The Corpse Walker by Yiwu Liao (1-Dec-2009) Paperback

by Liao Yiwu

The Corpse Walker is a collection of interviews conducted between 1990 and 2008 that opens a window unlike any other onto the lives of ordinary, often outcast, Chinese men and women.

Genres: China, Nonfiction, History, Asia, Short Stories, Biography, Politics

Paperback

First published April 3, 2003

About the author

Liao Yiwu is a writer, musician, and poet from Sichuan, China. He is a critic of the Chinese regime, for which he has been imprisoned, and the majority of his writings are banned in China. Liao is the author of The Corpse Walker and God Is Red. He has received numerous awards for his work, including the prestigious 2012 Peace Prize awarded by the German Book Trade and the Geschwister-Scholl-Preis in 2011 for the publication of his memoir in Germany.

Reviews

[Petra X]

Update Cannibalism, verbatim. "So Wang and the security guard crept along and hid behind the fence. They saw Mo Erwa's wife sitting at the front porch. Apparently, she was on the lookout for patrolling officials. Wang and the guards walked stealthily around to the back, where there was a door leading to the kitchen. Wang said he could see a small kerosene light glowing feebly in the dark. So he and the guard kicked the back door open and burst in. Wang raised his flashlight and yelled, Don't move.

Mo Erwa and his kids were scared. They blew off the kerosene light and began running around in the dark, like rats. In the process, someone kicked over a big boiling pot on the ground. Then the whole room steamed up and smelled of greasy meat. Wang yelled again: Don't move. Otherwise I'm going to shoot. His threat worked. When Mo Erwa and the kids calmed down, Wang struck a match and re-lit the kerosene light. He realized that Mo Erwa had dug a hole in the kitchen floor and was using it as a makeshift stove. The pot lay upside down and chunks of meat lay scattered on the floor. Wang asked: Where did you get the meat from? Mo Erwa answered calmly: We just boiled our three-year-old daughter.

The guard didn't believe what he had just heard. He picked up one piece from the floor and examined it under the flashlight. Before the guard had a chance to find out, Mo Erwa snatched it from the guard and stuffed it into his mouth. Then all the kids followed his example and dashed down to the floor to grab the remaining morsels. Despite Wang's yells and threats, the family devoured all the meat within minutes. Wang and the guard finally subdued Mo Erwa, tied his hands behind his back, and then dragged him to the village chief's office.

The next day, the village chief sent several guys over to investigate. They found a small bag of bones and the little girl's skull, which had been buried in the backyard. The village chief was so disgusted by the atrocity he ordered two militiamen to lash Mo Erwa fifty times. Mo Erwa screamed and his whole family knelt outside the interrogation room, appealing for mercy. According to Mo Erwa, the family didn't have anything to feed the little girl. Lack of food had stunted her growth. So they just killed her. The village chief interrupted Mo Erwa by saying: Do you know that killing and eating your daughter is a capital crime? Mo Erwa argued back: "She was going to die of starvation anyway. It was better for us to sacrifice her to save the rest of the family. We just hope she would reincarnate into something else in the next life. It's too hard to be a human being."

After the lashing, the village chief convened a meeting with several other officials. They decided to keep it quiet for fear that the incident could cost them their jobs. So two days later, Mo Erwa was released, but his story soon spread fast among the villagers. They took it as a sign of approval from the government and more families began to follow suit. Since boys were traditionally favored over girls, young girls were targeted. Some families ruthlessly murdered and ate their own daughters. Others would exchange their children with neighbors. Since a child could only last them for a couple of days, some, including Mo Erwa, began to kidnap children from other villages. Booby traps, which were used for wolves, were employed to capture kids.

By the time we found out, the practice had spread to other villages.
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The cannibalism, mostly of little girls, often their own daughters who until Mao didn't even have names, is sickening. Lashes as a punishment. Speaking against the party gets you executed. The details of this are really horrible. It was 1960 and the West was moving towards the Beatles, the Space programme and frozen tv meals and they are murdering, dismembering and cooking their daughters, or someone else's kidnapped daughters, in a makeshift stove, a hole in the ground with kindling and an iron pot.

