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Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress: A Novel Paperback – October 29, 2002
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Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress is an enchanting tale that captures the magic of reading and the wonder of romantic awakening. An immediate international bestseller, it tells the story of two hapless city boys exiled to a remote mountain village for re-education during China’s infamous Cultural Revolution. There the two friends meet the daughter of the local tailor and discover a hidden stash of Western classics in Chinese translation. As they flirt with the seamstress and secretly devour these banned works, the two friends find transit from their grim surroundings to worlds they never imagined.
- Print length184 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherAnchor Books
- Publication dateOctober 29, 2002
- Dimensions5.18 x 0.52 x 8.01 inches
- ISBN-100385722206
- ISBN-13978-0385722209
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“A funny, touching, sly and altogether delightful novel . . . about the power of art to enlarge our imaginations.” —The Washington Post Book World
“Poetic and affecting. . . . The descriptions of life in this strangest of times and places are so riveting that the reader longs for more.” —The New York Times Book Review
“[A] thrilling and . . . truly great work. . . . [A] richly complex fable.” —San Francisco Chronicle Book Review
“Gives the rest of the world a glimpse into that dark place where the human spirit continues, against all odds, to shine its light.” —The Boston Globe
“A wonderful novel . . . formed by detailed layering and exquisite craftsmanship, like a beautifully tailored garment.” —The Chicago Tribune
“Poignant, humorous, and romantic.” —The New York Times
“Seduces readers into its world. . . . [A] very wise little story of love and illusion.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer
From the Inside Flap
From the Back Cover
About the Author
He left China in 1984 for France, where he has lived and worked ever since. This, his first novel, was an overnight sensation when it appeared in France in 2000, becoming an immediate best-seller and winning five prizes. Rights to the novel have been sold in nineteen countries, and it is soon to be made into a film.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
The village headman, a man of about fifty, sat cross-legged in the centre of the room, close to the coals burning in a hearth that was hollowed out of the floor; he was inspecting my violin. Among the possessions brought to this mountain village by the two "city youths"-which was how they saw Luo and me-it was the sole item that exuded an air of foreignness, of civilisation, and therefore aroused suspicion.
One of the peasants came forward with an oil lamp to facilitate identification of the strange object. The headman held the violin upright and peered into the black interior of the body, like an officious customs officer searching for drugs. I noticed three blood spots in his left eye, one large and two small, all the same shade of bright red.
Raising the violin to eye level, he shook it, as though convinced something would drop out of the sound holes. His investigation was so enthusiastic I was afraid the strings would break.
Just about everyone in the village had come to the house on stilts way up on the mountain to witness the arrival of the city youths. Men, women and children swarmed inside the cramped room, clung to the windows, jostled each other by the door. When nothing fell out of my violin, the headman held his nose over the sound holes and sniffed long and hard. Several bristly hairs protruding from his left nostril vibrated gently.
Still no clues.
He ran his calloused fingertips over one string, then another . . . The strange resonance froze the crowd, as if the sound had won some sort of respect.
"It's a toy," said the headman solemnly.
This verdict left us speechless. Luo and I exchanged furtive, anxious glances. Things were not looking good.
One peasant took the "toy" from the headman's hands, drummed with his fists on its back, then passed it to the next man. For a while my violin circulated through the crowd and we-two frail, skinny, exhausted and risible city youths-were ignored. We had been tramping across the mountains all day, and our clothes, faces and hair were streaked with mud. We looked like pathetic little reactionary soldiers from a propaganda film after their capture by a horde of Communist farm workers.
"A stupid toy," a woman commented hoarsely.
"No," the village headman corrected her, "a bourgeois toy."
I felt chilled to the bone despite the fire blazing in the centre of the room.
"A toy from the city," the headman continued, "go on, burn it!"
His command galvanised the crowd. Everyone started talking at once, shouting and reaching out to grab the toy for the privilege of throwing it on the coals.
"Comrade, it's a musical instrument," Luo said as casually as he could, "and my friend here's a fine musician. Truly."
The headman called for the violin and looked it over once more. Then he held it out to me.
"Fogive me, comrade," I said, embarrassed, "but I'm not that good."
I saw Luo giving me a surreptitious wink. Puzzled, I took my violin and set about tuning it.
"What you are about to hear, comrade, is a Mozart sonata," Luo announced, as coolly as before.
I was dumbfounded. Had he gone mad? All music by Mozart or indeed by any other Western composer had been banned years ago. In my sodden shoes my feet turned to ice. I shivered as the cold tightened its grip on me.
"What's a sonata?" the headman asked warily.
