Why this book

Yu Hua wrote this sprawling, grotesque, tender epic to hold two Chinese eras in one breath — repression and excess — and it became a landmark of modern Chinese fiction, adored and argued over around the world.

The Story

Our tale begins in Liu Town with a disgrace. Baldy Li's father drowned in a public latrine, having fallen while spying on women — a filthy, ridiculous death. Therefore his young widow, Li Lan, carried a burning shame through the streets for years, her head always bowed.

But shame gave way to fortune. Li Lan married Song Fanping, a tall, strong, gentle schoolteacher who feared nothing, and he brought his own quiet son, Song Gang. Therefore two motherless-and-fatherless boys became brothers under one roof, and for a few bright years the household knew real joy.

Song Fanping was a giant in the boys' eyes. He could vault over hurdles, silence bullies, and lift the whole family with a single laugh. Therefore little Baldy Li and Song Gang worshipped him and believed, for a while, that their father was invincible and the world was safe.

But the Cultural Revolution swept in like a fever. Because Song Fanping's family had once owned land, Red Guards branded him a class enemy overnight. Therefore the gentle giant was dragged from his home, beaten, and paraded in a dunce's hat, and the boys' safe world began to crack.

Li Lan had gone to Shanghai for treatment, so Song Fanping set out to bring her home. But at the bus station the Red Guards fell on him again, and this time they beat him until he died in the dirt. Therefore the boys lost the only father who ever loved them.

Li Lan came home to bury her husband, and grief hollowed her out until her own health failed. But before she died, she joined the boys' hands and made them swear to remain brothers forever. Therefore Baldy Li and Song Gang, now orphans, had only each other left in the world.

Through those orphan years the brothers survived on scraps and stubborn loyalty. Song Gang always saved the larger portion for little Baldy Li, who swore he would repay it someday. Therefore their bond, forged in hunger, ran deeper than blood — which is why its later breaking would wound so cruelly.

The brothers grew up sharing one bed and one bowl, yet their natures split. Song Gang turned honest, gentle, and loyal, while Baldy Li turned brazen, greedy, and shameless. Therefore the same hardship that softened one brother hardened the other into a schemer with no fear of disgrace.

Then Baldy Li disgraced himself exactly as his father had. He was caught spying on women in the public latrine and hauled out by his belt before a jeering crowd. But the shameless youth felt no shame — he had glimpsed the town beauty, and that glimpse would rule his life.

The beauty was Lin Hong, and every man in town craved her. Baldy Li, having seen what no one else had, bartered his whispered descriptions of her for bowl after bowl of noodles. Therefore he grew notorious, and Lin Hong came to loathe the grinning oaf who had spied on her.

Remember the shape of it. Baldy Li wants Lin Hong and wealth above all else. Song Gang wants only a quiet, decent life. And Lin Hong wants nothing to do with the brother who shamed her — she is drawn instead toward the gentle one.

Baldy Li pursued Lin Hong without a shred of dignity, following her, proposing loudly, enduring every slap. But the more he chased, the more she recoiled. Therefore, desperate, he begged his own brother Song Gang to carry his love letters and plead his hopeless case for him.

But when Song Gang carried the letters, Lin Hong saw in the messenger everything the sender lacked — decency, warmth, restraint. Therefore she fell in love with Song Gang instead. The gentle brother, agonized, wed the woman his brother had craved, and Baldy Li's heart turned to cold stone.

Wounded and furious, Baldy Li swore off the brother he loved and, in bitter theatrics, had himself sterilized to prove he was finished with women and family. Therefore the two brothers, who had vowed at Li Lan's deathbed to stay together, now lived as strangers in the same small town.

Then China itself began to change, and Baldy Li changed with it. He took charge of a shabby workshop of the town's cripples and idiots, whom everyone else had written off. But under his shameless hustle, the little factory improbably started to turn a profit.

Baldy Li's schemes swelled from scrap metal to garments to grand deals. He failed loudly, borrowed wildly, and rose again each time. Therefore, as the whole nation chased money, the shameless peeping boy became the richest tycoon in Liu Town, master of everything he surveyed.

Yet at the summit of his fortune, Baldy Li was hollow. He owned the whole town but had no wife, no child, no brother who would even speak to him. Therefore when Lin Hong later drifted lonely into his orbit, the emptiest rich man in China reached for the one forbidden comfort left.

Meanwhile Song Gang and Lin Hong sank as Baldy Li soared. Song Gang lost his factory job and his lungs failed from dust and labor. But his stubborn pride refused every offer of help from his rich brother, and poverty pressed the gentle couple to the very edge.

So Song Gang made a desperate choice. He left town with a smooth-talking swindler named Zhou You to earn money on the road, peddling quack cures. Therefore the honest brother, to save his marriage, tied his fate to a con man and vanished for months into China's churning underbelly.

To sell breast-enhancement cream, Zhou You convinced Song Gang to get breast implants himself and become a walking display of the miracle. Therefore the loyal husband mutilated his own body for a swindle, all to send money home to Lin Hong — a sacrifice both absurd and unbearably tender.

In Song Gang's long absence, Lin Hong was lonely and Baldy Li was powerful, and the old craving and the old scorn dissolved into a secret affair. Therefore the wife of the gentle brother became the lover of the shameless one, and the deathbed vow lay in ruins.

Then Song Gang came home at last, his body broken but his heart still full of love. But he soon learned the truth of his wife and his brother. Therefore the one pure thing he had bled for — his marriage and his brotherhood — collapsed in a single, quiet, devastating moment.

Song Gang forgave them both in gentle farewell letters, wishing his brother and his wife happiness without him. Therefore he lay down calmly across the railroad tracks and let the train take him. The tenderest soul in the story chose to vanish so the others could live.

Song Gang's death broke the two who survived him. Lin Hong sank into running a brothel, hollow with guilt. But Baldy Li, richer than ever and emptier than ever, found no comfort — so he cradled his brother's ashes and dreamed of firing them into orbit, beyond this ruined earth.

What it means

The old town dissolved into a carnival of money and appetite. Baldy Li staged a national virgin-beauty contest that drew swindlers and schemers from everywhere. Therefore Liu Town became a grotesque mirror of a nation drunk on sudden wealth, where nothing was sacred and everything was for sale.

This is Yu Hua's verdict on modern China. Two brothers — one gentle, one grasping — shared a single history. An age of terror killed their father; an age of gold killed the gentle brother and crowned the shameless one. What a nation wins in wealth, it can lose in soul.

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