This book is part personal memoir about the Cultural Revolution and part meditation on ordinary life in China today. It is also a wake-up call about the widespread social discontent that has the potential to explode in an ugly way.
The book’s ten chapters present images of ordinary life in China over the past four decades, from the violent, repressive years of the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, when the author grew up, to the upheavals and dislocations of the current economic miracle. Along the way, Yu ranges widely across politics, economics, history, culture and society. His aim, he writes, is to “clear the path through the social complexities and staggering contrasts of contemporary China.” Each chapter is an essay organized around a single word. The ten words that the author has chosen to describe his homeland are: people, leader, reading, writing, revolution, disparity, grassroots, copycat, bamboozle and Lu Xun (an influential early 20th-century writer). None is likely to appear on the list of banned words and phrases that China’s censors enforce when they monitor Internet use, but in Yu’s treatment, each word can be subversive, serving as a springboard for devastating critiques of Chinese society and, especially, China’s government.China In Ten Words captures the heart of the Chinese people in an intimate, profound and often disturbing way. If you think you know China, you will be introduced to a country that is unlike anything you have heard from travelers or read about in the news.Author: Yu Hua
Yu Hua grew up during the Cultural Revolution and many of his stories and novels are marked by this experience. One of the most distinctive characteristics of his work is a penchant for detailed descriptions of brutal violence. Yu Hua has written four novels, six collections of stories, and three collections of essays. His most popular novels are Chronicle of a Blood Merchant and To Live. The latter was adapted as a film by Zhang Yimou. Because the film was banned in China, it instantly made the novel a bestseller. Yu lives in Beijing and made the decision not to publish China In Ten Words in his own country. Instead it came out in the other China – Taiwan. He has recently completed a U.S. book tour.