China in Ten Words

In this essay, Yu Hua recounts his early experiences with reading, dividing them into four distinct sequences that span his childhood and adolescence during the Cultural Revolution. Growing up in a time when and a place where books were scarce and heavily censored, Yu Hua’s love for reading developed under unique and challenging circumstances. He describes the impact of the Cultural Revolution on literature: Most works by foreign and Chinese authors were labeled as “poisonous weeds” and destroyed in book burnings (37). Despite this harsh environment, Yu Hua’s passion for reading persevered, and he found ways to access books and share them with his friends and classmates.

The first phase of Yu Hua’s reading journey began in 1973 when the town library reopened after being closed for several years. However, due to the extensive book burning during the Cultural Revolution, the library’s collection was severely depleted, offering only a handful of titles deemed acceptable by the authorities, mainly works of “socialist revolutionary literature” (37). Undeterred by the dry and ideologically driven content of these books, Yu Hua read them all, motivated by a deep hunger for any form of written story. He compares his situation to that of a starving man who isn’t picky about his food, emphasizing the scarcity of reading material available to him at the time. Yu Hua also recounts an incident involving his brother, a Red Guard, who threw a book at the librarian and hit her for questioning them about an ink spot on a returned book, highlighting the tense and volatile atmosphere of the period.

The second phase involved reading “poisonous weeds”—books by foreign authors such as Shakespeare, Tolstoy, and Balzac, as well as works by Chinese authors which had managed to escape destruction during the Cultural Revolution. These books circulated secretly among Yu Hua and his friends, often in incomplete form, with pages missing at the beginning and end. Yu Hua describes the frustration and despair he felt at not knowing how the stories ended, as well as the creative lengths he and his friends went to in order to track down the missing pages or invent their own endings. He recounts the experience of reading his first foreign novel, Dumas’s La Dame aux Camélias, which he and a classmate painstakingly copied by hand overnight to ensure that they both had a complete version.

The third phase of Yu Hua’s early reading centered on the unique phenomenon of big-character posters, a form of public communication that emerged during the Cultural Revolution. Initially used for political propaganda and the promotion of revolutionary ideology, these posters gradually shifted to include personal attacks, rumors, and scandalous revelations as the Cultural Revolution progressed and tensions between rival factions escalated. Yu Hua became engrossed in reading these posters, particularly those with sexual content, which he eagerly shared with his friends. He describes the excitement and titillation they felt at discovering these snippets of private life amid the political slogans and revolutionary rhetoric, as well as the efforts they made to track down the individuals mentioned in the posters and observe them in person. Yu Hua also recounts his discovery of a book on human anatomy in his parents’ medical collection, which contained detailed illustrations of the female reproductive system. This book became a source of intense fascination and excitement for Yu Hua and his classmates, who took turns sneaking into his parents’ room to pore over its contents.

The final phase of Yu Hua’s early reading began in 1977, after the Cultural Revolution ended and the ban on previously prohibited books was lifted. He describes the scene outside the local bookstore, where people lined up overnight to obtain coupons that would allow them to purchase classic works by authors such as Tolstoy, Balzac, and Dickens for the first time in years. The atmosphere was one of intense anticipation and excitement; people eagerly discussed which books they hoped to buy. Despite not managing to secure a coupon himself, Yu Hua sees this moment as a turning point in his literary education, marking the beginning of a new era of abundance and accessibility in Chinese publishing. He reflects on the stark contrast between the scarcity of his early reading experiences and the overwhelming variety of books available in China today, where he has witnessed bundles of classics being sold off for mere pennies at book fairs.

Throughout the chapter, Yu Hua reflects on the profound and lasting impact that reading has had on his life, both personally and as a writer. He describes the sense of transportation and emotional connection he feels when reading great works of literature, and how these books have become an integral part of his identity and experience. Yu Hua also shares a childhood memory of finding solace in the hospital morgue during the sweltering summer months, where he would take naps on the cool concrete slab meant for the deceased. Years later, this memory was suddenly evoked by a line from a Heinrich Heine poem, “[d]eath is the cooling night” (61).