From Parallel Universe to ‘Quantum Fiction’: Li Mei Zhen (2020) As Metaliterary Performance

This paper examines how Kong Yalei (b.1975), a mainland Chinese novelist better known for his translation of contemporary Western fiction such as that of the American postmodernist Paul Auster, turns his ongoing experience of writer’s block into a metafiction on the (im-)possibility of fictional writing. The protagonist, Kong himself, sets out with an ambitious plan to write what he calls “an encyclopedic novel,” consisting of infinite chapters that encompass all the elements of the universe that we inhabit. Having failed to write down anything but its title, Bliss Temple, and a preface, Kong begins roaming over various cultural scenes and sites in the city of Shanghai and encounters the photograph of an enigmatic cross-eyed woman named Li Mei Zhen. The writer claims to be called upon to “record” the woman’s “history,” which allegedly dates back to 1900. From there, his own life and Li Mei Zhen’s story become two parallel universes that engage in a series of quantum entanglements – the phenomenon whereby elements and events of one universe cannot make sense without understanding those of the other. In writing this “quantum fiction” about Li Mei Zhen, the writer eventually finds himself unable to tell where literature ends and life begins. This paper probes how Kong’s novel enacts a metaliterary performance to showcase and forewarn the aesthetic and social potentialities of literary productions, implied in its very title – “beauty” (mei) and “truth” (zhen).