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3rd out of 15 books
—
9 voters
Dream of Ding Village
Ding village is ground zero for an AIDS epidemic that mushrooms after villagers are coerced into selling their blood and are subsequently infected by contaminated plasma injections.
Hardcover, 352 pages
Published
January 4th 2011
by Grove Press
(first published 2005)
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Based on real-life events, this is a haunting novel on greed and how it destroys one family and its community. Ding Village is a township falling into decay, people drop dead everyday from the "fever." HIV/AIDS has contaminated over half of the population which has engaged in blood selling to raise money to develop the local economy and bring its residents out of poverty. Corrupt blood brokers, or blood heads, arise to compete with government blood banks, reusing needles and dirty cotton balls o...more
Dream of Ding Village is a morally complex story about a rural Chinese village dealing with the aftermath of HIV/AIDS due to unscrupulous blood-selling. However, it was likely censored in China as a thinly veiled critique of the country's runaway development. The story is strangely narrated by a 12-year-old ghost, the son of the chief "bloodhead" of Ding Village in Henan province who was poisoned in retaliation for most of the town coming down with "the fever" after a short-term prosperity. The...more
In the early 1990s, China's provincial health authority stumbled into a lucrative business - selling blood to pharmaceutical companies for use in making blood products. Poverty stricken farmers began eagerly selling their blood, and many small villages in rural areas saw a temporary boom in prosperity. Temporary, because the blood collection practices spread HIV. Yan Lianke is from Henan Province, where some estimates say one million people were infected and entire villages were wiped out by the...more
This book jumped out at me from the shelf at my beloved Sheffield library. I originally thought it would be good for my Chinaphile wife, but got hooked. The book quickly pulls you into a slower time that is distant and yet familiar at the same time. Somewhere between fact and fiction is Ding Village, a place in rural China that has fallen victim to the clash of socialism versus capitalism.
The poor but peaceful village has been invaded by a disease. Greed has turned villager against villager, hu...more
The poor but peaceful village has been invaded by a disease. Greed has turned villager against villager, hu...more
Haunting is the first word that comes to mind whenever I think about this book. Set in contemporary China, Lianke takes us on a journey to a remote village in Henan Province during the blood selling boom which resulted in entire villages being wiped out by AIDS through the use and reuse of needles and cotton swabs.
We meet Ding Hui the “Bloodhead” who becomes a very wealthy man cajoling the villagers to sell him their blood. Then there’s Ding Liang, Ding Hui’s brother who becomes infected with t...more
We meet Ding Hui the “Bloodhead” who becomes a very wealthy man cajoling the villagers to sell him their blood. Then there’s Ding Liang, Ding Hui’s brother who becomes infected with t...more
YAN Lianke's beautiful prose, unique characters, and distinct stylistic devices made a (based on actual events) story about the AIDS crisis in China easier to swallow: In order to raise the economic status of remote villages in China, unmonitored and unrestricted blood banks emerge to buy citizens' blood - only to destroy the families and communities in the process.
Dream of Ding Village was a very good read. Every once in a while it's nice to find a read from an Eastern writer, a translated pie...more
Dream of Ding Village was a very good read. Every once in a while it's nice to find a read from an Eastern writer, a translated pie...more
This novel could be a parable for the Great Leap Forward except that stories like Ding Villlage really happened in China. Peasants sold their blood and developed HIV and later AIDS. Some villages were wiped out when everyone died from AIDS or fled the depressing conditions of what amounted to a death camp. Just like in the Great Leap Forward, the peasants were the ones to suffer the most in these blood selling rackets. Yan Lianke does a great job showing how women AIDS patients are treated diffe...more
Dream of Ding Village deserves a second change -- it has the ingredients of classic novel, but fails to deliver. The prose reads like a simplistic young adult book (the fault of the translator?), and for what reason I can't understand, the book is narrated by a deceased 12-year old boy.
Yan Lianke provides a fictional account of government-mandated blood donations in China during the 1990s. Rural villagers were lured into giving up their blood for cash hand-outs by "blood heads" who exploited th...more
Yan Lianke provides a fictional account of government-mandated blood donations in China during the 1990s. Rural villagers were lured into giving up their blood for cash hand-outs by "blood heads" who exploited th...more
Not nearly emotive enough for my tastes; the prose felt short, choppy and simplistic, the characters were given firm outlines but were without emotional depth, and there was little sophistication in style or vocabulary. Possibly that style a reflects the village's poverty and the inability of the villagers to improve their lot, but I felt this could either have been written better or translated better. I didn't derive a lot of pleasure from reading this, and didn't feel at all connected to anyon...more
This is a really quiet book that tells an amazing story (based on fact): Poor rural villagers in China sell their blood in order to move up the economic ladder, and are then plagued with AIDS because the blood draws aren't done cleanly. The sociopathic party bureaucrats then sell them coffins. One family in particular is destroyed, as one son is a "bloodhead" and the other is a ne'er do well. Their father provides the moral center of the story as he attempts to keep up with cleaning and caring f...more
A true (broadly) and tragic story about a village completely wiped out by the AIDS epidemic that followed the mass selling of blood... it's unbelievably awful, but rather difficult to get into as it reads like a (terrible) fairy tale, narrated unjudgementally by the deceased son of the chief bloodbuyer-cum-coffin-profiteer.
