To Live

Just finishing Yu Hua's novel, To Live. This was Hua's first novel (1983) and inaugurates his continuing exploration of life among the poor in China in the years before, during, and after the Maoist revolution (see also Brothers and Chronicle of a Blood Merchant).  Though the narratives are set in a period ripe with political ideologies, the subject is simply the people, their struggle to survive, to raise families, to feed their children, to endure through storms of violence and deprivation--to live. Inspiring both laughter and tears, this novel is a masterpiece of storytelling and provides an intimate acquaintance with a culture that is both very different and yet much the same as our own, for we are all equally subject to these essential markers of human existence: desire, love, hardship, family, joy, sorrow, death, hope.

There is also a film version of this novel, and it, too, is quite good (probably because Hua supervised the writing). A few things were changed or added in the film, but the changes work out rather nicely. (The film received the Cannes Best Actor Award and the BAFTA award for best foreign language film). The film was made in China, but is available with English subtitles.