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In the “Balzac and the little Chinese Seamstress”
Jan Wong starts out as a naïve, nineteen year old, Canadian student who is displeased with the capitalistic nature of her surroundings. It was the early seventies and to the author, she was experiencing a cultural revolution all her own. Opposition to the Vietnam War was strongly prevalent, the notion of feminism was beginning to arise, and there was a strong desire against conformity of any nature. The author grew up middle class to second generation Chinese citizens and was fueled by bourgeois guilt, and by a feeling of separation from her roots. “Curiosity about my ancestry made me feel ashamed that I couldn’t speak Chinese and knew so little about China” (14). After devouring every morsel of information that she could, she firmly believed Mao and his “comrades” were the only people who had a legit shot at establishing a utopic society. It was official. Jan Wong was going to Beijing.…
The respondents came from various walks of life and different places in China, and the result is a book that goes into the lives and experiences of Chinese people ranging from artists to businesspeople, former Red Guards to rural migrants, prostitutes to Olympic athletes. However, for this assignment, it was asked to only read the interviews of a wealthy business man, a worker, and a Red Guard. I have heard about China Candid before and that’s why I know a lot about it. Sang Ye shows great interest in the personal experiences of his informants and they were presented not as representative of their occupation or class, but as interesting individuals with rich stories to tell. But with the context being modern China, political considerations affected the lives of all three people with whom he had conversations with. How the political expression was managed differed with every person. Some went along with the party line such as the Red Guard, while others distanced themselves from the authorities or make local officials a part of their schemes. Together, the personal stories told in this collection open a window onto what life is really like for both the Mao and post-Mao generations of…
Throughout the growth of the CCP, the peasants were growing in power and successfully overthrowing landlords and ridding of oppression. In this document, rising Chinese Communist Party leader Mao Zedong wrote about how millions of peasants will rise to be powerful and destroy any barriers holding them back. Peasants were gaining power and overthrowing landlord and non-Communist officials which shows the impact the CCP had on them. (Doc 1) The Communist Revolution seemed to be the best path for peasants to follow in order to live a more comfortable life. Peasants saw that…
During the Cultural Revolution, Ai WeiWei’s childhood was like a desert. Many people were killed or died due to starvation. And they were suffered stomach without medicine. His whole family and many citizens were living…
Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong’s implemented the Cultural Revolution and spread perpetual fear of death during his rule in China. Educated citizens faced humiliation, exile, beatings, and millions of youths had no choice, but to relocate to the countryside for their “re-education.” He classified books as propaganda and the owners as traitors who should suffer severe consequences. In Dai Sijie’s Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, the narrator and Luo risk getting caught with novels in their possession so that they can continue to escape the harsh reality of their life through them. Dai Sijie chooses to specify the Hunchback of Notre Dame, the Count of Monte Cristo, and Ursule Mirouët to emphasize the main theme of love, supported…
A coming of age story is one that resonates with us and we can empathize with it. In Balzac and the Little Seamstress the author Dai Sijie presents a bildungsroman through the maturity of the protagonist/narrator after reading books by Western authors that changed his perspective in life. The protagonist’s maturity can be seen through how he learns about the ideals of individualism, his emotional maturity when handling a pregnancy and discovering parts of himself like his sadistic part.…
The book Balzac and The Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie, is about these two young men by the name of Luo and The Narrator. Both families were known for doing some unethical things while practicing medicine so they became the enemies of the class. Due to it being during the time of the Cultural Revolution their punishment was for Luo and The Narrator to attend a village for re education which was a tactic used to change their beliefs and behaviors. Throughout the novel the culture clashes that The Seamstress encounters teaches her how to be independent and civilized.…
During the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese government under Mao Zedong used propaganda to help create an image of their new beliefs and aims, but the Chinese population had different stories about the revolution. The experiences of the Chinese citizens were often harsh, compared to the statements released by the government.…