For party officials there were midnight feasts. They said, that party officials (even extremely minor ones in villages) were the backbone of the Communist party, the revolution and without them the peasants disobey and there would not be The Great Leap Forward. For little girls there was a benefit. Should they not get aborted, murdered at birth, or killed for food, they got a name, revolutions need records, and so they got names.
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I'm up to Cannibalism now.....These are all interviews by the author with "China's social outcasts". Stories of people with very peculiar occupations. So far I've read 6 chapters. The first, The Professional Mourner, was a good one during Mao's great famine Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958-1962. Not because of all the funerals - these were people so poor they couldn't afford the food, of which there was plenty for party officials of all levels, but because they turned into uplifting, praise singers of St Mao and all his great works. From professional mourning to ass-licking. Whatever keeps you alive... A good professional mourner can wail, shriek, sing, moan, and act for up to two days at a time, when well paid.

The second was a prison interview, it was sickening. A human traffiker. Traffiking women has always been a traditional Chinese occupation apparently, but when the Cultural Revolution put a stop to the Triads, ordinary people got in on the act. Our "hero" first sells his daughters for $120 each in marriage and when Liao, the author, expresses disgust, he replies, "What do they know about happiness. As long as their husbands have dicks, that's all I care. The more often women get laid, the prettier they look."

So he tries to recruit women to come to the city for jobs with the intention of selling them. He has fake id cards made for workers in textile factories to lure them in, he says, "There were many women who would swallow my crap like it was the most nutritious food they ever ate. If they believed my crap and ended up getting sold, it served them right." He said he never sold them into prostitution, all he did was provide a service for the poor bachelors in the North. "I was in the matchmaking business."

The author says that for traffiked girls there is no traditional wedding. "In many cases the guy's parents hire some fellow villagers to tie up the girl immediately after the human trader hands her over and then the groom rapes her." The traffiker says, no, they're married, it's not rape. And anyway being tied up and beaten is quite normal in the countryside. He got life in prison as did 7 others in his human traffiking group. Two were executed. It's hard to wail against the death penalty sometimes.

[Neil · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful interviews with Chinese people, reminiscent of Mayhew's "London Labour and The London Poor". The accounts of life during the cultural revolution and the starvation that followed the Great Leap Forward are chilling, but the people are never less than fascinating.

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the most fascinating things about this book is how it came to be. Liao Yiwu is constantly on the run from the Chinese government, has been jailed, tortured, and forced to be a wandering street musician. The text for this book was smuggled out of China and published for the rest of the world to read, and wow, what a read! Yiwu interviews the members of the lowest rungs in Chinese society like the public toilet manager, a leper, a grave robber, a father who lost his son in the Tiananmen massacre, a blind erhu player, a human trafficker, a migrant worker, and many others. Most of them give graphic, detailed accounts of what life was like for during the famines and political turmoil of the Cultural Revolution and Great Leap Forward. I do wish that there were more interviews about current times now that China has opened up its economy a lot more as this would have provided a powerful compare/contrast situation.

One of the funniest chapters was the interview titled 'The Peasant Emperor'. In 1989 Zeng Yinglong declared himself emperor of his village and was later thrown in jail for it. The interview goes something like this:
Yiwu: Are you the well known emperor that people talk about in this jail?
Yinglong: You should address me as 'Your Majesty."

and then hilarity ensues.

One of the most memorable interviews was from a retired Communist Party official who discussed the difficulty of the 1960s famine and how his attempts at curbing cannibalism in his region were a failure. Apparently little girls were targeted since they are seen as disposable and some families would swap children in order to not eat their own. He raised some interesting moral questions about what one would do in a similar situation. Do you eat one child to save the rest or let them all starve to death?

Overall a really interesting and worthwhile read.

[spillingthematcha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Otwierająca oczy i poszerzająca perspektywy literatura faktu, warta uwagi.

[Meghan Fidler · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really try to avoid should-ing on people (my dad always says it's like sh!t-ing on people), however I'll make an exception in this case.

You should read this book,
because should know this story.
And you should be prepared. These people will make an impression.
The stories are short, you can take the book in little intellectual bites.

"The Corpse Walker" is filled with life stories from people who lived during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976?) in china. With depictions of daily life the book provides an in-depth examination of a centralized government's attempt to speed, control, and shape social change. Liao Yiwu captures the impact of this tumultuous time through interviews, allowing each individual their own voice. He also does a fantastic job sharing his own thoughts on the subject being discussed by including his own comments and questions.

