Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by sarahe
Dream of Ding Village by Yan Lianke
3.0
A true (broadly) and tragic story about a village completely wiped out by the AIDS epidemic that followed the mass selling of blood... it's unbelievably awful, but rather difficult to get into as it reads like a (terrible) fairy tale, narrated unjudgementally by the deceased son of the chief bloodbuyer-cum-coffin-profiteer.
There is nothing romantic or heroic here (other than one central relationship, arguably) as most of the book is concerned with the villagers' preoccupations with saving face, the quality of their funerals and coffins, and having someone to look after you in the afterlife, plus said profiteering on a massive, state-supported scale. I think I am just too far away from Chinese peasant culture to understand what this is really saying about their situation (and/or the situation of a rapidly, messily modernising China). It all seems completely inhuman... people claiming (if not meaning) that they would be happy to get the fever too if it meant they could have a coffin of gingko wood. What am I supposed to think of that?
Still, compelling.
There is nothing romantic or heroic here (other than one central relationship, arguably) as most of the book is concerned with the villagers' preoccupations with saving face, the quality of their funerals and coffins, and having someone to look after you in the afterlife, plus said profiteering on a massive, state-supported scale. I think I am just too far away from Chinese peasant culture to understand what this is really saying about their situation (and/or the situation of a rapidly, messily modernising China). It all seems completely inhuman... people claiming (if not meaning) that they would be happy to get the fever too if it meant they could have a coffin of gingko wood. What am I supposed to think of that?
Still, compelling.