Jasmine, a friend of mine, has long counted Yu Hua as her favorite writer. When we were students, he came to our campus to give a talk. She tried to drag me along. I did not read much then and had no idea who Yu Hua was, so I had no interest. She went by herself, peeked in from the doorway, and came back. Years later she still mentions it with a trace of regret. I regret not going with her.
To Live is not a thick book—under two hundred pages. Its language is lean, but the story is full. It stretches from the end of the War of Resistance against Japan through the civil war, land reform, the Great Steelmaking campaign, the famine of 1959, the Cultural Revolution, and the household responsibility system. Across those years, Fu Gui is tossed around and forced to struggle.
People say that readers start crying somewhere in the book because the characters' lives are so wretched. I did not cry, though parts of it left an ache. I understood that people like this were everywhere in those years. Fu Gui's family is not even the worst off. They were at least not caught up in the Three-Anti and Five-Anti campaigns or the Cultural Revolution in the same way, and they kept some human dignity. By the logic of the time, a man who had been a landlord and a puppet soldier should not have slipped through so many campaigns so easily.
The losses come one after another. Fu Gui gambles away the family property and drives his father to death. Only then does he feel remorse. His family has to share his punishment, moving from fine clothes and good food to work in the fields. His young daughter's innocent remarks are painful to read. Yet I did not feel much sympathy for him in this part. A gambler who ruins his family has only himself to blame, and plenty of people are born poor peasants. While reading, I thought that losing the land might actually be good luck; before long, landlords would suffer. Sure enough, Long Er, the man who cheated Fu Gui out of the property, is later executed.
His conscription is almost comic. A boy tricks him into knocking on the door of the county office, he gets into a fight with the man who comes out, and the press gang grabs him. On the battlefield he does not do much—he fires no gun and aims no cannon; mostly he scrambles for food.
His daughter is born into a wealthy household and ends up a peasant's child. At first she does not understand the change. Then a fever leaves her deaf and mute, a permanent disability. The family is too poor to keep her, so they give her away, a section that is hard to read. She eventually marries a man with his own disability, and dies in childbirth from heavy bleeding.
His son is obedient and sensible, taking on a great deal of farm work. To keep his shoes from wearing out, he carries them and walks barefoot to and from school every day. When the school organizes a blood donation, he runs up first, eager and happy, afraid that he will not get a turn. The doctor, callous, draws too much blood and kills him.
His wife, Jiazhen, develops a strange 'soft bone disease,' which the book attributes to years of hard labor. She had been a rich man's daughter and a Republican-era schoolgirl, educated and courteous, never one to quarrel. When she first married Fu Gui, he was out gambling, drinking, and chasing women; later the family declined and she shared the hardship. She is hardworking, long-suffering, and good at managing the household—a good woman. Still, I always felt she lacked a certain fighting spirit.
His son-in-law is honest and kind to his wife and her parents. After his wife dies, he alone carries diapers and the baby on his back while he works. He manages to raise the child to four, then dies in an accident. The grandson is also obedient and sensible. Small as he is, he goes to cut rice in the fields. At seven he falls ill and later eats too many beans and dies.
One by one, everyone close to Fu Gui dies. In the end he is alone. After all he has seen, he has made his peace with it and accepts his fate.
I have the life I have. When I was young I lived off the money my ancestors left and had a good spell, and afterward I went further and further downhill. That was better, really. Look at the people around me—Long Er and Chunsheng. They had their good spells too, but in the end they lost their lives. It is better to be ordinary. People fight over this and that, and after all that fighting they lose their own lives. People say I have gone from bad to worse, but I have lived a long time. Everyone I knew died one after another, and I am still alive.
The novel moves quickly. There is no padding and no dragging. It manages both concrete detail and inner psychology, and it follows a straight line without chapter breaks. It reads in one breath, smooth and natural. Among Yu Hua's books, I think this is the one with the strongest story, the strongest literary quality, and the highest artistry.