Triple Door

Triple Door is Han Han's first novel, published by Writers Publishing House in 2000, when the author was 17. Told in the third person, the novel centers on Lin Yuxiang: a bright boy born in a small town who, influenced by his father, is called a child prodigy from an early age, yet in middle school is badly lopsided in his studies, far stronger in Chinese than in science. At school he meets the Chinese teacher Ma Debao, a literary man who emerged from a cultural station and brings him into the literary club and essay contests, giving him his first taste of being affirmed through words. The story unfolds around Lin Yuxiang's high school entrance exam, his admission to a key municipal high school, and the less than two years that follow: extra tutoring, competitions, admissions, parental pressure, and school demands pile up layer upon layer. His dealings with classmates Qian Rong, Liang Zijun, Shen Xier, and others, along with his hazy, clumsy crush on the girl Susan, make up the brightest part of adolescent life. Through a great deal of witty, caustic, and sharply argued commentary, the novel depicts how parent-child, teacher-student, and classmate relationships are distorted in the face of test scores, presenting a lopsided student's confusion, resistance, and powerlessness on the exam-track. The title comes from the Doctrine of the Mean in the Book of Rites (He who rules all under heaven has threefold gateways), and the author's own explanation does not point to three exam gates, though readers often read Triple Door as the gate of school, the gate of family, and the gate of society. Dense language, packed metaphors, and biting satire are the book's most striking features, and they made it a landmark text in bringing post-80s writing into public view.