A letter to daughter

Is Wang Shuo getting old? As one of the most heralded Chinese literary figures in the modern era, his use of informal speech and slang won him a badass reputation as the front man of China's pizi wenxue – hoodlum literature. The immediate reaction to reading the title of his new book is: He's gone sentimental.

Though Wang's style has been described as punk, it doesn't undermine his natural erudition, which is palpable in this latest work. A Letter to Daughter is a text that contemplates China's history, in the form of a discourse with his child, covering the evolution of a country that he feels estranged from but nevertheless bonded to. He starts from beginnings – Peking Man, dynasties, different minzu (races). The book is written using stream-of-consciousness and diary layout, with Wang's impressive literary voice and poetic lyricism soaking his prose – also encompassing, of course, refreshing street phrases too rude to repeat here. It's enough to make one forgive his cold pessimism.

To be sure, it's not a history textbook: It's human and littered with emotional and subjective event-interpretations (growing up without a parental presence, for example, in the ‘60s and ‘70s, when the "cultural revolution" monopolized the attention of his elders). Reflections of this sort trigger Wang's own self-conscious and heart-straining confessions of not measuring up as a father. But it's his feelings of redemption and solace that form the nucleus of this "extended letter" to his "mirror image." The punkiest sentiment in this book is that "daughter" is a spark that keeps Wang hanging onto life, and that to him, she is – for this book at least – his only reader.