The first time the two boys told the story, their voices touched the audience. The effect had been so strong that even the village headman who, for all his harshness, couldn’t hold back the years pouring from his eyes. When Luo was sick with malaria, the little Seamstress brings four sorceresses to help Luo recover. To keep the sorceresses awake and watching over Luo the narrator recounts ‘The Little Flower Seller’. When the narrator told the story, the sorceresses weren’t too engaged and did not show any sign of influence. Luo wakes up in time to say the final line ‘The saying goes that a sincere heart can make a stone blossom. So tell me, was the flower girl’s heart lacking in sincerity?’ The sorceresses could no longer hold back the tears and started crying. Those people show that even the more emotionless person can have emotions, and stories can bring it out. Stories were invented a by people at the dawn of civilization for many reasons. Some stories were invented to tell history, some to show patterns. In the book "Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress" they discover what stories can do to them, and how powerful they are.…
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution or the Cultural Revolution (1966 -1976) was one of the most dramatic and bleakest periods in the history of the People’s Republic of China. The roots of the Cultural Revolution date back to the late 1950s to the early 1960s when the Great Leap Forward ended in catastrophe. The leader, Mao Zedong lost a lot of his influence among his revolutionary comrades, supporters and eventually, he was removed from actual powers by the members of the party. During his eradication, Deng Xiaoping and Liu Shaoqi came to power. They introduced China to “economic reforms based on individual incentives where families are allowed to cultivate their own plots of land - as an attempt to revive the crippled economy. Mao detested such policies, believing that the CCP was becoming too bureaucratic and the Party officials shied away from the values of Communism and revolution.” (Spence, 1990)…
Leading an adventurous, exciting life is something that many aspire to do before their time is up. Living in the 1960s was either a grueling, harsh time with the Cold War which was a state of military and political tension after the World War II, staring at protesters and activist’s faces, or a particular time for love, drugs, and carefree happiness. The creator and author of many works accomplished the task of living a wild life, even to his last few years. He believed that psychoactive drugs were a substance that had “great positive potential” and saw the drugs as a tool for learning about a person’s personality with others and seeing the world in a different perspective (“Further Down the Road”).…
A little while after her twelfth birthday Ji-li Jiang found that her life had changed from everything she would have wanted to something she would have dreamed in a nightmare. Her story started in May. A liberation army dancer walked into her classroom and no other sound could be heard. After this moment, her life changed. The visit from the liberation army dancer inspired Ji-li's teacher to destroy four olds (old ideas, old culture, old customs, and old habits). This caused the writing of the da-zing-baos (written forms of propaganda) and Ji-li was humiliated because of the writing on the posters. The downfalls of the Cultural Revolution started to begin. The Cultural Revolution was a time of much confusion in China. The Red Scarf Girl by Ji-li Jiang illustrates the chaos of that time. Ji-li’s experiences during this time period led to her point of view changing. Ji-li starts the Cultural Revolution full of progressive thoughts, but this quickly turns to confusion, and leads to an important choice, something that impacts the rest of her life.Remember to bring 100 pennies…
Most Chinese and Western views of the CR treat it essentially as a conflict of high (not local) elites, as a response to the concerns of a few people (not of many). Many explanations of this event fall into four types, relating it to (1) Chairman Mao's personality and cultural or political habits, (2) power struggle among high leaders, (3) ideal policies for radical development in an impoverished society, or (4) basic-level conflicts, induced by previous policies, of the sort suggested above. Let us examine these in order.…
The Cultural Revolution, formally the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, was a sociopolitical movement that took place in the People's Republic of China from 1966 until 1976. Set into motion by Mao Zedong, then Chairman of the Communist Party of China, its stated goal was to preserve 'true' Communist ideology in the country by purging remnants of capitalist and traditional elements from Chinese society, and to re-impose Maoist thought as the dominant ideology within the Party. The Revolution marked the return of Mao Zedong to a position of power after the Great Leap Forward. The movement paralyzed China politically and significantly negatively affected the country's economy and society.…
“Plight of the Little Emperors” was a very interesting book about youth in China and there expectations. Chinese parents push there kids as hard as they can to make sure they succeed in life. Some of these kids are pushed to know where and left in the cold. In this article, it explains one of the biggest social problems in China today. The three main topics in “Plight of the Little Emperors” are parent pressure in kids’ academics, college graduates and the lack of jobs, and how to escape the harsh world.…