Beijing Zero Kilometer

Beijing Zero Kilometer is a thousand-year history of blood and tears in Beijing

The only kind of living creatures who are free from ego are those poor people who have become demented before they die.
Beijing is said to be more abundant in this kind of live goods than other places.

Where power is concentrated, violence and killing also occur - the "Beijing Zero Kilometer" landmark is the burial place of generations of dead souls.

Following "The Prosperous Era" and "The Second Year of Jianfeng: The Unknown History of New China", Chen Guanzhong, the Chinese-speaking world's most daring novelist in criticizing China's current situation, once again uses a stunning historical perspective to depict a massive epic scroll of Beijing's history from ancient times to the present.


David Wang – recommended by Lin Rongji (founder of Causeway Bay Books) – highly praised

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Using Beijing as a "method," we ask what history is.
Chen Guanzhong wandered through the ruins of history, picking up scraps of newspapers like a "scavenger."

Few can match the explosive thinking and whimsical imagination of "Beijing Zero Kilometer." This novel chronicles the city of Beijing, spanning nearly a millennium, from the Liao Dynasty to the new era of the Republic. It draws on official history, unofficial history, and secret history, even incorporating elements of science fiction and ghost stories. Chen Guanzhong's bold blend of genres and styles in his depiction of Beijing is naturally remarkable. However, this is no pretense of shock; rather, he is conducting his own unique exploration of the capital. He seeks to explore the limits of the "novel" Beijing.

The narrative structure of "Beijing Zero Kilometer" is unique. Modeled after classic ancient texts like "Zhuangzi," the book is divided into inner, outer, and secret chapters. The inner chapter, the longest, recounts Beijing's millennia-long history as both an imperial and national capital, as well as the remarkable figures and events of its time. The outer chapter offers the confession of a fat, obese glutton in Beijing following the 1989 Tiananmen Square incident. From grand history to micro-history, it chronicles the city's culinary customs, shrouded in blood. The secret chapter goes even further, revealing the astonishing secrets of a dilapidated courtyard house outside Qianmen. The shortest chapter concerns the "art of human creation" that will bring future leaders back to life. At first glance, these three parts seem unrelated, but taken together, Chen Guanzhong shifts from history to science fiction, from literature to secrets, from unbearable weight to unbearable lightness. His narrative style is sometimes entangled, sometimes playful, as he crafts the most poignant allegory of his Beijing experience.

—David Wang (Edward C. Henclerson Professor at Harvard University)

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In January 1283, Wen Tianxiang, a famous general of the Song Dynasty who fought against the Yuan Dynasty, was crucified at Chaishikou (now Jiaodaokou, Dongcheng District), a place of execution in Beijing.
In September 1630, Yuan Chonghuan, a famous Ming Dynasty general who fought against the Jin Dynasty, was executed at Xishi (now Xisi, Xicheng District) in Beijing.
On February 3, 1949, the People's Liberation Army marched into Beijing with great ceremony. In June 1989, the June 4th Tiananmen Square Incident occurred in Beijing. The People's Liberation Army used force to suppress the pro-democracy protesters and students...

The poet Xu Zhimo called Beijing a dead city.
The writer Lin Yutang said that the most touching thing about Beijing is the common people, the coolies pulling rickshaws.
Writer Xie Bingying said that he didn't feel anything when he lived in Peking, but once he left her, he began to miss her inexplicably.
The writer Lao She, who lived in Beijing but died in vain during the Cultural Revolution, said that life is like floating in a pool of stagnant water, and living out one's own destiny.


"From then on, I said goodbye to the living world. I can't go back. I was confused and entered a strange world. I changed into a form of existence that no one had ever said existed. If life is a dream, then the existence of living things is just another dream. Dreams are private, dreams cannot be shared, dreams can only be individual, dreams are eternal loneliness. I am like the other living things in Nezha City, each of us dreaming all day long, stopped in time, and abnormally possessed. In this crowded alien realm, our dreams never intersect. In my dreams, I am cursed, encountering obstacles, and only obeying one main theme: a historian. I want to be a historian. I cannot help myself, I have lost my form and forgotten my nature, like a fly sucking blood, I no longer have free will, just like other living things have no free will, living in the thought of my own death, until forever, or until the party is over, the end of the living Nezha City...

"Living creatures don't need time; they live forever in the present moment of their own thoughts. Only historians cannot do without time. One of the historian's jobs is to construct a linear chronological record, to tell stories by carving out time."

This is the living Nezha City, not the real Beijing City.

The novel is divided into three parts: inner part, outer part, and secret part.

