To Live by Yu Hua review

Yu Hua was first a dentist, but after getting tired of "looking into people's mouths" he started to write fictional novels in 1983. He writes mostly historical novels that describes the situation for the Chinese people during the war in the 1940s and the following occurences such as the Great Leap Forward (1958-60) and the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), which was the time when he himself grew up. His novel To Live (1992) was made into a film by the wellknown filmmaker Zhang Yimou. The movie was banned in China which gave the story attention internationally and has made Yu Hua a famous author worldwide.

A man is wandering around in the Chinese countryside to collect traditional songs and stories told by the people living there. He finds it a very lazy and relaxing task, when he goes from village to village sitting a whole day with a man eating melons and listening to an old woman singing while she's making shoes of straw. Sometimes it's difficult to separate one village from another; the children calls to each other: "Here comes that yawning man again!". The village people recognizes him as the man who knows all the romantic songs and dirty tales, things that he really has learnt from them in the first place. In this prologue the author invites the reader into the Chinese countryside, and it's easy to see the giggling girls working by the rice field and feel the taste of the farmers' bitter tea.

One day the wanderer meets an old man, working in the field with his ox. The old man starts talking to the stranger and ends up telling his life story for him. The wanderer gets to captured by this story that he can't leave until it's finished. To Live is the story of this old man's eventful life.

The old man's name is Xu Fugui, and his story begins in the early 1940s as a young and spoiled only son of a landlord. Young Fugui is the worst imaginable son. He's mean to his father, he spends all the time at the bordel and is rude to his wife right in front of the eyes of his father in law. His wife, Jiazhen is a kindhearted woman and never shows any anger towards her husband, although she comes to the bordel and tries to make him stop his gambling and come home. Fugui doesn't listen and ends up losing all his family fortune and all land they own. The family, Fugui and his wife, their two children and Fugui's mother, once lived a rich and good life but now have to face a future in poverty.

The man who Fugui lost all his fortune to, now is the landlord of the same land that was once property to Fugui's family. The man doesn't get to enjoy his wealth for long, though, when he gets shot for being a capitalist by Communist soldiers. Fugui gets smitten by what happens and realizes that if he still had been the landlord, that would have been his own fate. He decides to value his own life more.

The story about Fugui is a story about survival, family relations and hope in the middle of despair. It's also a story about hard work, and a good read for a young person like me who hasn't been have to fear for my life or fight for a half sweet potato to eat. To read To Live also gives a invitation to understand what happened to the people of China after Communism had taken control there. When I read this book I just couldn't put it away but had to continue finding out what happened to Fugui and how he ended up singing and ploughing with his old ox after all that happened.
/ [Easterling]

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