Among the Chinese writers who participated in this year’s Macau Literary Festival, one of the highlights must be Yu Hua. Born on April 3, 1960 in Hangzhou, Yu grew up during the era of the Cultural Revolution. After the Chinese National Higher Education Entrance Examination was reinstated, Yu was unable to be admitted into universities, and became a dentist in a small town. This “dentist” was different from the dentist we know today, and it was a tough and boring job. Yu thus wanted to change his fate through writing.
In 1983, Yu started his journey of literary creation, and eventually gained a position in the Haiyan County Cultural Centre of Zhejiang Province. In 1987, Yu published his first work that made his name: Leaving Home at Eighteen, in the first issue of 《北京文學》(Beijing Literature). He then continued to write 《一九八六》(1986), 《現實一種》(A Type of Reality), 《河邊的錯誤》(A Mistake at the River Bank),《四月三日事件》(An Incident on April 3) and became a leading figure of Chinese Avant-garde literature, creating an avant-garde trend with other authors like Su Tong, Ge Fei and Sun Ganlu.
At the late 90s, Yu gradually changed his writing style to become more aligned with the traditional pragmatic style. Some critics say his work To Live is the sign of his transition. To Live was first published in the Chinese literary journal Harvest. It depicts the suffering of Xu Fugui when his close friends and families leave him one after another. It is about the relationship between a person, his fate and an era. The story covers the periods that were the most volatile in contemporary Chinese history, such as the Chinese civil war, the land reform, the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. It shows the suffering of the Chinese nationals and a search for, review and reflection on the meaning of life. Behind the title of the book is not the painful whining or raging of wrath, but a kind of forbearance, bearing with the fortune, suffering, boredom and indifference brought by life.
To Live has achieved huge success: It was one of the top 10 books chosen by China Times in 1994; top 15 books by the Hong Kong publisher Bok Jik; Best Foreign Fiction in the1998 Grinzane Cavour Prize in Italy; Bing Xin Literary Award in 2002; one of the a hundred best books in the centenary chosen by the Yazhou Zhoukan; and one of the 10 most influential books in the 1990s chosen by Chinese literary critics and editors.
As a major work during Yu’s transitional period, one of the most crucial changes in To Live is that the writer ceased using words that are obscure and instead adopted a simple writing style and constructed a dialogue style that is unique to Yu Hua.
Take a scene that depicts thousands of KMT soldiers frozen to death at night as an example. The depiction of death and the severity, cruelty, brutality, pain and fear that go with it was done in a cold way that is even somewhat elegant and brisk. This gives a feeling of absurdity and distance within the heaviness of death. This is also how Yu demonstrated an increasingly strong style and built the literary world of Yu Hua that is amazing and quirky