There is nothing romantic or heroic here (other than one central relationship, arguably) as most of the book is concerned with the villagers' preoccupations with saving face,...more
There is nothing romantic or heroic here (other than one central relationship, arguably) as most of the book is concerned with the villagers' preoccupations with saving face,...more
What a book! When I started reading, I was unsure whether the topic was a metaphor for something else, or whether it was based on fact. Then I poked around on-line and realized it was based on fact. I almost couldn't keep reading, realizing that it was based on fact. very disturbing. The novel has a definite Asian feel - it doesn't wrap its characters up as neatly as a U.S. novel. And there's so much left unsaid between the characters... But Ding Hui is a horrific bad guy and Grandpa is a lost h...more
This book was certainly interesting -- a dark (and sometimes darkly comic) look at a rural Chinese village devastated by AIDS as a result of rampant plasma selling encouraged by greedy businessmen and unscrupulous politicians. And even though it threatened to get boring at points, it never completely bogged down. But something kept me from really getting into it -- perhaps a barrier of translation or possibly of cultural understanding on my part -- the fable like characters (particularly the unr...more
In 'Dream Of Ding Village' Yan Lianke, one of China's most pre-eminent and controversial novelists, tackles the harrowing topic of AIDS in his country's impoverished rural regions.
Longlisted for the 2011 MAN Asian Literary Prize, 'Dream of Ding Village' is as gruelling as you might expect given its subject matter. But Lianke lends it an extra dimension by employing his trademark satire and black humour to devastating effect.
Lianke's most famous work, 'Serving The People', about an affair between...more
Longlisted for the 2011 MAN Asian Literary Prize, 'Dream of Ding Village' is as gruelling as you might expect given its subject matter. But Lianke lends it an extra dimension by employing his trademark satire and black humour to devastating effect.
Lianke's most famous work, 'Serving The People', about an affair between...more
Dream of Ding Village is the sad and poignant story of a village destroyed when old ways meet new and the devastating effect it had on a family. The Ding family had lived in Ding Village for generations but the village is struggling with poverty a huge problem. The town directors looking to turn things around decide to open blood collecting centres were people have there blood taken in exchange for money. For a while things improve with people having more money but then illness starts to show it...more
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Yan Lianke’s latest work, Dream of Ding Village, is narrated by Ding Qiang: “I was only twelve, in my fifth year of school, when I died. I died from eating a poisoned tomato I found on the way home from school…I died not from AIDS, but because my dad had run a blood collection station in Ding Village ten years earlier. He bought blood from the villagers and resold it for a profit.”
Qiang’s narration details how the dirt-poor villagers were coerced into selling their blood at Government-sanctione...more
Qiang’s narration details how the dirt-poor villagers were coerced into selling their blood at Government-sanctione...more
J'ai adoré, et je conseille ce magnifique roman. On en apprend beaucoup sur certaines pratiques révoltantes se déroulant en Chine.
Il dénonce la bêtise des gens qui exploitent la crédulité des villageois pauvres. Des pauvres gens ont l'espoir de gagner de l'argent en donnant leur sang, donc chacun y passe, mais les conditions d'hygiène sont déplorables et le sida se transmet entre les donneurs. Ainsi le seul qui gagne de l'argent est le fabricant de cercueils, triste ironie !
Il dénonce la bêtise des gens qui exploitent la crédulité des villageois pauvres. Des pauvres gens ont l'espoir de gagner de l'argent en donnant leur sang, donc chacun y passe, mais les conditions d'hygiène sont déplorables et le sida se transmet entre les donneurs. Ainsi le seul qui gagne de l'argent est le fabricant de cercueils, triste ironie !
This is the saddest book I have read in a long time. A dirt poor village in China finds the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow--selling their blood for money with the governments encouragement. People are building new homes, buying cars, and living well. Of course, unscrupulous blood banks pop up which don't use sanitary collection methods. Soon the bubble of prosperity bursts into a village where half the people have AIDS and are dying.
