Lost and Forgotten Languages of Shanghai – Ruiyan Xu

Read as part W of the “Along the Library Shelf” reading journey

Chosen because

The only X on the shelf and an intriguing title.

The Review

Li Jing is a success, running his own financial investment business in Shanghai, married to the attractive and intelligent Zhou Meiling with whom he has a young son.

Then, in a gas explosion, a shard of glass pierces his head and incapacitates the part of his brain that processes language into speech. As a result he can no longer speak his native Chinese but can utter a few words of the English he knew as a child in America, not used since.

This “Broca’s aphasia” is rare and a specialist neurologist, Dr Rosalyn Neil, is flown in from America to join the medical team treating Li Jing. She is glad to make the trip, leaving behind a recently failed marriage, but finds the culture shock (convincingly described) a struggle until some ex-pats take her in tow.

What follows, slowly but never dully, is an exploration of the importance of spoken language and the feeling of impotence that results from its loss. The effect on Li Jing’s business, built on his ability to charm his contacts and clients, could be catastrophic but it his relationship with Meiling that suffers most. His inability to communicate with her as of old, contrasts starkly with the growing ease with which he can connect, using his improving English, with Rosalyn.

Of course those who speak the same language (Rosalyn and her fellow westerners, Meiling and her father-in-law) often fail to communicate too, so this is not all about a rare medical condition but also about a general malaise.

Li Jing’s inexorable drift on the tide of language from east to west is told with empathy from all points of view by Ruiyan Xu (herself a mixture of the two cultures) to produce a thoughtful book that may lack action but is not without tension of the will he won’t he, will she won’t she, kind.

Read another?

Probably not – intense emotion is all very well but I like some light relief and a bit more to be happening in my books.