Among the darkness of the human trafficer who began by selling his daughters, the red guard who still seeks the meaning and retribution his old position gave him, and the monk who watched people claw away at centuries old temple architecture, are images of human beauty. The humor of the Public Restroom Manager was, dare I say it, a refreshing breath of air. And the soft forgiveness of so many torture victims makes the heart ache.

Thank you, Liao Yiwu, for enduring political persecution and jail time. Thank you for sharing these underrepresented voices.
I am delighted that Kang Zhengguo recognized the importance of this work and helped get it published.

[Beata · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting insight into China. The book proves that Beijing is not China and that ordinary people can tell incredible stories. A European reader like myself feels challenged by the stories that are shocking or, to say the least, incredible.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Twenty-eight Chinese people share their stories, as interviewed by Liao Yiwu. From the Falun Gong practitioner to the blind erhu player, their experiences were eye-opening, often harrowing, inescapably political. Whenever I read a book like this I cannot help but think -- I am so lucky. Strongly recommended.
4.5 stars

[Luke · Rating 1 out of 5]

For all my life, I've lived at a juncture between what life experiences my country has granted me and what life experiences my country would prefer me to believe. Growing up in an area that ranged between 70-80% Asian American, depending on the city and the business, meant taking a displacement of my own identity and norms as expected. Indeed, given my home environment, I tended to love whatever I encountered that was determinedly different from what unquestioned habitus cultivated my parents and their people, and so what fashionably goes as 'Diversity/Equity/Inclusion' today was the friends who shared their chopstick eaten lunch with me at school and the college mates who took me on hot pot/sushi/dumpling/milk tea excursions after finals. Back then, I took the presence of myriad diaspora communities for granted, but these days, I encounter more of these communities' continents of origin more in fearmongering news than I do in the community members' own words, so I've found it necessary to supplement my diet of the latter with works such as these. Still, there is a difference between a collection of testimonies and a YouTube rant, and given the choices that Liao Yiwu made in his interviewing style (not to mention how off the credibility of most of these pieces are, straitened transcription circumstances or not) there is plenty to enrage oneself about and very little that I can supplement my base knowledge of China with, even when applying the usual severe limits of a 20th c./post Mao lens. All in all, the fact that something like this can be put out and be well regarded in the 21st c. just makes me think about what would happen if someone tried to do the same thing to the US and/or a European country, and there's only so much suspension of disbelief I'll grant to something so overt in its propagandizing.

There's a trend that has plagued media ever since it became unacceptable for the US to sweep third world countries under the disaster capitalism rug and call it a day, especially pertaining to nonfiction derived from non-Anglo lands. The further from the center an individual of one of these works is, the more their portrayal is boiled down to trauma and reaction to trauma. Now, given the circumstances of the author's compiling of material, I understand how the typical standards of authorial objectivity would necessarily be bent so as to get any material written at all. Still, there's a difference between drawing material from the disenfranchised and going out of one's way to put together yet another portrait of 'Communism Bad, But Will Also Complain About Capitalism Without Naming It Such'. Namely, you'd think with 28 pieces garnered from 28 individuals at the bottom rung of society, one would have run into a sex worker or a queer person or a drug addict: aka, someone who's rendered as abject in the countries that pieces like these pander to as they are in China. Add on how the poorly the interview questions tended to line up with their designated answers, how brazenly Liao Yiwu recorded himself fishing for answers, and how rarely the pieces offered a picture of an individual personality instead of a list of party slogans and a Power Point presentation on Third World suffering, and you had a text that simperingly led you by the nose more than anything else. It could have muddled through with a three star for its pains, but considering what a mess Falun Gong has been making on the alt-right side of things in the US, it's rather despicable to offer a portrait of it and expect the reader to just fall over themselves in pity, no questions asked. All in all, there's much to be said about the life of the marginalized in post-Mao China, but if you choose to make your book resemble nothing so much as a NY Times op-ed/screed with all its misrepresentations and coverups, don't be surprised if I treat it like one.

