The Story of Ah Q - A Parallel To Singaporeans Today

 
"The True Story of Ah Q" is an episodic novella written by the famous Lu Xun, first published as a serial between Dec 1921 and Feb 1922, comprising 9 chapters - considered among the masterpieces of modern Chinese literature.

The character of Ah Q in Lu Xun's short noval has given rise to a unique expression in China called "Ah Quism".

"Ah Quism" is the attempt to find cheap moral victory in defeat and failure. A typical Sinkie trait, which is now being displayed through the speeches of PAP leaders in Parliament over the last three days.

In the story, Ah Q is continually defeated, by his fellow low-lifes, by respectable people and by revolutionaries.

Yet he keeps turning each and every situation around in his head afterwards, in order to feel good for himself.

For instance, while being beaten by loofers, he loudly denigrates himself as being as low as an insect, thus showing himself to be the "foremost self-belittler" - and certainly being "foremost" in anything is admirable, is it not? So, in this manner he is spiritually superior again to his persecutors.

To some people, "The True Story of Ah Q" may be confusing because it seems to have no moral centre.

Ah Q is motivated by self-interest, even when he tries (and fails) to join the revolution. None of his persecutors nor his victims seem to be people of any integrity.

The ending is tragic and ironical. Ah Q had wanted to join the revolutionaries in order to enjoy a better life and higher status but he failed to do so because he overslept and missed the train. Later the revolutionaries, the very people whom he had looked up to, framed him up for the crimes they have committed. Ah Q was arrested and executed. He signed on his death sentence note as Q instead of O, the standard signature for illiterates in those days.

Ah Q was executed for the crimes of others, yet he died without any regret nor protest. This is what most Sinkies are - always suffering in silence without making any protest, yet still can feel great about their existence and predicaments. Chronically tragic!

This all seems to be a lawless and sadistic black humour.

To really get the morals of this story, you must understand the historical context: China had just gone through a bourgeois democratic revolution in 1911, overthrowing the last imperial dynasty and setting up a Republican Government the following year.

However, the new government could not throw off foreign domination (by Austria, Britain, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Russia and USA) or bring about needed reforms to improve the lot of the people.

So, in 1919, the famous May Fourth movement began with a student protest in Beijing. And several decades of political upheaval and bloodshed on a mass scale followed, before the eventually victorious Maoist Revolution set China on the path to what China is today.

It was in the confusing Republican period that Lu Xun started writing, placing the story of Ah Q in the turmoil of the incomplete revolution of 1911. It was a time when many Chinese looked to Western ways (like our bananas) to overthrow ancient Chinese traditions rooted in the feudal system.

A character in "The True Story of Ah Q" is just referred to as the "Imitation of Foreign Devil", an affluent Chinese person who adopts the fashions of the West.

The "revolutionaries" in the story are an ambivalent lot, far from the ideologically driven revolutionaries who came later.

Ah Q is thus both a ridiculous figure — with his self-centred ignorance and his psychological "victories" - and a pathetic low-life unable to compete in a vicious environment made more difficult by foreign powers dominance.

While laughing at Ah Q, the reader somehow also understand his confusion and applaud his hapless attempts to improve his situation against all odds. 

SSO

PS. Posted on behalf of SSO