Silence Comes Late

Silence Comes Late is the first novel by journalist Li Haipeng, published by Baihuazhou Literature and Art Press in 2011. The novel follows the protagonist Xia Chong from age 4 to 31, spanning 1976 to 2008, and is set mainly in "Round Stone City," modeled on the author's hometown of Shenyang. Xia Chong is a person unusually sensitive to tragedy: in his parents, his best friend from adolescence, and the many ordinary people around him, he sees a great deal of misfortune that is taken for granted and therefore never examined. He himself is not a central figure of his era; his actions are often governed by boundless inner wandering and a detachment that keeps him from joining anyone's camp. The "silence" of the title comes from three periods in which Xia Chong refuses to speak to people—kindergarten, the first year of high school, and at thirty-one, traveling alone in western Sichuan. The novel begins with the third silence and unfolds in reverse chronology; the narrative alternates between first and third person and uses a sonata-like structure in which several secondary threads wind around the main line. The recurring image of "the dragon and the cicada" is the key to the work: the era and the nation are vast, powerful, and ambitious like a dragon, while the individual is detached, small, and unable to find calm like a cicada. There is also an unfinished love story: the heroine Qi Min, young, intelligent, and more composed, leaves a touch of warmth in the somber narrative. On the eve of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Xia Chong, now a lawyer, looks back on the road he has traveled and, in a silence that comes late, completes his understanding of himself and his era.