Hatred

Published around 2004, Hatred is a novel by Yi Shu set against the backdrop of Hong Kong's economic downturn, waves of layoffs, and the shadow of an epidemic. Wang Fuzai, who had worked at her company for years, is suddenly laid off, and her husband Shao Nan has already been unemployed for a year; the couple moves from a spacious home into subsidized housing. After losing his job, Shao Nan gradually reveals another face: drinking, stealing money, causing scenes, and repeatedly beating her. Fuzai, clinging to old feelings, keeps yielding. By chance she runs into her middle-school classmate Li Yuemei on the street. Yuemei has married the wealthy businessman Zhou Ziwen; dressed elegantly and generous with money, she seems to live in comfort and contentment. The two women, whose circumstances could hardly differ more, grow close again: Yuemei takes Fuzai away from that squalid little home and urges her to start over, while Yuemei herself makes no secret of caring for her husband only for his money. When Fuzai returns home to pack and formally seek a divorce, Shao Nan beats her savagely once more, and she miscarries the month-old pregnancy, losing forever the ability to bear children. Just when Fuzai is at her wit's end, Yuemei tells her a story: two women agree to remove each other's loathsome husbands. Soon afterward Shao Nan dies in an "accident," Fuzai collects the insurance money, Yuemei and her lover also die mysteriously, and Yuemei's husband Zhou Ziwen is revealed to have had a former wife who likewise died in an "accident." Fuzai finally sees this man—impeccably dressed, presenting himself as gentle and honest—for what he is, refuses his arrangements, and resolves to go north to work in Shanghai, only to die of poisoning in a train compartment bound for Shanghai. In her customary spare, cold prose, Yi Shu tells a chilling, cruel story without raising her voice.