By Audrey Fong
A bicycle on which to commute to work. A sewing machine with which to sew new clothes. Eggs, milk, and meat to cure his children of malnutrition. These are a few of the basics the unnamed protagonist of Ruyan Meng’s debut novella Only the Cat Knows wishes he could afford. Yet, he only makes “thirty-seven yuan and seventy-five cents” each month. The amount, imprinted in his mind, haunts him. This inability to afford what his family needs compounded with the fact that he has not received a raise in over a decade form the basis of the novella.
Only the Cat Knows is both the 2020 Red Hen Press Novella Award winner and the first work from Ruyan Meng, a writer born and educated in China. While Meng moved to the U.S. over three decades ago, she continues to be fascinated by her home country, especially 1950s-1980s China and its “Stalinist-style oppression enforced by Mao Zedong.” The novella takes place in the middle of this time period in a typical 1970s “worker village” and follows one ordinary man’s struggle to survive the communist regime while still supporting his family. As mentioned before, much of what propels the plot is his inability to do so at the expense of his malnourished children — his son suffers from acute nephritis and his younger daughter from pleurisy.
Yet, the unnamed protagonist isn’t the only one struggling in the worker village. A coworker named Xiao Ma hasn’t “had sick leave for almost ten years.” And his brother-in-law’s marriage is strained after years of his housing allotment submission being rejected. When explaining how hard he’s worked to care for his family including re-submitting his housing allotment submission time and time again, he tells the protagonist, “We all did our damn best,” to which the protagonist agrees. They’re all doing their damn best. As shown by his college degree, higher income, and his ability to buy cookies — a luxury — for his daughter, the brother-in-law is viewed as a more capable husband than the main character. So to see the brother-in-law still struggling to improve his family’s life speaks to how crushing life in a typical 1970s worker village was for many Chinese people — even those who were college educated or party members. In addition to these instances, the narration is interspersed with overheard conversations about the difficulty of the speakers’ lives to emphasize that life is hard for everyone.
However, the suffering the novella focuses on is the main character’s and every other character’s struggle acts as more of an additional example of the oppression present under Mao’s rule than as a subplot. The story ascends to its climax when the protagonist is tasked with buying grain to feed his family and in the process, loses ten yuan — the money that would feed his family for one month. He descends into hallucinations, swearing that a stray cat must’ve seen who robbed him and then trying to strike a deal with the cat to share who did it. Thus, the title of the book: Only the Cat Knows. In his desperation to feed his family, he burglarizes his sister’s home. His niece catches him in the act. His reaction, which I will not give away, speaks to how desperate the protagonist is to feed his family and how few choices he feels he has. Once again, the cat is watching him, echoing the effect of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg’s eyes in The Great Gatsby, reminding the character that a greater being is watching at all times and stirring reflection in him.
Told in direct and seemingly simple language, the novella reads in a matter of fact voice, reserving judgment for the reader to make instead of the author providing it. Given that the story revolves around the oppression the Chinese faced in Mao-era China, this detached voice works because it spares the reader of any grey areas. Everything reads as fact. This did happen to the character or this did happen in the worker village, end of discussion. In a world where we can be so quick to disregard something or someone as emotional, this almost emotionless voice serves to inform readers of what occurred during this time period and gives the naysayer no room to argue. I appreciated the firmness and finality of Meng’s words, which leave no room for someone to object or to question the extent of the oppression during this period, while also not leaning into the “doom” narrative we see so often in novels taking place in communist China.
Without giving away the ending, I will say that many readers may find the ending insufficient, wishing that we could find out more about the character and what happens to him. However, like in the case of Kate Chopin’s “A Pair of Silk Stockings” and the film Manchester by the Sea, the sort of vague — some may interpret it as abrupt — ending works in that it reflects real life. Life goes on even past the ending of a story, and in that sense no story is ever truly done. If anything, the ending proves how in a hopeless worker village, one atrocious day or act is just one of many. You must move on to the next problem because that’s the only option you have.
Only the Cat Knows is a crushing depiction of everyday life in Mao-era China. It teaches us of a world many of us have not had to live through and provides insight into modern China. Most of all, it does so sparingly, avoiding harsh judgment and refraining from falling into tropes of how the West views communist China. And in its refusal to provide judgment, we gain an understanding of how people during this time period got along by, as the protagonist’s brother in law would say, doing “their damn best” to survive a harsh environment.
Only the Cat Knows is available from Barnes & Noble, Bookshop, Eso Won Books, Garden District Book Shop, The Last Bookstore, and Skylight Books.
Audrey Fong is a writer, interested in food, coming of age stories, and Asian American narratives. She earned her B.A. in English from UC Irvine and is currently pursuing an M.F.A. in creative writing from Chapman University. She is the co-founder and co-editor of Soapberry Review.