"I don't know," I faltered. "It's Western."
"Is it a song?"
"More or less," I replied evasively.
At that instant the glint of the vigilant Communist reappeared in the headman's eyes, and his voice turned hostile.
"What's the name of this song of yours?"
"Well, it's like a song, but actually it's a sonata."
"I'm asking you what it's called!" he snapped, fixing me with his gaze.
Again I was alarmed by the three spots of blood in his left eye.
";Mozart . . . ," I muttered.
"Mozart what?"
"Mozart Is Thinking of Chairman Mao," Luo broke in.
The audacity! But it worked: as if he had heard something miraculous, the headman's menacing look softened. He crinkled up his eyes in a wide, beatific smile.
"Mozart thinks of Mao all the time," he said.
"Indeed, all the time," agreed Luo.
As soon as I had tightened my bow there was a burst of applause, but I was still nervous. However, as I ran my swollen fingers over the strings, Mozart's phrases came flooding back to me like so many faithful friends. The peasants' faces, so grim a moment before, softened under the influence of Mozart's limpid music like parched earth under a shower, and then, in the dancing light of the oil lamp, they blurred into one.
I played for some time. Luo lit a cigarette and smoked quietly, like a man.
This was our first taste of re-education. Luo was eighteen years old, I was seventeen.
B
a few words about re-education: towards the end of 1968, the Great Helmsman of China's Revolution, Chairman Mao, launched a campaign that would leave the country profoundly altered. The universities were closed and all the "young intellectuals," meaning boys and girls who had graduated from high school, were sent to the countryside to be "re-educated by the poor peasants." (Some years later this unprecedented idea inspired another revolutionary leader in Asia, Cambodian this time, to undertake an even more ambitious and radical plan: he banished the entire population of the capital, old and young alike, "to the countryside.")
The real reason behind Mao Zedong's decision was unclear. Was it a ploy to get rid of the Red Guards, who were slipping out of his grasp? Or was it the fantasy of a great revolutionary dreamer, wishing to create a new generation? No one ever discovered his true motive. At the time, Luo and I often discussed it in secret, like a pair of conspirators. We decided that it all came down to Mao's hatred of intellectuals.
We were not the first to be used as guinea pigs in this grand human experiment, nor would we be the last. It was in early 1971 that we arrived at that village in a lost corner of the mountains, and that I played the violin for the headman. Compared with others we were not too badly off. Millions of young people had gone before us, and millions would follow. But there was a certain irony about our situation, as neither Luo nor I were high school graduates. We had not enjoyed the privilege of studying at an institution for advanced education. When we were sent off to the mountains as young intellectuals we had only had the statutory three years of lower middle school.
It was hard to see how the two of us could possibly qualify as intellectuals, given that the knowledge we had acquired at middle school was precisely nil. Between the ages of twelve and fourteen we had been obliged to wait for the Cultural Revolution to calm down before the school reopened. And when we were finally able to enroll we were in for a bitter disappointment: mathematics had been scrapped from the curriculum, as had physics and chemistry. From then on our lessons were restricted to the basics of industry and agriculture. Decorating the cover of our textbooks would be a picture of a worker with arms as thick as Sylvester Stallone's, wearing a cap and brandishing a huge hammer. Flanking him would be a peasant woman, or rather a Communist in the guise of a peasant woman, wearing a red headscarf (according to the vulgar joke that circulated among us schoolkids she had tied a sanitary towel round her head). For several years it was these textbooks and Mao's "Little Red Book" that constituted our only source of intellectual knowledge. All other books were forbidden.
First we were refused admission to high school, then the role of young intellectuals was foisted on us on account of our parents being labelled "enemies in the people."
My parents were doctors. My father was a lung specialist, and my mother a consultant in parasitic diseases. Both of them worked at the hospital in Chengdu, a city of four million inhabitants. Their crime was that they were "stinking scientific authorities" who enjoyed a modest reputation on a provincial scale, Chengdu being the capital of Szechuan, a province with a population of one hundred million. Far away from Beijing but very close to Tibet.
Compared with my parents, Luo's father, a famous dentist whose name was known all over China, was a real celebrity. One day-this was before the Cultural Revolution-he mentioned to his students that he had fixed Mao Zedong's teeth as well as those of Madame Mao and Jiang Jieshi, who had been president of the Republic prior to the Communist takeover. There were those who, having contemplated Mao's portrait every day for years, had indeed noted that his teeth looked remarkably stained, not to say yellow, but no one said so out loud. And yet here was an eminent dentist stating publicly that the Great Helmsman of the Revolution had been fitted with new teeth, just like that. It was beyond belief, an unpardonable, insane crime, worse than revealing a secret of national security. His crime was all the more grave because he dared to mention the names of Mao and his consort in the same breath as that of the worst scum of the earth: Jiang Jieshi.
