Xun's original version, Kong Yiji and an unattributed English translation are available for comparison. The entire book is online at the moment - it's a fun, quick read.