Fugui Xu is born to a wealthy family in China toward the beginning of the twentieth century. Fugui is the typical rich reprobate as a young man - he has a wife, baby, and elderly parents, but this does not stop him from spending all his time in whorehouses and gambling halls. Fugui does not even bother to keep track of his losses until one night, when Fugui learns he has squandered his family's considerable fortune, land, and home. The family must now transition from a life of affluence to that of the poorest farmers. Before long, this devastation is revealed to be a blessing, however, when the revolution occurs and landlords are executed - Fugui is very aware that the man he lost his fortune to has been killed in his place. As communism is established and decades pass for Fugui who, despite the political and social upheavals of this time, is primarily concerned with his family. They face hardships and tragedy, wanting not their previous fortune or political power, but just to live.

Quote: "Fengxia would often pull me by the hand and ask, 'Dad, a table has four corners. If you shop off one corner, how many are left?' I don't know where Fengxia had heard this, but when I said three corners, Fengxia would smile ear to ear and laugh uncontrollably. She would say, 'Wrong! There are five corners left!'"

Grade: B+
Review: To Live is a classic work of the unrelentingly sad variety. The main character finds that when fate takes everything else away from you, living is enough. I liked this work because all though it is set in a political and historical context, the reader for the most part is only subtly aware of it - the context impacts the lives of the characters, but Fugui is not much concerned with communism or democracy or reform - he is concerned with the next harvest, not with who is in power in China. For a man living through the civil war between the Nationalists and the Communists, land reform, the Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution, Fugui has no political leanings to speak of. He does not generally blame his misfortunes on those in power, even when their choices impact him and his family so negatively, but rather chalks his circumstances up to fate. An interesting, fairly brief look at one man in China, living through (and despite), some of the biggest upheavals in the nation's recent history. ( )

A charming novel with depth that belies its simple prose and structure. Yu captures the tragedy and the determination of 20th century China through this story of a man who loses everyone he loves yet continues to press on with life. Zhang Yimou's movie also is compelling but the details and setting of the novel strike me as more authentic. Highly recommended. ( )

TO LIVE (Huozhe) in Chinese means "living continuously" with a connotation of "perseverance." It's a quintessential story of a man's poignant epic transformation that spans over four decades of modern Chinese history. Like Gao Xinjian's ONE MAN BIBLE, owing to its quasi-subversive and sensitive content that relentlessly exposes the faulty rule of the Communist Party, TO LIVE was originally banned in China at its first publication in 1992. The language of TO LIVE is cunningly simple but not without terrain. The overall backdrop of the novel is highly historical: it covers the Sino-Japanese War, the civil war between the Communists and the Nationalists, Liberation, the founding of People's Republic of China (beginning of Mao's reign), the land reform era, the Great Leap Forward (blind smelting of iron that led to famine), the Proletarian Cultural Revolution and modern reform.

Literature detailing the escape of Chinese dissidents and the turmoil during Proletarian Cultural Revolution flourishes, especially after the Tienanmen Square massacre in 1989. Stories of individual persecution under the red flag suddenly top most bestseller lists in the Western world. What really distinguishes TO LIVE from this literature and puts it among the pantheon of most influential modern Chinese literature is Yu Hua's sensitivity to the details of daily life and the verisimilitude of his delineation. Yu's writing makes an unerasable impression on Chinese people because the protagonist's experience provokes them to re-live the painful memories.

Fugui lives a most frivolous and extravagant life. He indulges in gambling, debauchery, and prostitution. His pregnant wife comes to the brothel to beg him go home with her. TO LIVE begins with a totally predictable lead that in less than a third way into the book Fugui would have squandered his family's fortune and settle into the honest work of a farmer. His turmoil as a poor farmer confirms the Chinese saying "calamities never occur singly." The Nationalist Army forces him to leave his family and fight against the Communists. In utter poverty and devastation after the civil war, Fugui family lives an even more austere life under the land reform policy. He is determined to make his son's life complete at the sacrifice of his daughter, a typical feudal practice. The Great Leap Forward, which renounces agricultural practice and mandates surrender of all pots for smelting iron. The result is the worst famine in Chinese history that people would kill for a sweet potato.

TO LIVE might have focused on Fugui's rebirth at the cost of life-and-death episodes against fate, poverty, and adverse social policies, but the heart of the novel is the undying hope for the better. Against the backdrop of his turmoil is the author's jest on the absurdity of a country that would blindly allow its political turmoil to cost lives of the innocent. The Cultural Revolution, which purged scholardsand banished them to be re-educated in the countryside, is said to have a profound effect on modern China for it pushed the country backward. The purging, the thought policing, the labeling, the parading, the public criticizing session are among the few tactics Yu depicts in TO LIVE.

TO LIVE is depressing to read. The protagonist's life, which is merely a tiny cross section of his generation during the time of the novel, is infused with hardships one after another, the incessant mourning and funerals, the horrors and ravages of a most ridiculous revolution that wrecked the nation apart.

http://mattviews.blogspot.com/2006/01... ( )