For many years Luo's family lived in the apartment next to ours, on the third and top floor of a brick building. He was the fifth son of his father, and the only child of his mother.
I am not exaggerating when I say that Luo was the best friend I ever had. We grew up together, we shared all sorts of experiences, often tough ones. We very rarely quarrelled.
I will never forget the one time we came to blows, or rather the time he hit me. It was in the summer of 1968. He was about fifteen, I had just turned fourteen. That afternoon a big political meeting was being held on the sports ground of the hospital where our parents worked. Both of us were aware that the butt of the rally would be Luo's father, that yet another public humiliation awaited him. When it was nearly five o'clock and no one had yet returned, Luo asked me to accompany him to the hospital.
"We'll note down everyone who denounces my father, or beats him," he said. "That way we can take our revenge when we're older."
The sports ground was a bobbing sea of dark heads. It was a very hot day. Loudspeakers blared. Luo's father was on his hands and knees in front of a grandstand. A great slab of cement hung round his neck from a wire so deeply embedded in the skin as to be invisible. Written on the slab were his name and his crime: reactionary.
Even from where I was standing, thirty metres away, I could make out a dark stain on the ground made by the sweat dripping from his brow.
A man's voice roared through the loudspeaker.
"Admit that you slept with the nurse!"
Luo's father hung his head, so low that his face seemed buried in the cement slab. A microphone was shoved under his mouth and a faint, tremulous "yes" was heard.
"Tell us what happened!" the inquisitor's voice barked from the loudspeaker. "Who started it?"
"I did."
"And then?"
A few seconds of silence ensued. Then the whole crowd screamed in unison: "And then?"
This cry, raised by two thousand voices, was like the rumble of thunder breaking over our heads.
"I started it . . . ," Luo's father confessed.
"Go on! The details!"
"But as soon as I touched her, I fell . . . into mist and clouds."
We left as the crowd of fanatics resumed their mass inquisition. On the way home I suddenly felt tears running down my cheeks, and I realised how fond I was of the dentist.
At that moment, without saying a word, Luo punched me. I was so taken aback that I nearly lost my balance.
In 1971 there was little to distinguish us two-one the son of a pulmonary specialist, the other the son of a notorious class enemy who had enjoyed the privilege of touching Mao's teeth-from the other hundred-odd "young intellectuals" who were banished to the mountain known as the Phoenix of the Sky. The name was a poetic way of suggesting its terrifying altitude; the poor sparrows and common birds of the plain could never soar to its peak, for that was the reserve of winged creatures allied to the sky: mighty, mythical and profoundly solitary.
There was no road to the mountain, only a narrow pathway threading steeply through great walls of craggy rock. For a glimpse of a car, the sound of a horn, a whiff of restaurant food, indeed for any sign of civilisation, you had to tramp across rugged mountain terrain for two days. A hundred kilometres later you would reach the banks of the River Ya and the small town of Yong Jing. The only Westerner ever to have set foot here was a French missionary, Father Michel, who tried to find a new route to Tibet in the 1940s.
"The district of Yong Jing is not lacking in interest," the Jesuit commented in his notebook. "One of the mountains, locally known as 'the Phoenix of the Sky,' is especially noteworthy. Famed for its copper, employed by the ancients for minting coins, the mountain is said to have been offered by an emperor of the Han dynasty as a gift to his favourite, who was one of the chief eunuchs in his palace. Looking up at the vertiginous slopes all around me, I could just make out a footpath rising from the shadowy fissures in the cliff towards the sky, where it seemed to melt into the misty air. I noted a small band of coolies making their way down this path, laden like beasts of burden with great panniers of copper tied to their backs. I am told that the production of copper has been in decline for many years, primarily due to the difficulty of transport. At present, the peculiar geographic conditions of the mountain have led the local population to grow opium. I have been advised against climbing it, as all the opium growers are armed. After harvesting their crop, they spend their time attacking anyone who happens to pass by. So I content myself with observing from afar this wild and lonely place, so thickly screened by giant trees, tangled creepers and lush vegetation as to make one expect to see a bandit leaping from the shadows at any moment."
