Reading Yu Hua's "To Live"

[imron]

I was also thinking about 《狼图腾》

I didn't like this that much. It started out well, but then I lost interest in it quite quickly, and towards the end I found it really dragging on. I would also put the difficulty level quite a bit above《活着》and it's about 4-5 times the length so it's also not something that will be as accessible for people who don't have much reading experience behind them. For comparison 《圈子圈套》is about double the length of 《活着》(but a significantly easier read).

[Gleaves]

Quite agonizing at times, but also a beautiful book. I really enjoyed it. I plan to go back and listen to the whole thing, maybe reading along as I go, but will probably hold off on that for a bit.

It did feel a little over the top to have killed everyone off, but I started to expect it given the tone of the book. My favorite bits, unsurprisingly, were the few bright spots. I loved when 二喜 walked out of dinner, barely saying goodbye, only to come back and work on the house. My least favorite part was probably when the doctor asked why he didn't have more sons, even before letting him know his only son was now dead.

In terms of difficulty - I didn't breeze through this book, but it was definitely accessible, especially for literary fiction. It was a notch tougher than most of the pop fiction I have read recently. I liked the style, it was simple and direct.

I'll definitely come back to 余华. Any suggestions? I have heard mixed things about 兄弟. China in Ten Words looks interesting. I get the impression most of his stuff is worth a read.

[imron]

I'll definitely come back to 余华. Any suggestions? I have heard mixed things about 兄弟

I'd probably take a look at 《许三观卖血记》which is quite similar to 《活着》in terms of difficulty, but slighly longer. I've also read 《在细雨中呼喊》but didn't like it that much. It jumped around too much and was a bit tricky to follow in parts.

Regarding《兄弟》I thought it was good, however I liked《兄弟》(下) far more than I liked 《兄弟》(上). However you really need to read 上 in order to appreciate 下, and 上 takes a while to get beyond perving at female bums in public toilets. I would also rate it as more difficult than《活着》so it might be worth waiting until you've read a few more books and are quite comfortable reading stuff at the《活着》level before starting it (otherwise you might yourself giving up on it).

[Gleaves]

Thanks. I'll pick up a copy of 《许三观卖血记》 for when the mood strikes. I think I will grab 《十個詞彙裡的中國》, too, since I just read a few good reviews.

[edelweis]

I finished the book yesterday. Regarding the events of the last part of the book, I agree with jkhsu that they are not as moving as the rest, perhaps that's because the main theme of the book is the harm people do to other people...

福贵 does not beat himself up about those accidents as much as he does over his behaviour to his family in earlier years. He also can't blame someone else as in the case of 有庆. In my opinion those last few deaths do have a purpose in the storyline, they made 福贵 a lonely man who thinks constantly about his dead family, speaks their names daily to his ox, and therefore will tell all about them to the 1st narrator.

[jkhsu]

Congrats. Looking forward to the next book. Are you in?

[edelweis]

Is that 圈子圈套 ? I will give it a try at least. I can't see how the plot could be easier to follow than 活着 so it will probably be harder, but on the other hand it has an IT theme and less drama so... could perhaps slowly plough my way through it

[jkhsu]

Is that 圈子圈套

Yeah, that seems like the best choice based on imron's suggestion. I'm ok with waiting a bit for daofeishi and other's who haven't finished "To Live" to join in. Does sometime in December sound ok with people? Anyone else interested?

Also, regarding the ending. I watched the movie a long time ago and totally forgot most of it but recently read the wikipedia and imdb entry for it. I realized that the ending for the movie is vastly different from the book and more "hopeful" I think.

Wikipedia link for the movie:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Live_(film)

imdb link for the movie:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110081/synopsis

[imron]

Does sometime in December sound ok with people?

That will make it book of the month in both December 2010 and 2011

[edelweis]

That's fine with me (but given the length of 圈子圈套, it might become Book of the Term for me at least).

@jkhsu thanks for the links. Even though it has a happier ending, the movie seems more explicitly political... might explain why it was banned.

Edit: I mean, to me the book does not really criticize the communist party more than the Kuomintang, it takes care to blame the weather for the famine, and it does not show the old land owners in any particularly good light. It's more an account of how people hurt each other, whatever their political convictions or lack thereof. The ruling party just has more opportunities for doing that...

[Gleaves]

I found 圈子圈套 a little bit easier than 活着, mostly because of the modern setting I think。 There is some specialized IT vocab, but it is not too bad.

[Areckx]

okay maybe I'm completely lost here... the link at http://www.youshengw...ontent/878.html has 171 different chapters... and they seem to all be hour-long broadcasts from some program called EBC, chapter 1 apparently being http://www.youshengw...o/?878-0-0.html which seems to have a bunch of advertisements for the first 7 minutes, and when a guy started reading, it didn't correspond to the links to the online book at http://book.kanunu.o...5/0716/375.html

Am I just completely lost???

EDIT: Why didn't you just link to the book? http://www.youshengw...ntent/1287.html

EDIT: Woah this is difficult to read along. I think I'm going to have to just listen to it a lot every day, and pick at the text with http://mandarinspot.com/bookmark

[Gleaves]

Strange, I'm pretty sure that link to the audio previously worked for me, but definitely points to something else now.

[BertR]

EDIT: Why didn't you just link to the book? http://www.youshengw...ntent/1287.html

Because they obviously changed the contents of these webpages. Before the book was on http://www.youshengw.com/Content/878.html

I'll correct the links in my previous posts.

[Areckx]

That's what I was thinking. I guess those Chinese websites change around a LOT, huh?

[xuexiansheng]

I know I'm late to the reading party, but I just read the 1st few pages today. I'm looking forward to this, my 1st Chinese novel!

[imron]

Not to worry, all it means is now there are plenty of other members around who have read the book and can help out with questions

[xuexiansheng]

Woohoo! I finished the 1st part (pages 1 to 19 in someones book). Really interested book！ I'm reading as I finished the TV show "金婚“。The last few episodes of the show with the character 大宝, had some interesting overlapping vocabulary with these first 19 pages(i.e. 孽子， 二流子， 等等....) Two things I wanted to ask about, there seems to be two sentences in 文言文 that I couldn't figure out/translate. What is the meaning of the sentences in bold? Are they quotations from something.....?

赌博就完全不一样了，我是又痛快又紧张，特别是那个紧张，有一股叫我说不出来的舒坦

and

我在青楼常和龙二他们赌，有输有赢，所以我总觉得自己没怎么输，其实我赢的都是小钱，输掉的倒是大钱，我还蒙在鼓里，以为自己马上就要光耀祖宗了。

Sorry for the missing characters, I'm working with an online copy that has moved between programs (Wenlin and Openoffice) and may have corrupted these characters or not had them available.... Maybe someone with a paper copy can help, please!

[imron]

Fixed up the missing characters. Usually best to turn off formatting before pasting, or use the "paste from word" button.

Not sure if those were the sections you wanted highlighted or not, so feel free to go in and change them otherwise. Also, Chinese text never seems to 'bold' very well (i.e. it looks almost identical to unbolded text), so you're usually better off changing the colour.

[xuexiansheng]

@imron- Wow, you're fast! Thanks for the edit clean up and the replacing the characters. Those sentences make sense now! Must have been a cut and paste thing... And the suggestion for future posting is noted, thanks!

On to the next section!