Despite the tragic nature of its subject matter, this is a funny and engaging book. The story of a village devastated by AIDS, it explores human relationships and how people react when something as final as an incurable illness affects an entire community. Inhibitions are lost and social contracts are ripped up. In a strange way, though, the illness ceases to matter. It is a background detail. At the centre of the story is one family - the cause of the AIDS epidemic, the exploiters of it, and th...more
the book give you the glance how development create a doom in a village. that the meaning of modernity is so meaningless that it dries your blood out of you. even a love story end very tragically and human loss is at its very end. death is all over the pages, even if you are living. everywhere you look, everything withered and loss their life.
a very dark way of seeing the china's development.
a very dark way of seeing the china's development.
Jun 25, 2012
Mircalla64 (free Liu Xiaobo)
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
cina
i cinesi che danno anche il sangue per il loro governo, che in cambio gli regala una bara...
negli anni novanta in Cina il governo incoraggiò la vendita di sangue tra i contadini, come fonte accessoria di reddito,
il tutto avvenne senza controlli igienici e l'AIDS si diffuse in tutta una regione con un numero incalcolabile di vittime
il libro parla della storia del Villaggio dei Ding, e della fine dei loro sogni
da questo libro è stato tratto un film che è stato presentato alla Festa del cinema di R...more
negli anni novanta in Cina il governo incoraggiò la vendita di sangue tra i contadini, come fonte accessoria di reddito,
il tutto avvenne senza controlli igienici e l'AIDS si diffuse in tutta una regione con un numero incalcolabile di vittime
il libro parla della storia del Villaggio dei Ding, e della fine dei loro sogni
da questo libro è stato tratto un film che è stato presentato alla Festa del cinema di R...more
The writting style of this book was a little strange, but that may be beacause it is a translation. The story is very sad. There are no one-dimensional characters, and no heroes or good guys. All the characters are flawed, but in ways that are understandable considering their circumstances.
At face value this is a very simple story of a sad and shocking situation but subtly contains more complicated themes such as: greed, love, honesty and morality.
I learned a few things about China reading this - for example, by the end I completely understood why it was being narrated by a dead boy.
I couldn't help feeling that something was missing though but perhaps some of the poetry and symbolism was lost in translation to English.
I learned a few things about China reading this - for example, by the end I completely understood why it was being narrated by a dead boy.
I couldn't help feeling that something was missing though but perhaps some of the poetry and symbolism was lost in translation to English.
This is book is very well written, you get a sense of the village life and the attitudes of the people who inhabit it. It also presents a fictionalised version of a terrible time in recent Chinese history, however it's hard to warm to any of the characters despite their plight, as the epidemic brings out the worst in the majority of the residents.
Even the main character is hard to sympathise with due to his inability to see when he is being ill-treated and/or manipulated by his friends.
The story...more
Even the main character is hard to sympathise with due to his inability to see when he is being ill-treated and/or manipulated by his friends.
The story...more
Based on the true story of the calamity that fell on the poor villagers of the author's native Henan province. Harrowing tales of deluded villagers selling their blood over and over again only to find out that they were spreading the AIDS virus to themselves and their neighbors, which led to the orphan crisis in the villages. Parents were quaratined from their healthier spouses and their children, while many children were left with no one to care for them since their parents and other relatives...more
I got this thinking it was some sort of satire about Communism. I had no idea that the selling of blood in Chinese backwaters and whole villages being wiped out by AIDS had atually happened! So that's pretty horrific but the book itself wasn't that great - some of the sections are too drawn out with odd bits of repetition as though I wasn't reading the final draft. Reviews from papers say things like 'Wonderfully biting satire, brimming with absurdity, humor and wit' and 'A very funny, sexy, sat...more
A mixture of documentary and fiction. Story from mainland china about the effects of blood selling on a small community in china. Many people died of aids due to sharing of needles. A really sad book, but a really interesting read!
Simply stated, this is a phenomenal novel, one of my favorites for 2011. It's so good in fact, that I'm surprised more people haven't read it. Then again, I tend not to read like most people, so maybe I'm not surprised. It's translated from Chinese, deals with very delicate and depressing subject matter (largely because it's based on fact), but the writing is so incredibly good.
This book merits quite a lengthy review, you know, the kind hated by most people who are just looking to see if it's g...more
This book merits quite a lengthy review, you know, the kind hated by most people who are just looking to see if it's g...more
A tale of how greed destroys families and civilizations. Almost sci-fi in its dystopian nature, but based on an all-to-common story in China.
Five stars for the astonishing ending. Despite the subject matter, it is an entertaining and sometimes quite funny book
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