Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress: A Novel

This book is wonderfully written and depicts a scene that is only recently becoming revealed to the West. While it was known that life was difficult in China and all the more so under Mao Zedong, not until recently was it known to what extent; how things seemed almost pointless in so many ways. 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.

And the problem? Why do so very few people read any serious works? And why do even a smaller subset of those read some old “fusty” classic? Like sex, if it is “forbidden,” it only heightens one’s interest. Mao Zedong initiated the Cultural Revolution in China in 1966. It was his response to the failure of his “Great Leap Forward,” which he commenced in 1958, in the hopes of rapidly industrializing the country, and featured, in part, Chinese peasants attempting to make steel in their backyards. The Cultural Revolution attempted to rid the society of bourgeois and foreign influences, and this included Western literature, such as that written by Honoré de Balzac. The author of this work, Dai Sijie, would live through this very difficult period. So would I! But, fortunately, outside China, and I remember the news reports as being very sketchy as to what was truly transpiring in the country. Dai Sijie provides confirmation that it was a very unpleasant time with society in a self-destructive mode, with enemies under every proverbial bed. Hum. Other societies have also been there. Dai Sijie would eventually be permitted to immigrate to France, in 1984. The novel opens in 1971. Luo is 18. The unnamed narrator is 17. Both have been uprooted from their homes in Chengdu, a city of four million people, which is the capital of Szechuan province, with a population of 100 million. They have been sent to a very remote mountain village, high on Phoenix of the Sky Mountain, which is accessible only by foot, for “re-education,” since they have been identified as members of the bourgeois class. Luo’s father is a dentist, and had worked on “the Great Helmsman of the Revolution” himself, Chairman Mao. That connection did not save him from a graphically described public humiliation in the stadium. The narrator’s parents are intellectuals of sort, teachers, and hence the (perhaps) one way ticket to Phoenix of the Sky Mountain. When they arrive, they are carrying a violin. The peasants have never seen one before, and are prepared to destroy it. Luo plays a sonata on it. Quick thinking, by calling the musical piece “Mozart is thinking of Chairman Mao” saved the instrument. It is a re-education, or, at least a different education. One of their assigned tasks is to carry the human and animal fertilizer (a/k/a fecal material) to the fields in baskets on their backs. Despite this, and other unpleasantness, they do manage to “game” the system fairly well, and are soon permitted to go to a neighboring town, see the movie, and provide a narration of it in the evenings to the villagers. In their travels, they meet another son of the bourgeois, aptly named “four-eyes.” They discover his cache of forbidden Western literature (in translation), with Balzac’s works being preeminent. And then there is the matter of love coupled with lust, for the most attractive young women in another village, a young seamstress whose father is one also, and most conveniently travels a lot. Luo wants to use the Western literature to “re-educate” the young seamstress out of her peasant origins. Dai Sijie stirs these elements into a page-turning story. This novel recalled Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books , which concerned another non-Western culture during a time of oppression, and a few people who would use Western literature as a sanity life-preserver. I felt that Dai Sijie did a much better job with this central theme. ‘Tis a shame, because I continue to like the idea of a “re-education” of sorts, more in the form of a highly incentivized form of “national service” whereby, in particular, the elites have a couple of years experiencing how the “deplorables” live. Admittedly, it did not work out very well during the Cultural Revolution, and the concept of “national service” has very little traction among the hustling elites who would be resentful of any break in their career moves, which would include reading Balzac. For Dai Sijie experience, and tales from the Cultural Revolution, with its positive side-effect of instilling a deep appreciation for the classics, 5-stars.

This book is a quick and beautiful read, detailing a brief span in the life of two Chinese youths who have been sent to a remote village to be "re-educated." The boys discover Western literature and the reader sees the almost magical effect it has on these two boys' lives and the no less profound effect it has on the object of their affections, the Little Seamstress. 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.

An extraordinary book by a gifted writer. My book club had such varying`interpretations'of this book and its meaning. This is what an excellent book creates.

I first read Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress more than a decade ago and bought this copy for my 17 year old son. It is a wonderful story told with care.

Very different and interesting. Worth a read.

It drew me in… I loved it! Highly recommend