The Power of Tears and Self-Assertion: The Changing Meaning of Suffering in Binu and the Great Wall of China (2008)

Meng Jiangnü (which means the female firstborn) is a mythical character known for her tears. One of the versions of the legend depicts her as an ordinary married woman during the time of Emperor Qi, the first emperor of China. Her husband, like many other men of the time, was summoned to help build the Great Wall of China. When winter arrived, Meng Jiangnü feared that her husband did not have enough warm clothing and walked all the way to the building site to bring him winter clothes, only to discover that he had died. Her grieving tears caused a section of the Great Wall to collapse, revealing the bones of those who died in the labouring. She used her blood to identify the bones of her husband and gave him a proper burial. This story is one of the four great Chinese folklore tales. Though numerous versions and developments have occurred at different historical periods, the power of her tears in collapsing the Great Wall has remained a common feature. In 1999 a British publisher Canongate started a project of revisiting myths and invited global writers to re-present a myth of their choice for the twenty-first-century readers. Su Tong’s response to the invitation was Binu and the Great Wall of China, a re-imagination and re-configuration of the story of Meng Jiangnü for the new century. This contemporary Meng Jiangnü has a beautiful name, and her tears are not only tears of suffering. Rather, they represent the power of her will. Her long journey in search of her husband is a contemporary rite-of-passage, at the end of which she reclaims her husband’s identity from the painful anonymity of the many dead bodies. The chapter examines this re-telling and argues that Binu’s experience is a contemporary reflection on the meaning of suffering, through which the complexities of gender identity are revealed. What is of particular interest in this reflection is the relationship between mankind and nature, as seen in Meng Jiangnü’s interaction with her constant companion the frog, and how animal and human beings present themselves as beings in a continuum at different points of her journey. With this re-presentation of human–nature relationship, Su Tong’s tale of Meng Jiangnü turns suffering into a means of human connection.