Man in Tweed dot Com

Book 15

This post was written by Mike

The Corpse Walker: Real Life Stories, China From the Bottom Up by Liao Yiwu

My first non-fiction title of the year is a doozy. Liao Yiwu, a dissident poet, interviewed people from the bottom rungs of Chinese society to provide a glimpse of what their lives entailed. Think of him as a Chinese Henry Mayhew (which leads me to wonder where the hell my copy of London Labour and the London Poor is living as it is not on the bookshelves I’ve checked). He interviews those who lived through the Great Leap Forward and the subsequent famine, the Cultural Revolution, and the Tienanmen Square and Falun Gong crackdowns. He interviews the good, the bad, the persecuted, the villains, the saints. The life stories are heartbreakingly open and direct. These people tell the stories of what life was like during the craziness of these times in sometimes brutal detail. Although they are the dregs of society it is amazing how many of them were at one point in the highest regard. This is not to say he focuses on the persecuted. He interviews a man who specialized in kidnapping women and forcing them into slavery marriages. He interviews the so-called Peasant Emperor who attacked a hospital and made the nurses his concubines. He does not sugar coat his stories. Many people at the bottom of society are there for a reason.

Of all the interviews, “The Retired Official” struck me as startling. Despite the craziness, despite the zealotry, there were still those trying to make things work properly. If anything, people are more responsible for what happened in China than the Communist Party. In fact a surprising (to me) number of the people he interviews, despite the unbelievable levels of persecution they underwent, still do not harbour ill will towards the Communist party. Human corruption and zealotry overrides common decency and sense. This does not remove the Communist Party from attack but points out that many of those persecuted want the government to simply acknowledge what happened. They don’t want revenge, they want recognition.

I highly recommend this book. Rating: A+

Tags: 95 Books