A portrait of alienation－and of fulfillment

Chinese author Ding Jie explores in his novel, Snuggling, the basic existential dilemmas of the human condition. Photos provided to China Daily

Ding Jie's Snuggling is a powerful portrayal of certain aspects of Chinese life that are rarely seen in more popularized works of literature.

Westerners will no doubt recognize a cultural dynamic quite different from their own that is bound to arouse the enthusiasm of readers interested in new forms of contemporary Chinese literature. But to emphasize its cultural distinctiveness would be to understate its importance as a literary exploration of the more basic existential dilemmas of the human condition.

On the surface, this is a love story, with humble beginnings typical of the love narratives of other fine literature. Two lonely souls meet by chance, stumble through awkward first impressions and gradually realize a connection they do not share with others.

Chinese author Ding Jie

The result is nothing less than a beautiful portrait of intimacy. But the story runs much deeper than this, moving along with undercurrents that reflect the anxieties of alienation and mortality, the quiet desperation people feel when life has carried them helplessly out to the margins of society and left them struggling to make sense of it all.

With unembellished description and remarkable elegance in prose, the author takes us there, into these margins, acquainting us not merely with the despair of two lost souls, but with the very problem of life's meaning. It is in this sense that Snuggling transcends its cultural predispositions.

The two central characters of the story have histories that have tragically alienated them from those who would otherwise have been the source of emotional support. And it is through these histories that we empathize with the author's rather profound reflection on the existential isolation that is an inescapable part of the human condition.

As a central theme, alienation is apparent on many levels in this story.

Luan Xiaotian is drawn out west to a remote town to receive a modest award for his artistic work, only to find himself lost and without his luggage. He is a young man without a sense of identity, a fact symbolized in the ID card he has lost. We feel him casting about for his own whereabouts as much as for his luggage.

He meets Anfen, who compels him to relate stories about his past as she offers to help. He acquiesces, and the two find in each other a kind of refuge from their daily cares.

Stimulated by their shared experiences, they set off on a search for a district where a local tea is made that Anfen fancifully characterizes as having the capacity to produce "beautiful hallucinations, or maybe some pretty messed up ones".

In what feels like a desperate search for meaning, they tell stories on the way, exploring their pasts with increasing candor and reconstructing every detail.

Stories within stories can sometimes feel distracting, but the author weaves them into the central narrative with astonishing facility. So the result feels more like a seamless interweaving of happenstance and human affairs that cannot be summed up with any simple formula.

But where abstraction fails us, our intuitions prompt the belief that these are near unadulterated representations of human nature, possible only by the pen of an author who has had a history of untrammeled observations of human behavior.

In this sense Snuggling is a work that approaches the ideal of literary art, unhampered by moral predilections about right and wrong and theories about why human beings behave the way they do.

This work is not a judgment on the human condition, certainly not an effort to furnish an answer about how to live.

With extraordinary literary craft, Ding imparts to us the powerful impression that the alienation we feel is only apparent, perhaps even an illusion in the context of a broader matrix of time and space in which our destinies are ultimately fulfilled.

The author is an assistant professor of philosophy with the New York Institute of Technology.