The Golden Age

The Golden Age is the first volume of Wang Xiaobo's "Age Trilogy" and the collection that made his name and remains his most representative work. Set against the Cultural Revolution and the decades surrounding it, it gathers novellas including "The Golden Age," "Thirty and Standing," "As Time Flows By," "Love in the Revolutionary Era," and "My Two Worlds of Yin and Yang." The protagonists are mostly named "Wang Er" and are struggled against, investigated, and disciplined amid an absurd, repressive political environment. The title novella follows the "loose woman" scandal surrounding Wang Er, an educated youth sent to the countryside, and Chen Qingyang, a team doctor, during their time in Yunnan: the two are ordered to confess their "crimes" and ultimately admit to everything with a candor bordering on provocation, using body and love as their last stronghold against the outside world. The novel writes sex as both uninhibited and pure, mounting a sharp and humorous challenge to hypocritical moral dogma and political prejudice. "Thirty and Standing" and "As Time Flows By" turn to the ordinary life after returning to the city and the melancholy of passing time; "Love in the Revolutionary Era" looks back on an absurd age through a boy's eyes; and "My Two Worlds of Yin and Yang" depicts a "impotent" man's self-exile and recovery under the gaze of the world. The book opens with the general preface "Why I Write" and includes an afterword and an appendix, embodying Wang Xiaobo's literary stance of "interesting, intelligent, free."