I don't consider myself the ultimate inviolable arbiter of what is real information and what is fake. However, considering how much time my career path has spent transforming itself from librarianship from information science and leading all of its members along accordingly, my professional skillset literally focuses around separating the wheat from the chaff in the realm of knowledge. So when by the end of this work every sense was screaming to get a second opinion, I took that seriously. As circumstances don't allow for that particular vehicle of enhanced credibility, I'm just going to have to leave this work here: satisfied that I ticked it off my TBR after nearly a decade, fatigued by how it was largely more of the same sycophantic dreck that my country's newspapers love to put out whenever it thinks its white population could use a tad more Yellow Peril in its collective consciousness. All in all, record your transcriptions of human rights violations and put it forth to less censored waters if you must. I personally prefer to take the route of the beam in my own eye over the mote in the camel's, and there's more than enough of that sort of abjecthood floating around my home state with its for profit prisons and NIMBYs for me to eye any pro-capitalism call to arms in lands far from mine askance.

[Audacia Ray · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading horribly depressing/angry-making books is sort of my thing. But damn, The Corpse Walker really did me in. Story after story of horrific things that the oppressive Chinese government has done to its people, horrific things people do to each other, and the horrific things people survive and keep on being people.

The stories are all interviews, done by Liao Yiwu, who is himself not in favorable standing with the Chinese government. The conversational style of the interviews is lovely - Liao is not a passive listener, and he doesn't just ask question, but often challenges his interviewees and calls them out on things he disagrees with or doesn't think are true.

My major beef with the book is that out of 28 interview, ONLY THREE ARE WITH WOMEN. One of the three is titled "The Yi District Chief's Wife," and its clear that if the Chief were alive, he'd be the one Liao was interviewing.

[Vanessa Hua · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the best oral history of China I've read (and I've read many) -- filled with pathos and humor and crassness -- and I really appreciate the care in which the journalist and his translator asked questions (often challenging or prodding the source) and creating a narrative. Amazing stories, about people who walked corpses home, who ran public toilets, Rightest love stories.

[Zak · Rating 5 out of 5]

From author description: Liao Yiwu is a writer, musician, and poet from Sichuan, China. He is a critic of the Chinese regime, for which he has been imprisoned, and the majority of his writings are banned in China.
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This book was simply fascinating. Liao Yiwu speaks to an interesting cast of characters from the bottom rung of Chinese society. Many have gone through interminable hardship and suffering during the decades of upheaval brought on by the civil war and the numerous "revolutions" and "big leaps forward" brought on by the painful birth of communism in China.

It was enlightening to find out that many among the Chinese people were actually caught up in the fervour of creating a new nation where everyone would be considered equal. Unfortunately, things did not turn out as initially hoped, resulting in situations where colleagues turned on each other, tenants turned on landlords, students persecuted professors and even family members denounced each other. Torture, beatings and even killings became norms. I had thought all along that the majority were indifferent to politics and simply resigned themselves to a new regime, but it seems that many amongst the populace were actually active supporters, if not participants, in the "revolution". It also became apparent, in contrast to my earlier belief, that many of the transgressions and cruelties were actually carried out by rabid mobs of ordinary people, instead of government forces. Due to the prevailing atmosphere, any expression of doubt or demonstration of failure could be construed as a sign of not being fully committed to the cause and one could easily be labelled a counterrevolutionary. Hence, when crops failed and famines hit, village chiefs continuously lied to party officials that everything was dandy and even offered to provide relief to other stricken areas. All whilst their own people were eating clay to assuage their gnawing hunger and literally starving to death. Therefore, in many respects, it was the people themselves who brought on a lot of the suffering on each other.

The writer talks to 16 different people in this book and is very frank in his interviews, not hesitating to chastise them when he feels they have done wrong. The most interesting one to me was the "corpse walker." If you have watched some Chinese or HK vampire films you would have seen some scenes where dead bodies hop along led by a person holding a lantern and ringing a bell. My guess is that these scenes originated from the original corpse walkers in China, people who are paid to bring bodies back over extremely long distances to their home town for burial. The reasons for the lantern and the bell are explained in the book.

[Bonnie G. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this as a buddy read with the amazing Kate and truly enjoyed both the book and the wide- ranging discissions it inspired.

This is an oral history of people living in the post-Cultural Revolution China. Obviously the government did not and does not allow this sort of discussion, so the interviews were held in a clandestine way, often inside prisons, and Liao Yiwu was himself imprisoned for his work getting this information out to the world. He now lives in Germany.

