A giant Mao looms over Hong Kong. Welcome to 2030

I first knew Badiucao as the rebel heart dissident exiled in Australia, penning pictures of koalas suckling on Chairman Mao, pandas in red-star caps brandishing severed kangaroo heads decked out in scholarly mortarboards to protest “soft power in Australia”, you name it. He was that kind of guy. Didn’t mind, didn’t take prisoners; if you wanted to see world leaders sodomising each other, he was your man.

Some of that spirit animates his and journalist Melissa Chan’s debut graphic novel, You Must Take Part in Revolution, as three young activists befriend each other during Hong Kong’s 2019 Umbrella protests.

After a bomb attack goes horribly wrong, we skip forward to 2030. Andy, an Asian-American veterinarian, is re-examining his past. Mainlander Maggie’s radicalism sees her imprisoned. Rounding out the trio, Olivia has fled to Taiwan, where the US – now ruled by a right-wing autocrat who seized power in a coup – has an increased presence. (China has taken up shop over in Cuba.)

In this future, a giant Mao statue stands over Hong Kong. Neon signs advertise, in simplified Chinese, a two-child policy. It’s all a bit ridiculous: even the mainland has officially (and famously) dubbed Mao “30 per cent wrong”, and a two-child policy was encouraged during British governance of Hong Kong. At least when Chuck Norris saved a Florida mall from those dastardly commies in Joseph Zito’s 1985 hamfest Invasion USA, things were fun!

Andy remains a good boy, even when he seeks to rebel a little – “American exceptionalism, and American optimism. Too cute,” a wise older activist tells him. That is, until he journeys to Taiwan and becomes a soldier for the US military. Andy doesn’t really know what he’s fighting for (Hong Kong’s freedom, he consoles himself).

The narrative, trying to convey multiple cultural, political and linguistic points at once, sometimes gets bogged down in detours. It’s as if it cannot decide which audience to speak to. When Andy writes jia you during the Umbrella protests – an expression meaning “fighting” or “hell yeah” – a conversation ensues between Olivia and Maggie that seems to mock his poor Chinese handwriting.

It seems intended for readers who do not understand Chinese but, for those who do, it’s mostly confusing – why would Olivia, a native Chinese speaker, mock Andy’s (basically fine, maybe awkward) handwriting? It doesn’t feel credible or consistent with their camaraderie as three ethnically Chinese comrades from different contexts and geographies finding friendship. At its worst, the book takes itself far more seriously than some of the more gung-ho beats of the plot warrant.

More realistic are all the high-tech goggles folks wear in the future: who needs dystopia when tech giants are tightening the screws?

Life is continually surveilled. An online emoji can cost you your job (a dystopia many local public figures are sadly all too familiar with). Each day, life becomes more unlivable, more poorly serviced, more underpaid – but with more tracking and monitoring as a trade-off. No need to travel to China, either: a quick journey to our Coles/Woolworths duopoly brings you face to face with surveillance and weapons companies like Palantir, whether you’re out shopping, delivering, or in the warehouse. What a deal!

During one excellent section, Olivia descends into a hellscape of skulls. Badiucao’s art shines as the narrative shows us a world where hope feels distant: the promises of socialism, capitalism, democracy, communism, take your pick – all compromised by history’s weight, the loss of ideals, the tightening noose of technology and the violence done in the names of all of them.

A reference to the tragedy of the SARS epidemic that seems to blame China for fatalities in Hong Kong feels on the nose by comparison: at best, it’s ambivalent about political accountability and mishandling of the kind that has beleaguered countless disasters, from Hurricane Katrina to Fukushima in 2011; at worst, it’s tired China-bashing that mixes inferiority complexes (Hong Kong, colonised by EuroAmerica, never quite able to actually be EuroAmerica) with superiority ones (at least we’re not mainlanders!). Of course, any bullied people know it’s easier to be a crab in a bucket and drag down those around you rather than face yourself – never mind the colonial boot that’s actually crushing your face.

Olivia, with her conflicting loyalties, is perhaps the book’s strongest and most compelling representation of this dilemma. She shows how a person’s choices – not necessarily their culture or language, their citizenship or political allegiances – can really define who they are.

In this respect, the Mao lines that provide the book’s title – “If you want to know the theory and methods of revolution, you must take part in revolution. All genuine knowledge originates in direct experience” – feel both ironic and deadly serious. This is the story of people who are in mourning, dealing with feelings of helplessness and loss. For each of them, China means many things. A language, a culture, but, at the same time, different languages, different cultures, different histories.

A place … or is it places? Taiwan, mainland China, Hong Kong, Singapore, more, less? Which dynasty? Qin? Yuan? Which ethnicity? Han? Mongol? Leader? CCP, Chiang Kai-shek, Mao, Kublai Khan? All of which suggests “China” is never a continuous historical entity. There are as many Chinas as there are people who identify with that big, generous word.

The grievances, hurts, and pain of different communities, whether they identify as “Chinese” or otherwise – including Asian-Americans; or those who fled the mainland for the West after Tiananmen; or Hong Kong after 1997; or Tibetans, Taiwanese, countless others – have formed all sorts of ways of belonging. Their grip upon the past, Chan and Badiucao suggest, can be an act of courage, of resistance. Yet it can also, they warn, mean fossilising, repeating a narrative instead of recognising that the world has changed and will go on changing.

While our world remains crushed inside a trauma loop of surveillance, bullying and abject violence, what choices will we make? It’s when this question comes into focus that You Must Take Part in Revolution shines.

You Must Take Part in Revolution by Melissa Chan and Badiucao is published by Affirm ($40). Badiucao is a cartoonist at The Age.

What else is happening in the book world?

- Looking for a last-minute Father’s Day gift? Try these books
- Brilliant or boring? The verdict on Rachel Cusk’s new novel
- This entire novel is one sentence. Somehow, it works
- Why fear of the ‘mad witch’ still pins women down today.

The Booklist is a weekly newsletter for book lovers from Jason Steger. Get it delivered every Friday.

You have reached your maximum number of saved items.

Remove items from your saved list to add more.

License this article

AdvertisementAdvertisement