The Fat Years

The novel is set in the near future of 2013, where China has entered a "Golden Age of Ascendancy," while Western nations have stagnated after a second economic crisis in early 2011. Lao Chen, a Hong Kong expatriate and writer living in Beijing, finds himself enjoying the atmosphere of prosperity and contentment. Though suffering from writer's block, he makes a modest living off renting apartments and attends monthly film screenings held at a restaurant owned by his friend Jian Lin (and attended by an insomniac Politburo member named He Dongsheng). Lao gradually find himself pulled into events by his old friend Fang Caodi, who is frantically searching for the missing month of February 2011 (with official records and public memory jumping from January to March), and his former flame Wei Xihong (known as "Little Xi"), a former public security bureau lawyer who now acts as an Internet activist.

Lao's feelings of contentment begin to vanish as he listens to Wei and Fang's partial recollections of February 2011 and discovers that any available literature about the Cultural Revolution and political issues of the 1980s (including the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989) are either highly sanitized or unavailable. Lao and Fang eventually follow Wei to the township of Warm Springs, where she is helping a house church negotiate with the local government. After Lao confesses his love to Wei, they return to Beijing.

After another film screening at Jian's restaurant, Lao is inadvertently pulled into a kidnapping of He Dongsheng by Fang, Wei, and Zhang Dou (an aspiring guitarist who also recalls February 2011), who are determined to understand the meaning of the missing month. After Dongsheng and the others agree their situation means they will "live or die together" (with Dongsheng's disappearance automatically throwing suspicion onto Lao, but Dongsheng admitting his kidnapping would throw cause suspicion of revealing state secrets), they begin to discuss China's present situation. Dongsheng explains that, with growing challenges to the Communist Party's legitimacy and authority, the decision was made in the midst of the financial crisis to enact his "Action Plan for Ruling the Nation and Pacifying the World." For one week, all government services and forces were forbidden to intervene without express permission, with widespread upheaval and rumor mongering only ending with the reentry of the People's Liberation Army and armed police. The restoration of order and ensuing crackdown helped cement the necessity of the Communist Party in the public mind.

Dongsheng further explains that the Chinese government was able to save their economy with intrusive measures such as the conversion of large percentages of national bank savings accounts to expiring vouchers; large-scale deregulation; strengthening property rights; crackdowns on corruption, counterfeit consumer goods, and "misinformation," and price controls (citing those by Walther Rathenau in World War I Germany and in World War II America). This is coupled with a foreign policy calling for a "Chinese Monroe Doctrine," with East Asia developing under Chinese direction; advocating non-interventionist economic cooperation and political stability in Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia; and even signing a non-aggression pact with Japan. Backing up these challenges to American hegemony is a new "first use" nuclear weapons policy. Dongsheng even reveals that the general atmosphere of contentment is due to the controlled addition of the drug MDMA into the public's drinking water and bottled drinks and that the missing month of February 2011 is simply a case of social amnesia.

After unsuccessfully arguing with Dongsheng over the benefits of liberal democracy, Fang, Zhang, Wei, and Lao release him and part ways in the early morning.

• Lao Chen: A writer living in Beijing, born in Hong Kong and a longtime Taiwanese resident. After studying in a Jamaican Catholic university and working in a New York Chinese-language newspaper, he returns to work as a reporter in Hong Kong and Taiwan. He becomes an author of some notability, though he finds himself unable by the time of the novel to make progress on his magnum opus. He makes a modest living off royalties and renting apartments in Beijing and Hong Kong.
• Wei Xihong: Also known as "Little Xi", she is a longtime human rights defender and a former public security bureau lawyer (after having resigned after the harshness of the 1983 Anti-Spiritual Pollution Campaign). She and her mother operated a Beijing restaurant named "The Five Flavors," a hotbed of political and social discussion through the 1980s. In the "Golden Age of Ascendancy", however, she finds herself isolated for her critical opinions of the government.
• Fang Lijun: Also known by his pen name "Fang Caodi", he is a longtime friend of Lao Chan. He was born in 1947 in Beijing and raised in a Taoist temple, his Nationalist father having fled to Taiwan and his Taoist mother dying in prison. After suffering for his family's reputation under the Cultural Revolution, he was allowed to travel to the United States as relations with China thawed. He lived for a time in a New Mexico hippie commune and worked at a Chinese restaurant on the East Coast, before moving to Nigeria and finally moving back to mainland China to travel through the west. He is searching for the missing month of February 2011, which he links to his reliance on asthma medications.
• "Big Sister Song:" The mother of Wei Xihong and proprietor of the current "The Five Flavors" restaurant.
• Wei Guo: The illegitimate son of Wei Xihong. An ambitious law student at Peking University, with ambitions of joining the Central Propaganda Department, he is also involved in the para-fascist SS Study Group.
• Jian Lin: A friend of Lao Chen, real estate entrepreneur, and restaurant owner with movie showings
• He Dongsheng: The cousin of Jian Lin and a Politburo member, who is ultimately shown to be behind the "Action Plan for Ruling the Nation and Pacifying the World."
• Zhang Dou: A former child slave laborer and aspiring guitarist. He is also aware of the month of February 2011 and the unusual behavior of people in the "Golden Age of Ascendancy."

• 2013 Jan Michalski Prize for Literature, finalist[5]

• Censorship in China