The Phoenix of the Sky comprised some twenty villages scattered along the single serpentine footpath or hidden in the depths of gloomy valleys. Usually each village took in five or six young people from the city. But our village, perched on the summit and the poorest of them all, could only afford two: Luo and me. We were assigned quarters in the very house on stilts where the village headman had inspected my violin. This building was village property, and had not been constructed with habitation in mind. Underneath, in the space between the wooden props supporting the floor, was a pigsty occupied by a large, plump sow-likewise common property. The structure itself was made of rough wooden planks, the walls were unpainted and the beams exposed; it was more like a barn for the storage of maize, rice and tools in need of repair. It was also a perfect trysting place for adulterous lovers.
Product details
- Publisher : Anchor Books (October 29, 2002)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 184 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0385722206
- ISBN-13 : 978-0385722209
- Item Weight : 6.2 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.18 x 0.52 x 8.01 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #20,272 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #54 in Censorship & Politics
- #136 in Cultural Heritage Fiction
- #2,096 in Literary Fiction (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
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Customers find the book very educational and real. They describe the writing style as wonderful, amusing, and intensely real. Readers also describe the book as a quick, exquisite, moving, and fun read. They say it's a beautiful gem and well worth your time. Customers also mention the entertainment value as lovely, truthful, and romantic.
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Customers find the book style beautiful, great, and charming from page one. They also appreciate the nice cultural depictions, sweet characters, and vivid imagery.
"...The book is truly a terrific one, and it reads quickly, but it's point lingers long after the read is finished. It is highly recommended." Read more
"...Sijie blends humor, romance, and beauty together to create a book that is unforgettable and impossible to put down...." Read more
"...The book itself is a treasure, with beautifully printed jacket pages and a grippping cover photography..... this book is simple and short, but will..." Read more
"...The one good thing about the book was that it had nice cultural depictions...." Read more
Customers find the book lovely, fascinating, and suspenseful. They also say it has happy moments and times they feel bad for the characters. Readers say the story isn't oppressively literary and gives a vivid feeling for the era. They mention that the book is historical worthwhile and there is romance.
"Set during the re-education of the Chinese well to do, this little novel is breath taking...." Read more
"Had some informative and thought provoking passages." Read more
"...You also get a very raw and truthful look back in time, to how it was for young adults in China during the Cultural Revolution...." Read more
"...It’s beautiful, it’s romantic, and it can be sad. It has its happy moments and times you feel bad for the characters. It’s beautifully written too!..." Read more
Customers find the writing style wonderful, poetic, and descriptive. They also say the young men in the story are likable and intensely real.
"This book is wonderfully written and depicts a scene that is only recently becoming revealed to the West...." Read more
"...The book itself is a treasure, with beautifully printed jacket pages and a grippping cover photography..... this book is simple and short, but will..." Read more
"...However, this book was written so wonderfully well. The romance was a side story, true, but it was written with sensitivity and realism...." Read more
"...It’s beautifully written too! I highly recommend reading this book!!" Read more
Customers find the book very educational, rich, and deep. They also say it keeps them engaged and inspires them with its power to fuel the mind. Readers also mention that the book provides an interesting view of another culture.
"Had some informative and thought provoking passages." Read more
"...This is another good book club read- there are a number of interesting ideas about the impact of literature on human lives." Read more
"...and not overwhelmingly difficult for them, but at the same time rich and deep...." Read more
"...Personally, I found the narrative to be quite dry and uneventful; there were only a few isolated instances where the story would have quick climaxes...." Read more
Customers find the book easy to read and say it's an exquisite, moving, and fun read. They also say it came really fast.
"...The book is truly a terrific one, and it reads quickly, but it's point lingers long after the read is finished. It is highly recommended." Read more
"..." Read more
"A good, quick read about two young boys who are best friends sent for "re-education" into the deep rural provinces of China...." Read more
"...A slice of life the featured characters of the story endured.A quick read with an ending that put a smile on my face" Read more
Customers find the book short, fantastic, and simple. They also say the book itself is small and thin.
"...jacket pages and a grippping cover photography..... this book is simple and short, but will leave you with a lot to talk about once it is finished...." Read more
"I enjoyed reading this book. The book itself is small and thin and for someone who hasn't read a book in a while easy to get into...." Read more
"...This is a short book, and was an enjoyable quick read, although parts of the ending still mystify me...." Read more
"...It is short and not overwhelmingly difficult for them, but at the same time rich and deep...." Read more
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The Revolution took on meaning for Mao in such a way as to try to purge the country of anything 'Western.' But this book shows, that what he did was really nothing, with respect to what he wanted. All he did was to rid the country of speaking about how people are people everyday and all of their lives.