I lived in China around the time many of these interviews were conducted, and I was honored that so many people shared their stories with me and my now ex-partner (his Chinese was far superior to my own, so really they were trusting in him more than me, but I was lucky enough to ride shotgun.) The stories here are completely in keeping with what we heard, though they are even more brutal. This information is so important to all of us, to fully see the danger of strongman government, of deifying a leader and closing your eyes to his lies until it is too late, and also to pay respect to those who suffered, and to better understand China as it is today. Liao often shared his opinions in the interviews, telling people they were terrible or guilty, or that their actions or the actions of other were wrong, and that really bothered me. Still, I am so grateful for his immense personal sacrifice to bring these stories to the world, and amplify the voices of people who had so much taken from them.

[Ensiform · Rating 4 out of 5]

translated by Wen Huang

This is a collection of reports from the 1990s on everyday men and women at the bottom of Chinese (mostly Sichuan) society: a professional mourner, a public toilet attendant, the neighborhood cadre man, a leper, a grave robber, a Falung Gong practitioner, and so on. There is even an interview with a human trafficker who sold unwilling "wives" to local men. (The title comes from an interview with a man hired to "walk" a corpse to its burial place in a show of reverence for the departed.) What emerges in these disparate accounts is a population left behind, either neglected by the state, actively persecuted, or merely mystified by the rapid change of China's economy and cultural compass. The guiding thread throughout is that the pursuit of money is making people careless of others. The professional mourner, for example, is losing work. Farmers want to be rich and live urban lives; they no longer want to pretend sorrow for show. The ancient abbot of a Buddhist monastery looks on in dismay as cadres see the temple only as a source on enriching themselves.

Liao, previously imprisoned for his writings about the Tiananmen Square protests, knows there is more than one side to nearly every story. The trafficker, in prison, is painted as a monster, whether social forces created an opportunity for his work to thrive or not. Liao's interview with the father of a student killed during the protests reveals that the Chinese state could be a remorseless machine before the arrival of Chinese capitalism. He discusses with a party leader how famines in the 1960s got so bad that some people turned to cannibalism. However, there is also a feeling of hope and optimism: his subjects remain resolute that the past need not haunt the future. Forgiveness and a stoic resilience are a common theme.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Did you know that Confucius was once a professional mourner, paid to put on a good show at funerals? No? Neither did I until I started reading this collection of stories from Liao Yiwu, a dissident author, oral historian and poet from Sichuan Province in China who was due to visit Australia in May, but as of yesterday (May 9th) has been refused permission to travel by the authorities.

Some time very soon indeed, China’s economic output is going to exceed America’s. In my lifetime and yours, they will become more powerful economically and in time, also militarily. Let’s hope it becomes only ‘interesting’ (and not scary) to see what happens when the balance of power shifts from the West to the East, and from a democracy to a totalitarian state. Certainly there will be ‘adjustments’ to be made. All of us need to start a belated education about China…

Liaw Yiwu, who earns his living as a musician, has a growing international profile since the publication of The Corpse Walker, a collection of interviews with the underclass in China. The authorities don’t like this because officially, of course, there is no underclass in (a-hem) ‘egalitarian’ Chinese society.

To read the rest of my review (and to see how you might be able to help ease Yiwu's plight) please visit http://anzlitlovers.wordpress.com/201...

[Andrew]

A lot of people are going to gravitate towards Liao Yiwu because of his Chinese dissident status, and at at time when some sort of official Sinophobia is more or less de rigueur to some degree across the American political spectrum, I'm terrified that too many readers are going to come to this with some sort of Cold War mindset.

But when you actually read The Corpse Walker, you're treated to China not as a monolith, but as this great conflicting chaos of voices (you know, the kind that exists in any country). When a society has had some kind of baked-in authoritarianism for millennia, individual expression comes out in highly idiosyncratic ways, whether that's in religious cults, some truly insane village superstitions, psychopathic and remorseless human traffickers, the proud bruisers carrying out the Cultural Revolution, or villagers who happily flout the one-child policy and tell anyone trying to enforce the law that they're not going to pay the fine, so fuck off. This is Studs Terkel for China. Read it.

