Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress
June 11th 2006 07:24
This is almost a novella, very easy to read, fun and important and not at all a children's novel (as it's initial tone and size might suggest). Part coming-of-age story, part history, and part empassioned-ode to the power of storytelling... this is a simple, funny, bitter and moving story that can be read on several levels.
The story is told by an un-named protagonist (named as 'Ma' in the film version) who, alongside with his best friend Luo, has been sent to a remote Chinese village for 're-edutcation'. This is the Cultural Revolution, where Chairman Mao sought to root out elements of China that he felt threatened the current regime... various intellectuals were denounced, persecuted and imprisoned, and their children were sent to peasant villages to be re-educated (IE. used as a labour force). Ma and Luo are the sons of parents who have been labelled as enemies of the state and their chances of seeing their families again are very slim as a result. So they make the most of their time in their village, which is situated on a mountain known as 'The Phoenix of the Sky'.
Luo is a born story-teller, and is able to use his gift to entrance the villagers... soon the pair are able to buy exemption from various back-breaking tasks by telling stories that entertain the whole village. This in turn leads them to seek out more stories to tell and soon they get a whiff of a possible horde of banned western books, which they set about trying to gain access to at all costs...
The Little Seamstress of the title is the beautiful daughter of a rich and valued local tailor. Luo and Ma are entranced by her, and Luo begins an affair with her, seeking to educate her by re-telling the stories found in the classics... starting with Balzac. In order to do this, they educate themselves first by reading the novels in question, and through them we witness the power of a good piece of story-telling.
Here the re-education is twofold - the two boys are being re-educated by Chairman Mao so as to become tools of Communist China, meanwhile they are re-educating themselves and working against the system - learning to hate the oppressive nature of their world.
Working in tandem with this theme is a bitter and subtle examination of the flaws Chinese socialist system itself... we see up-close the hypocrisy of Mao's China, the ways in which exemptions and privileges can be bought, and the ways in which laws are dodged. One such sequence in the book makes the relations between the people and the law quite clear... we see how far people have to go to obey the system when some villagers are forced to drive a buffalo off a cliff in order to eat it, inadvertently mutilating the poor creature before killing it. Parrallels between this and the extremes our protagonists go to abound throughout the novel, and it's easy to see why Ma and Luo hate the system so much by the book's bittersweet end.
The structure is somewhat episodic but not without a fulfilling narrative. Where I expected predictability I instead felt surprise and satisfaction. Author Dai Sijie is a Chinese ex-pat and filmmaker who now lives in France... he himself underwent 're-education' in China during the early 70s, and I suspect that there are more than a few elements drawn from his own experiences to be found in this book and the various misadventures our protagonists bluff their way through. This is a very well-constructed and entertaining piece of literature, and a finer contemporary cheer for the cultural human spirit in the face of tyranny couldn't be found today.
I'm pretty sure the current edition of the book looks pretty much like this. My copy does anyway.
Luo is a born story-teller, and is able to use his gift to entrance the villagers... soon the pair are able to buy exemption from various back-breaking tasks by telling stories that entertain the whole village. This in turn leads them to seek out more stories to tell and soon they get a whiff of a possible horde of banned western books, which they set about trying to gain access to at all costs...
The Little Seamstress of the title is the beautiful daughter of a rich and valued local tailor. Luo and Ma are entranced by her, and Luo begins an affair with her, seeking to educate her by re-telling the stories found in the classics... starting with Balzac. In order to do this, they educate themselves first by reading the novels in question, and through them we witness the power of a good piece of story-telling.
Here the re-education is twofold - the two boys are being re-educated by Chairman Mao so as to become tools of Communist China, meanwhile they are re-educating themselves and working against the system - learning to hate the oppressive nature of their world.
Working in tandem with this theme is a bitter and subtle examination of the flaws Chinese socialist system itself... we see up-close the hypocrisy of Mao's China, the ways in which exemptions and privileges can be bought, and the ways in which laws are dodged. One such sequence in the book makes the relations between the people and the law quite clear... we see how far people have to go to obey the system when some villagers are forced to drive a buffalo off a cliff in order to eat it, inadvertently mutilating the poor creature before killing it. Parrallels between this and the extremes our protagonists go to abound throughout the novel, and it's easy to see why Ma and Luo hate the system so much by the book's bittersweet end.
Author Dai Sijie
The structure is somewhat episodic but not without a fulfilling narrative. Where I expected predictability I instead felt surprise and satisfaction. Author Dai Sijie is a Chinese ex-pat and filmmaker who now lives in France... he himself underwent 're-education' in China during the early 70s, and I suspect that there are more than a few elements drawn from his own experiences to be found in this book and the various misadventures our protagonists bluff their way through. This is a very well-constructed and entertaining piece of literature, and a finer contemporary cheer for the cultural human spirit in the face of tyranny couldn't be found today.
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