Seize the day

Author: Shan Sa

Year: 2005

I stopped by at Gramedia bookstore few days ago to bought Da Vinci Code as my birthday gift for my cousin. After walked around, I picked some books for myself. One of them was a novel by a young –if you consider that 33 years is way too far from old– writer: A Girl Who Played Go.

This 398 pages book can be resumed in three parts: first one about the Go girl then followed by a brief story about a young Japanese soldier while he was in China. The last part will be the one described the relation between those two people in 1936 when Japan occupied Manchuria.

Part One : The girl was a 16 years Manchurian school girl. She played go since she was 4 when her 8 year old cousin, Lu, taught her about how to played those black and white pebbles. She was the best player after Lu in their neighborhood. She played a lot game and won them all. Secretly, Lu had a crush on her. He wrote her some letters to express his desire. Having no special feeling, the girl turned him down for unspoken reason. She felt relieved when Lu finally left after the disappointment. She thought that Lu was in temporary lost and would get better soon. She would happily welcome him back after he recovered.

One day, Min –a college young man– and his best friend, Jing, saved her in a street chaos while the Liberation Movement people was fighting against the Japanese regime. Later she found out that the two young men joined Liberation Movement, too. Min was a lighthearted young man and captured the girl’s heart immediately; but Jing was kind of an introvert and unpredictable one. Few times she thought Jing had insulted her indirectly. The girl and Min made a couple then. At the end of a Jing’s birthday party, she saw Min was very close to his beautiful colleague who later found out had joined the movement. Her name was Tang. The Go girl was jealous and intended to go home earlier but Jing stopped her. Jing noticed that Min had abandoned her and told her that Min didn’t deserve such an interesting and special girl like her. After that moment, she realized that Jing was in love with her too. It was not that Min was better, actually he was not, but the combination of the two young men was so attracting to her. She wasn’t sure about love anymore since she enjoyed the two men’s attention at the same time. Losing one side would destroyed the whole attraction. Then she found out she was pregnant with Min’s child. Unfortunately, Min and some Liberation Movement members were sentenced to death. On the day they were executed, she saw Min and Tang kissed in seconds upon their death. She felt betrayed and decided to get rid of the fetus. Then Jing came and told her that Min and Tang had married in prison while they were waiting for the execution. Jing was able to escape from death by betraying his organization.

Confused and disappointed, she tried to continue her Go game in the square. Finally, there were two choices to run from her misery: accepted Jing’s invitation to come with him to Peking or tried to talk to her Go rival, a stranger she knew little by little each day they played. She asked the stranger to helped her but he said no. So she followed Jing and left her Go table in A Thousand Wind Square. There she left a stranger in waiting as well.

Part Two : The stranger was a young Japanese soldier. He was in an undercover duty. He was a good man but neither naïve nor “clean”. He slept with some geisha and many girls from the house. Even so, the unforgettable was a geisha named Sunshine. He was chosen to be the man in her mizuage, a moment when she would lost her virginity. He failed to do so due to his deep feeling for her. Then he cut a little part of his finger to make some blood mark on white cottons. He kept the secret to save the geisha from embarrassment. Despite the nights he spent with other women, Sunshine was the only one in his heart.

In the beginning of his undercover days, he met a girl who was self-playing Go in A Thousand Wind Square. Then they became rivals without knowing each other’s name; they just kept their promise to meet at certain time to play Go. The more they met the greater feeling grew silently in his heart. He didn’t know why but the girl reminded him of Sunshine. One day, he noticed that the girl had changed. She seemed sick and unhappy. He almost failed to prevent his hands from holding her. It hurt him so much to say “No” when the girl asked him to helped her –in broad of course helping her meant loving and protecting her like a Chinese man loves and protects a Chinese woman. A “Yes” meant he turned his back on his country and his ancestors. He had lost his love the moment he realized the girl was not coming to the square anymore.

Part Three : The contact between the two people began in Chapter 46. They knew each other through their steps and strategies in their Go board. So much the arrangement of the pebbles can tell you about the person who makes it. The girl learnt to trust her unnamed rival by giving a great attention to the pebbles positions on the board, by noticing his on time presence and his patient upon her lateness. But nothing could ever happen to them, the young soldier thought, since they were separated not only by land and country but also by history. Not knowing who he really was, the girl regretted that she left him in the square. Among all men she knew, the stranger was the one she knew best.
A tragedy in Peking ended their story. The girl was almost rapped by the Japanese soldier. The young Japanese soldier then recognized who she was and pretended to make the first shot. He was not able to helped her in the first time in the square but he had to do something to save her this time. His mother used to say that if he was to choose between death and fear, he should not hesitate : choose death. So when the soldiers started to yell and rush into the room, he decided to kill her then killed himself. Therefore, he had helped, loved, and protected her from further desolation.

Simple beautiful story. Touchy. As melo as custom oriental love stories which seldom ending up happily. I announce it has 9 of ten stars !!!

Rate: 9/10