I finished Ghost Cities. I think I've been Siang'd. I know that 2025 with unreliable narrator is aging as well as roasts casted in gelatine moulds, but combined with #BadChinese as the over arching theme everything about this book that wouldn't have worked otherwise worked. Also, everything is artificial with the end goal of being seen as a creative genius. This is the point of the book. This is the book.
If you are expecting Lulu Wang's congruent clashing between cultures, this is not it.
It's two connected parallel stories.
One is a modern Australian urban fantasy with a mild flavour of Nightvale, from a perspective of someone whose understanding of modern China is entirely based on English edition of Wikipedia and YouTube, and every Chinese segment was google translate in the most awkward way possible.
Another is western fantasy with a mild flavour of chinoiserie. It was explicitly stated to be set in Jin Dynasty. At some point I think it forgot that it's meant to be set in Jin Dynasty.
It is a wild ride, and every mishap felt like an intentional hammering of Hashtag Bad Chinese. At one point the book talked about the perception of artists versus audience, and I think Siang has this dry awareness that had he been any less of a western tourist who committed to the superficial and reactive approach, while Kruger-Dunning its way into how to not do a social commentary. Had this book been even slightly more sincere, it would not be as well received by the English audience.
The English literature crowd demand arrogant unreliable narrator with a yellow face, and Siang/Xiang served and played them with just that, and scoring a Miles Franklin Literary Award along the way. He knew Australia need to feel smugness to look at a Hashtag Bad Chinese as Token Chinese, and good on him for playing that.
It will not give you the Disco Elysium or 石一枫 feel, the sense of seeing a mirror image of you that you hate, a vortex that drags you further and further away from something that remotely resembles a borderline functional human in a greater unfightable environment that devours you. Ghost Cities is the literary theme park, where Hashtag Bad Chinese is the ride the attraction the goofy in a fursuit.
It is so artificial. It is so delightful.
