I Could a Tale Unfold: the fanfiction that nobody wants

[dolorous_ett]

I thought I'd tell you a bit about the stories I could write if anyone displayed even the slightest inclination to write New Practical Chinese Reader fanfic. I've been teaching these illustrated tales (disguised as language teaching material) for a year, and the fanfiction instinct now being deeply ingrained, I've been speculating about the inhabitants.

Wait! Don't go! At least give it a try. I promise to be reasonably brief.

Actually, this book has backstory, that goes all the way back to the predecessor of this book, the original Practical Chinese Reader. Produced in China in the early 80s, it chronicles the adventures of the appallingly goody-goody Gubo and Palanka, a Caucasian boyfriend and girlfriend of uncertain origin, as they study in China. They have a Chinese friend, a drippy young woman called Ding Yun.

It's hard to like Gubo and Palanka. Gubo has a bowl cut and is Always Right. Palanka has long flowing locks and is Nearly Always Right (being a girl, that should be good enough, and the rare cases when she is Wrong are set up as jokes). They pay attention to exactly the sort of things the Chinese government wants them to, always study hard, never lose their temper and start shouting in the street, and they stand up for old people on the bus in an irritatingly smug way.

Once you get past a certain stage in these textbooks, the text moves away from Gubo and Palanka to more literary topics, and the happy student never expects to hear anything from them again. In the majority of cases this is true. But I went back to Chinese as a teacher, and what did I find but...

New Practical Chinese Reader: the next generation!

Among several others, this book contains the offspring, not of Gubo and Palanka, but Gubo and Ding Yun!

Clearly there has been dirty work at the crossroads. Gubo and Palanka were practically inseperable, and plainly made for each other. So what happened? Did Ding Yun drive a wedge between them, or did predatory Gubo make the first move - who, after all, would suspect such a model youth? What hold did Ding Yun have over Gubo, to make him marry her? Is Palanka nursing her greivance overseas, brooding darkly over dreams of revenge? Or is she mouldering in an unmarked grave somewhere in the northern suburbs of Beijing?

Whatever Palanka's unhappy fate, Gubo and Ding Yun have moved to Canada and are living a life of complete respectability there (though I'm pleased to relate that Gubo has gone bald and is sporting a combover. Serve him right). Their middle son, Ding Libo, is one of the main characters of this series of books.

The Foreign Students

Ding Libo is a soft, damaged-looking young man, who retreats from reality (which, as I've stated, probably contains some very unpleasant facts about his parents which he can't bring himself to contemplate) into Chinese painting, tai chi and other approved cultural activities. He plainly has more feelings than are quite proper for his roommate, Ma Dawei.

Ma Dawei is a large American. Lumpish of form, and with that unfortunate hairstyle blond and curly men have when trying to grow their hair, Ma Dawei blunders through life with the sensitivity and grace of a warthog, registering nothing, understanding nothing and smiling at everything. He is completely oblivious to Ding Libo's feelings (his obvious distress when Ma Dawei catches a bad cold and needs to go to the clinic would melt the hardest of hearts), and in fact takes up with a young woman called Xiao Yanzi - of whom more later.

Lin Na is a young woman from Britian with long blonde hair. Superficially normal, she takes part in all sorts of cultural activities, slavishly visiting every museum, place of historical interest and opera performance that she can get her hands on, and taking every opportunity to practice her Chinese. The reason for this is that she is a spy,  who obsessively collects every detail of life in China she can get her hands on. She has collected a lot of information already, which she stashes away inside a soft toy panda (in miniaturised form), so that she can hand it to her friend Wang Xiaoyun, who obsessively cuddles any soft toy she can get her mitts on (she thinks it's cute) and will thus be the one caught with the sensitive information.

The Chinese

Wang Xiaoyun is young and silly and destined never to be more than an unsuspecting catspaw to Lin Na. Although she states her age to be twenty, she still wears her hair in bunches, has her mobile phone on a string round her neck so she doesn't lose it and affects a whole series of girlish actions we are supposed to find cute. It's just possible that she is playing a very deep game indeed, and is more intelligent than she makes out, but there is almost no evidence to support such a theory.

Song Hua is a creepy young man with regular features and mean little eyes who studies Economics in Beijing. He wears a carefully ironed shirt at all times, and - most sinister of all - for his birthday party he wore a tie with a tiepin. He certainly wants something out of Lin Na - he goes shopping with her for a frock (which is just not normal in China) and is seen looking at her in a speculative sort of way as she buttons up her qipao dress - and invites her to at least one concert. Whether he's a cold-hearted lecher with an eye to the main chance or Lin Na's handler, I have yet to determine. Either way, he's trouble.

Lu Yuping is a journalist. We know he is a journalist because he wears one of those waistcoats with hundreds of pockets and carries his camera bag with him at all times. He has no discernable role in the story at all. My theory is that he is either supplying material to Lin Na (which strikes me as somehow out of character and way too straightforward) or else is trying to get to the bottom of the mysterious events surrounding the marriage and subsequent hurried departure from China of Ding Libo's parents. He is, after all, a journalist.

Xiao Yanzi is Ma Dawei's love interest, and something of a cypher. In the one picture we have of her, she seems pretty enough, but with a masklike face and a certain stiffness to her posture. Plainly, she has something to hide. And there is no way that "Xiao Yanzi" is her real name - it can't be - no-one has a surname that means "little". In short, the notoriously dim Ma Dawei has picked up a girlfriend who has a secret and is operating under an obvious alias. The outlook can't be good.

So - tell me - would you read fanfiction about these characters? The potential is enormous, as you can see - heartbreaking angst, low comedy, detection, espionage, possibly even romance and definitely slash...