[Edzia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jedna z takich książek, która czuję, że poszerzyła moje horyzonty i otworzyła oczy na sprawy, o których wcześniej nie miałam pojęcia.

[Nikoletta (nikisjournal) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jestem bardzo z siebie dumna, że wreszcie ją skończyłam. Jest tutaj wiele historii pełnych bólu. Mamy miks, jeśli chodzi o dobór rozmówców i rozmówczyń: są osoby prześladowane przez władzę z byle powodu, ale też jednostki złe czy niemoralne, którymi ciężko nie gardzić. Bardzo mi się podobało, że autor wprost określa przemoc i mówi otwarcie, że dane działanie było złe czy okropne. Brakowało mi takiego podejścia w innych dziełach nonfiction. Nie miałam też pojęcia, że dla tak wielu osób życie w Chinach jest po prostu piekłem:( Straszne. 3.5

[Orinoco Womble (tidy bag and all) · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed God is Red: The Secret Story of How Christianity Survived and Flourished in Communist China, though "enjoy" is an odd word to use. Perhaps I should say, I got a lot out of it. So I was eager to read this, Yiwu's first book, which is/was banned in China. He writes about a life he knows, having been a political prisoner, street musician, and man on the run for many years. From the simply unfortunate to the conmen and thieves, we are introduced to the marginalised members that no society wants to acknowledge. Some of those interviewed have suffered from political events such as the Tienamen Square massacre or Maoist purges, while others suffer due to their own ignorance or criminal choices. On occasion, the author remarks to his subject, "You're such a jerk!"--but only when justified, as in the case of the human traffickers, the "illegal border crosser" or the "migrant worker" who basically ditches his wife and three daughters and lights out for pastures new, and claims that he can't be held responsible for his own genitals' desire to breed. When the author presses the human trafficker to acknowledge that he makes money from selling ignorant young girls into prostitution, the reply is: "She's the child of ignorant peasants; what does she know of happiness?"

What indeed.

Not a book to be read straight through justlikethat. Some of the people I met in this book, such as the sleepwalker and the "leper" who is not a leper at all, will haunt me for months. I learned that Mao Tse-Tung invented both the concept and the term "political correctness" though of course with a different meaning, though the Western interpretation is as astringent in its own way.

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Liao Yiwo, a poet and political prisoner, became interested in others on the outskirts of Chinese society. He performed interviews, some of which were risky, with people who didn't fit in modern times. Old people who remembered traditional ways - like the corpse walker - people who had suffered under Mao's purges, people who had been marginalized by recent accommodations with capitalism. Although Liao travels a bit, most of the interviews take place around Chengdu, his home. The 26 stories in this book are only a fragment of the oral histories he has taken, and they had to be smuggled out of the country. Chinese life under Mao was capricious and mad, like life in Spain at the height of the inquisition. Cynical accusations could mean ruin or death for whole families. During the Great Leap forward, farms were abandoned, forests cut down and household metal objects melted down in a futile attempt to jumpstart industrial production. Instead, people starved in the millions and some families ate their own children rather than leave everyone to starve. During the Cultural Revolution, treasures of a thousand years of civilization were destroyed because they represented the old ways. These people showed a terrible resilience in the face of nightmare, and they almost universally praise Deng Jiaoping for stopping the madness when he assumed leadership on Mao's death. Together the lives build a remarkably coherent picture of China culture constructed in layers - outer layers are the new veneer of capitalism, middle layers the Communist excesses, at the core remnants of traditional culture lurking beneath the surface.

[v · Rating 4 out of 5]

American readers who do not know about the shameful chapters in modern Chinese history will find the material in this book shocking. Liao Yiwu's interlocutors -- most of them from Sichuan Province -- discuss the communist terrors of the 1950s and 60s, upheaval and poverty after the economic reforms, the suppression of dissent since the 1980s, and the life of cruelty and crime led by some on the margins of society. It is a one-sided story handled by a scrappy amateur. But the real power of Liao's book is in the consistency, composition, and humanity of the material he has gathered which makes it clear that the CCP which administered the anarchic terror of the past is the same CCP, fundamentally unchanged, that proclaims the "China Dream" of today. The Chinese people, however, endure, and Liao's work shows this with echoes of the literary qualities of the best of contemporary Chinese fiction.

