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Synopsis

The Beijing Taxi Driver is a novel-in-progress, set in contemporary Beijing and interspersed with tales of imperial and Mao-era communist China.

Through the windscreen of Wang’s taxi we see Beijing at the beginning of the twenty-first century – a city of pollution, rapid development and urban flux. Taxi driver Wang’s quiet life is disrupted when one day he receives an anonymous letter claiming that he has been reincarnated several times. Other letters follow – letters adopting a narrative form to recount Wang’s previous lives during the Tang dynasty, the invasion of Genghis Khan, as a Ming dynasty concubine, a fisherman during the Opium Wars, and as a teenager in the Red Guard during the Cultural Revolution.

At first Wang feels threatened and is convinced that he is being targeted by a madman, but before long he is seduced by the fairytales and suspends disbelief.

Through the epistolary tales the novel explores the cyclical nature of history, and the powerlessness of ordinary people as the subjects of dictators, and in times of revolution and war.

Research for The Beijing Taxi Driver

I moved to Beijing in June 2007 and spent a year immersed in the language, culture, history and politics of China.

I started writing The Beijing Taxi Driver at the end of 2007. I was studying Mandarin at a language school in Beijing at the time and would spend a lot of time wandering aimlessly around the city, sometimes striking up random conversations with Beijingers. A few off-duty cab drivers were friendly and good-humoured enough to talk with me, and I soon had the idea of making a cab driver my main character.

The main narrative of The Beijing Taxi Driver is set in modern-day Beijing, which is a fascinating, sometimes very surreal place to be. I aim to focus on how, despite all the modernisation and consumerism, the majority of Chinese are still disempowered and silenced, and to explore what happens to the average person who has reason to challenge the state.

I have long been interested in Chinese history and decided to intersperse the main narrative with fantastical tales set in other historical eras.

‘Sixteen Concubines’ is based on a true story of the sixteenth-century Ming dynasty emperor Emperor Jiajing, who tortured to death 200 concubines. One night sixteen of his concubines attempted to assassinate him in his bedchamber, but failed and were all executed. The moment I heard about this failed assassination plot, I knew I was going to turn it into fiction.

Most of the research for ‘Sixteen Concubines’ was done at the National Library of China last summer. I read every book about Emperor Jiajing I could find, a lot of Ming dynasty fiction and erotica, and I hope ‘Sixteen Concubines’ possesses a strong fidelity to the spirit, manner and social customs of Imperial China.

This extract is taken from ‘Sixteen Concubines', chapter fourteen of The Beijing Taxi Driver.