Plot
Set four years on from the events of Shanghai Baby, Marrying Buddha continues the story of Coco, a writer from Shanghai, now aged 29. The plot intersperses Coco's adventures in New York, and later in Madrid, Barcelona and Buenos Aires, with her journey in China from Shanghai to the Buddhist monastery on Mount Putuo, (Putuoshan).
In New York, Coco meets a Japanese-Italian documentary filmmaker named Muju, and after a short romance moves in with him. Muju is a divorcee with strict ideas about women's roles and behaviour. He prefers his girlfriends, for example, to be competent cooks and willing to demonstrate their expertise for him. Coco, who cannot cook, finds it difficult to adapt to life with Muju. After a few months, Coco meets another man, the all-American Nick. When she travels to Spain without Muju, she resists embarking on an affair with Nick, who coincidentally visits the same cities and stays in the same luxury hotels as Coco. In Buenos Aires, Coco and Muju meet again, but Muju is disappointed with what he feels is Coco's snobbery and arrogant, self-centred behaviour. The two argue, and soon after returning to New York, Coco travels home to Shanghai without knowing whether she and Muju are still lovers.
In Shanghai, after resuming her old, pleasure-filled life, Coco travels to the place of her birth, Mount Putuo, where she spends time with an elder in a Buddhist monastery. Later, Nick pays a surprise visit to Coco in Shanghai, and Coco finally relents and sleeps with him. After he leaves, Muju pays a surprise visit to Coco in Shanghai, and Coco sleeps with him, too. Shortly afterwards, Coco learns she is pregnant, but she does not know who is the father, Muju or Nick.
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“Ends in themselves, my letters plot no change;
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Aspire, astound, establish or estrange.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. “The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. The time sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it.”
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“If you need a certain vitality you can only supply it yourself, or there comes a point, anyway, when no one’s actions but your own seem dramatically convincing and justifiable in the plot that the number of your days concocts.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)