The first volume, "Inner Chapter," narrates the history of Beijing through the story of a wandering soul who aspires to be a historian, recounting Beijing's thousand-year history as both an imperial capital and a national capital, as well as the remarkable figures and events throughout the ages.
From the fierce battle between Liao soldiers and resentful troops at the Yanjing Zhenzhong Temple; to the Mongol soldiers besieging the city, resulting in fourteen or fifteen people starving to death and cannibalism in Jin Zhongdu; to the serial sexual torture and murder of young palace maids in the Ming Forbidden City harem during the reign of Emperor Jiajing; to the Chai Market where Wen Tianxiang was crucified; to the West Market where Yuan Chonghuan was executed; to the Caishikou execution ground where Tan Sitong was beheaded; to the Xijiaominxiang Detention Center where Li Dazhao was strangled; to the Girls' High School Attached to Beijing Normal University where Principal Bian Zhongyun was beaten to death by exposure to the sun... Nezha City, a living cargo created by Zhu Di of the Ming Dynasty, interacts and attracts the center of imperial power. Wherever supreme power moves, it expands; where power is concentrated, violence and killing are also the result.
A wandering spirit gazes down and mocks the ups and downs and intrigues of the people of the mortal world of Beijing. Within the living Nezha City, the wandering spirit engages in encounters with notable historical figures, reminiscing about the vicissitudes of Beijing's past. This wandering historian's spirit is, surprisingly, Yu Yamang, the half-brother of food historian Yu Simang, who was murdered by him for witnessing the June 4th Tiananmen Square Incident in Beijing...

The second part, "External Story", introduces the confession of an obese glutton in Beijing after the Tiananmen Incident in 1989.
The protagonist of Beijing Food is Yu Simang, whose ambition when he was young was to change society, but later he became a historian.
Yu Simang, whose name carries a rather amusing connection to Pakistan and mangoes, rose to fame for his Beijing culinary reviews, earning him the nickname "Wolf Warrior," a culinary defender of Beijing's indigenous flavors. He was obsessed with the city's time-honored cuisine, citing every dish listed in the 1935 "Old Beijing Travel Guide" as a familiar tale. He even considered any restaurant in the capital before 1990 to be considered Beijing-style. Originally, Yu Simang's writing was limited to print media, but with the widespread adoption of smartphones and 4G, social media propelled him to internet fame. He cites endorsements from renowned food experts like Yuan Mei, Tang Lusun, and Liang Shiqiu for Beijing-style restaurants, proving that delicious food is readily available in Beijing.

The final part, "Secret Chapter," is like a mystery novel, describing the secrets of the posthumous disposal of the brain of Mao Zedong, a great madman.
In 1949, Mao Zedong visited the Soviet Union and toured the Moscow Brain Institute, where Lenin's brain was secretly stored. In 1957, Mao returned to Moscow to meet with Chinese students studying in the Soviet Union. He first met Dr. Yu Cong. Yu Cong returned to China in 1960 and was persecuted and crippled during the early years of the Cultural Revolution as a Soviet revisionist spy. In 1972, Mao's health declined, and he summoned Yu Cong to secretly oversee the brain preservation project. In 1976, Mao instructed Hua Guofeng, Zhang Yufeng, and Wang Dongxing to arrange his final arrangements, including the preservation of Mao's brain. Upon Mao's death in September of that year, Hua, Zhang, and Wang first instructed Yu Cong to open his skull and remove the brain, then ordered the body to be preserved in embalming fluid. Mao's brain and body were temporarily stored in separate underground military spaces in western Beijing. New leader Hua Guofeng ordered the construction of a Chairman Mao Memorial Hall in Tiananmen Square. During construction, they secretly restored the late Qing Dynasty Central Axis underground tunnel, connecting it to an air-raid shelter beneath a courtyard house in the south of the city. Further tunnels were dug deeper to create an experimental repository for Mao's brain.
From Dr. Yu Cong, who guards the laboratory, to the experiences and fates of the five guardians who came before and after him, why is it that the seemingly peaceful house harbours a murderous plot...

The zero kilometer mark in the novel "Beijing Zero Kilometer" symbolizes the starting point of a national or urban trunk road and the heart of a city. However, how many dynasties' blood-stained stories are hidden in the zero kilometer mark located in Tiananmen Square?

The book "Beijing Zero Kilometer" illuminates the darkness of history with a piercing gaze, delves into desolate places, re-examines the past, and reimagines reality, creating a unique work with contemporary thinking.

2020-06-06

麥田

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