ABSTRACT

In Chapter 34 of Chunming waishi (Unofficial history of the old capital, Beijing),2 the journalist Yang Xingyuan heads over to Sanyang Hotel on the west side of town, to meet up with an old friend from the south who has recently arrived. As Yang walks into the door, he sees that his friend Hua Boping is by the window, “carefully poring over a map of Beijing”— but when Hua catches sight of our hero, “he threw down the map and rushed over to shake Yang’s hand vigorously, exclaiming all the while” (447). Indeed, not only in this episode but throughout its entire 86 chapters, the novel continually reminds us: why read a map of Beijing when you can have Yang Xingyuan as your guide? In fact, in the very next scene, Yang prevents Hua from being bilked by the hotel attendant, interrupting his offers of expensive services: “That’s enough. He may be a newcomer to Beijing, but I certainly am not” (448). The original readers of Unofficial History of the Old Capital apparently agreed; within a year of the novel’s debut in the pages of the literary supplement “Yeguang” (Moonlight), the newly founded Shijie wanbao (World evening news) became the most sought-after newspaper in town.