My Beijing: Four Stories of Everyday Wonder

My Beijing: Four Stories of Everyday Wonder is a graphic novel by Nie Jun (translated by Edward Gauvin) published in 2018 by Graphic Universe. At a young age, the writer taught himself lianhuahua, traditional Chinese book type comprising a series of small, sequential drawings prototypical of the comic book. My Beijing emulates the comic book in a formal sense; there are one to five full-color graphic panels per page, each watercolor representing discrete scenes in the stories they relate. With the exception of a few editorial notes, the narration is the characters’ dialogue. My Beijing is a charming tale of family, simplicity, and the dreams of the individual within an urban landscape.

The principle characters include the young female Yu’er, who is physically disabled and uses a crutch to walk, which causes her to be ostracized by the occasional peers that figure in the stories. The other main character appearing in all four stories is her grandfather, “Grampa,” farcically corpulent and bearing the attire and attitude of a cheerful, working-class retiree who swells with pride at his family and memories of his younger days.

The stories—all set in Beijing—take place between the urban neighborhood of this inter-generational pair and fantastical settings imagined by the characters. The first story, "Yu’er’s Dream,” introduces the protagonist of the story’s title, who is excluded by her peers from a neighborhood swimming pool. Instead, her grandfather (who pushes her through their hutong—a traditional alleyway abutted by courtyard residences, a fixture of pre-modern northern China—in a wheeled cart) devises a plan that will allow Yu’er to swim despite her apparent inability to walk. He suspends her from a tree by a rope attached to her waist, using the tree’s branch as a pulley. As she hangs in mid-air, he gives her coaching tips from a book on swimming technique that he reads from his lawn chair in the courtyard. The neighborhood children gather to watch as Yu’er executes swimming strokes in mid-air. Then, when her grandfather falls asleep, she dreams that she is swimming—nay, flying—above rooftops, with the urban skyline creatively rendered in the background.

The second story, “Bug Paradise,” also begins with Yu’er’s exclusion by other children her age, whom she rebukes for dismembering a butterfly in the alley. This story, too, finds Grampa sleeping in his reclining chair in the courtyard while Yu’er struggles against the able-bodied children who mockingly challenge her to a game of soccer. An overweight but charming young boy comes mysteriously from up the alley. He threatens the other children, who beat him up, but eventually leave Yu’er alone. This boy proposes resuscitating the butterfly by putting him in a jar and bringing him to a “Bug’s Paradise,” a wild garden where various insects sing together in a chorus. After imaginatively enjoying this garden concert of insects, the boy tells Yu’er that his name is Doubao, and he gives her the butterfly in a jar before biking away. Yu’er wonders how he addresses her by name, but he is already gone, biking off in the distance. When Yu’er arrives home (traveling in a shopping cart), her grandfather awakens from a dream and claims to remember something about this “Bug Paradise” of which his granddaughter speaks. He also reveals that “Doubao” was his childhood nickname. Lest there be any doubt concerning the coincidence, the story closes with a vintage photograph of Grampa, unmistakably resembling the mysterious boy who came to Yu’er’s aid in her adventure to “Bug Paradise.”

The third story, “The Letter,” finds Yu’er riding on her grandfather’s back as they stroll through the city streets. Grampa sees an old green letter box and tells Yu’er that he used to be a mailman and collect stamps. As he shows Yu’er his stamp collection, his memories inaugurate a flashback that reveals Grampa wearing a full costume of a lime green to match the outmoded mailboxes of the urban street. His flashback explains that he used to deliver mail from all over China. Once, he found himself in possession of a unique stamp for which he needed a specific mate. When he saw a letter bearing such a stamp, he prepared to ask the recipient if he might reclaim the stamp for his collection. Upon delivering this letter, he saw that the recipient, too, loved the stamp and wanted its mate for herself. Grampa deferentially gives this young lady his stamp, and asks to visit once in a while to see the two as a pair. She agrees, and Grampa admits that this woman of the past is Yu’er’s late grandmother. Yu’er resolves to write her grandmother a letter, which she posts in the old mailbox. The closing panels show that the letter is indeed delivered (back in time), and Yu’er’s grandmother of the past reads this letter from her granddaughter, imploring her to be nice to the mailman.

The fourth story, “Kids at Heart,” showcases Yu’er and her grandfather alongside another older gentleman, an artist called Pumpkin. A foil for Yu’er’s grandfather, this man is a curmudgeon, embittered by the commercial failure of his artwork. When Yu’er’s grandfather asks Pumpkin to draw a diagram to instruct the neighborhood residents to recycle, Pumpkin is offended and storms off to a rooftop from which he falls and injures himself. Grampa rushes to his aid, bringing him to the hospital and even loaning Pumpkin his dentures so that he can eat an apple. The story closes with Yu’er becoming Pumpkin’s pupil in art. The two sit on a hilltop, painting the urban skyline.

These stories involve adventures in time travel, dreams, and boundless human imagination. My Beijing’s delightful illustrations and imaginative plot make for an endearing representation of a special girl who has an exceptional relationship with her grandfather.