The Thin Book Club 3: Dai Sijie's "Balzac And the Little Chinese Seamstress"

In 1968, Mao Zedong launched a campaign to change China. As part of the cultural revolution, the universities were closed. A program started in 1957 to re-educate petty thieves and smaller offenders by sending them to the countryside was extended to all young people representing "intelligentsia" and they were also sent as far as possible from their homes to be re-educated by "poor peasants". They had to do hard manual work in primitive conditions for two or three years, and this could still be extended by one year. The re-education program was only officially ended in 2013. 

Dai Sijie's Balzac and Little Chinese Seamstress (184 pages) is based on the author's own experiences; he spent three years at a re-education camp near Sichuan. Sijie, whose parents were medical professors, managed to return (by the book, the odds for this were 3/1000) and studied to become a teacher. In 1984, he moved to France to study cinematography and afterwards successfully worked as a filmmaker there before his book was published in French in 2000. 

The re-education is seen from the point of view of the first-person narrator (whose name only appears on page 102) Ma, 17, is with his friend Luo, 18, sent to a remote and hard-to-reach mountain village to work for the peasants. The two boys had not even finished their school but are punished because of their parents who are doctors and also disciplined.

When Ma and Luo after walking for two days arrive muddy and exhausted in the village on the mountain, all villagers convene to see the "city boys", and their possessions are examined with suspicion. The peasants have not seen a violin before and think it may be a "bourgeois toy" and therefore should be destroyed. Luo intervenes and makes Ma play a Mozart's sonata which as western is forbidden. When asked, he quick-witted renames it as "Mozart is thinking of Chairman Mao" which satisfies the audience.

The villagers have not seen an alarm clock either as they live without time, and the clock becomes a village attraction, a kind of mystical object that now starts to rule the villagers' lives.

The work is hard, the boys have to carry large and heavy buckets of sloshy human and animal dung along slippery paths higher in the mountain where it is used as a fertiliser. They also have a two-month duty in the mine which almost kills Luo. The boys feel bitterness, especially after finding out that the "poor peasants" are former opium growers.

Luo has a natural talent for telling stories and the area in front of their barren accommodation soon becomes a village centre where he recites to the villagers the movies he has seen. This makes the headman of the village so elated that he sends them to a town nearby to watch a movie and then come back to recite it so that it takes as long as the movie itself. With his talent and asking questions, Luo can do this.

In a neighbouring village, there is another boy sent to be re-educated, Four-Eyes, whom they befriend. His parents are writers. By accident, while looking at For-Eyes' place for something warmer for Luo who is ill, Ma bumps into a heavy suitcase under the bed. He and Luo conclude that it can only contain forbidden Western books. Four-Eyes denies all this but when Four-Eyes' glasses are broken, it is too much for him to carry a heavy bucket up the path he cannot see and the two others help him, thus managing to get from him a thin book by Balzac which gives them much joy and enjoyment.

A tailor arrives to the village to make clothes for the village people which is a major event. The boys get to know his beautiful daughter Little Seamstress who has taught herself to read and is starving for culture. Luo charms her by reciting movies and the Balzac book and they become lovers. Also Ma has feelings for her. 

When these three hear that Four-Eyes will be released thanks to her poet mother's relations and their help which he failed to reward by giving them another book, they plot a plan to steal the suitcase and manage to do this. Luo starts dangerous daily trips over the mountain to see Little Seamstress and read to her, especially more of Balzac who is her favourite. This all later has surprising consequences.

The book opens an interesting view to what the countryside of China was only 50 or so years ago - nobody in the village can read. The adults' literacy rate in China now is 96.74% (and the 3.36% illiteracy must represent still surviving old people). China is hugely benefiting from general education but the cost of demolishing the previous order was high. It is harrowing to think that only 0.3% of the young people sent to be re-educated were able to return to their homes and families, if there was anything or anyone to return to. 

The background is bleak but even from it Sijie brings out moments of joy, friendship, love, and humor. Foremost, he shows the value of literature: it enables people to share their inner realities with each other; it enriches their lives and raises them above everyday toiling; it calls for imagination and creativity. 

The movie "Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress", published 2002 is on YouTube with English subtitles (regrettably, the resolution is not great).

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