In a sense, we see much the same in Gao Xingjian's Nobel Prize winning "Soul Mountain." A journey is undertaken. Many things are encountered, yet they are on such a basic and visceral level. Probably because in most of China, that is all there is, abject poverty, party officials, and little villages clustered around mountains.
How different is the culture of those living in a primarily agrarian society than living in a 'virtual' society. How the concept of making food for the day is no longer something people of the 'West' even consciously think about, mostly, they just think about getting it and eating it. Here the reader is faced with a very different type of life, and a very different type of education or re-education as the case may be.
Whatever it may be, the objective of re-education was never realized, because the objective was to change human beings into something that they were not. This attempt was bound to fail from the beginning. And here we see another example of its failure. Western literature reflects societal values and events. They are human events. They will happen in any society. No attempt by any despot to change human nature will succeed. Human nature can only be changed by humans, perhaps one person at a time, but not by anyone other than themselves.
Sijie's book makes that point poignantly, and with great aplomb. The book is truly a terrific one, and it reads quickly, but it's point lingers long after the read is finished. It is highly recommended.
Falling victim to the down to the countryside movement, the narrator and his best friend Luo are forced to relocate to a remote mountain village, where they encounter the Little Seamstress. Sijie’s depiction of an “uncultured” young Chinese girl who eventually comes to the realization of her infinite potential drives the book to themes of independence, trust, and self reliance.
However, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress wouldn’t be complete with only a plot of societal rebellion under a Communist rule. Luo makes it his goal to educate the uncultured Little Chinese Seamstress, ultimately hoping to give her a more profound sense of independence. Stringing together a series of thoughtful and surprising scenes, from their recent possession of books, the boys and the Little Seamstress quickly find themselves presented with possibilities they never knew existed.
Making allies with “Four-Eyes'', one of the few youths selected to live in the city, the boys dangerously obtain a copy of Urusle Miroet. However, their quest to educate and impress the Little Seamstress through literary knowledge, as well as their desire to rebel against the dominating CCP doesn’t even come close to an end here. Encouraged by the Little Seamstress, the group steals the books Four-Eyes has in a hidden suitcase, ultimately casting a series of suspenseful scenes, all falling under the prominent theme of rebellion.
The novel’s pages then darken, following the narrator’s realization that Luo has impregnated the Little Seamstress. Knowing that abortion is illegal and that the little Seamstress cannot receive help from a midwife, the novel shifts the reader’s view to fear, doubt, and anger. Sijie’s choice to include this subplot circles to the prominent historical themes of this book, while also offering readers a more specific view of the utter autocracy that possessed China. Even though the description of the narrator’s optimism is encouraging, the totalitarian setting in China remains fully represented nonetheless. By incorporating a tyrannical government into the novel, the predictable prince and pregnant princess story is immediately demolished, leaving readers a remaining thirty pages of surprising and unpredictable scenes.
The book then resumes its theme of independence with the Little Seamstress abruptly leaving the seemingly inescapable village to have a life in the city. Knowing that a nuanced level of culture and education now resides with the Little Seamstress, she discerns that her potential is being limited by her life on the mountain. While impacted on an emotional and educational level from her acquisition of books, it is ultimately Luo and the narrator’s appreciation of the Little Seamstress that leads her to the revelation that her beauty is something of great value. Ironically it is Luo’s desperate efforts to “culture” the Little Seamstress that become the reason she leaves the mountain, ultimately stunning readers on one final note.
While this novel can be viewed from both moral and psychological standpoints, by casting three characters whose lives are controlled by the Chinese Government, Sijie makes an undying attempt to provide readers a view of the more dominant historical components of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. For anyone who has even the slightest amount of interest in Chinese culture, a story of friendship crossed with love, or the totalitarian government run by Mao Zedong, this book will not disappoint.
The story is told almost entirely from the perspective of the unnamed narrator except for the pivotal moment in the story, which is told from the perspective of the multiple participants in the scene. The ending is a bit unexpected, but then again, given the liberating power of literature, it is not a total surprise that Little Seamstress undergoes a metamorphosis and leaves her cocoon. As heartbreaking as it is for the boys, if she had stayed where she was it would be almost like a betrayal to the liberating ideas she learned through Balzac.
Sijie blends humor, romance, and beauty together to create a book that is unforgettable and impossible to put down. It is lamentable how short-sighted and misguided China's "Cultural Revolution" was, and it is amazing that Sijie could spin this touching of a tale from that hard and unforgiving period. "Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress" is a must read.
Top reviews from other countries
Das Buch gibt es auch auf deutsch und für Leute mit wenig Zeit auch als Film, bei dem der Autor auch Regisseur war.