I have lived a full life. I feel as if it was worth being labeled a landowner. I have suffered to redeem the sins of my children and have created future happiness for them. I heard that we will soon be allowed to sell and buy land again. Aiya, there will be more landowners and rich people than before. Things just move in cycles.

[Hartley]

“Looking back, you have to admit that Chinese peasants are the most kind and obedient. They never thought of rebelling against those who had brought them so much suffering. I bet the idea had never occurred to them.”

“This is China. You don’t have much control when you are alive. When you die, you won’t have control over your own obituary either.”

“He was a hero for a couple minutes and ended up paying a hefty price in the next twenty years.”

“The Party Secretary looked at me and softened his tone: “OK. You have to make a choice between that woman and the Party.” I said again, very firmly, “I love her.”

Liao Yiwu’s “The Corpse Walker” is a lurid and disquieting oral history, a fun-house reflection of Studs Terkel’s well-known “Working.” Unlike “Working,” the many protagonists of “The Corpse Walker” are uniformly those on the bottom-rung of China’s system, whose very documentation demonstrates the failures in Mao’s utopian dreams, Deng’s market reforms, and, now, Xi’s ongoing efforts to eliminate poverty and extreme social stratification. The Chinese underclasses are an upside-down lumpenproletariat, often cast down and marginized as a result of imagined politicization: the sons of landlords and the daughters of professors.
Most striking is the utility that these people had for the revolution, oil in the furnace of class struggle. There is a strange symmetry to many of their stories: the anti-rightist campaign of 1957 with its big character posters, beatings, and humiliations; the Great Leap Forward inaugurated in 1958 and its famines, cannibals, and wet clay; the Cultural Revolution: societal breakdown, armed conflict, forced confessions, murders, speeches, flags. And yet, even in these stories of survival in the face of the most extreme adversity, as the bulk of these stories involve at least two of the three of the above eras in Chinese history, there is no clear answer as to *why* these people survived, even as millions of others died. At the individual level, Chinese history begins to look like chance. No wonder, then, that an interview subject states that gambling “seems to be the national pastime.”
For the protagonists of the Corpse Walker, efforts to seize control of one’s fate are almost certain to end in disaster. A family’s favorite son, top of his class and destined to lift his parents out of poverty, is butchered at Tiananmen, his hands mangled by the bayonet he had hoped to block from his chest. An engaged man building a new wing for his wife is accused of grave robbery and tortured in prison. A sickly woman whose health finally improved with the physical exercise and passion associated with the Falun Gong is beat by CCP officials and forced into an insane asylum. It goes on and on and on, the hopes and dreams of the human heart stunted and deformed by clubs and boots.
How is it then, that his can all go on? Trotting out the tired phrase “Mao is both Stalin and Lenin,” and thus, irreplaceable, seems to miss much of the point. Perhaps Xi’s fears of a rising “historical nihilism” are accurate, that justice could only beget obliteration. Yet, the persistent effects of historical trauma are passed on to children and their children’s children. Is it possible the avoid a reckoning for all time? The people chronicled here offer no unified answer, shifting between desires for reconciliation, forgiveness, solitude, and escape. Some even seem happy, to have found a meaning and value in their life despite the troubles of conscience. Two of my favorites are “The Rightist” and “The Counterrevolutionary,” names with belie the true banality of their crimes. The Rightist was convicted for loving who he chose to; the counterrevolutionary for telling the truth.
Liao Yiwu, smartly, refuses to end his collection with an epilogue. It remains open-ended.

[Alisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not what I expected. The book opens with two stories about funerals and "corpse walking" and closes with a few interesting pieces about blind musicians and career criminals, but everything in between? Classify under, "What Appalling Things Happened to Me During the Cultural Revolution" and "The Even More Appalling Things I Did to Other People During the Cultural Revolution."

I understand that there was no escape from the Cultural Revolution and I guess I should have realized that for anyone over the age of 30 or so the events and impact of those years are pretty much the biggest story they're going to come up with.

I'm not saying this isn't valuable journalism. On its own it deserves 3 or 4 stars. But it gets knocked down to 2 for false advertising. I already read Wild Swans. I know what happened and it makes me ill. I'm going to have to go back to World War II just to cheer myself up.

Clara, if you're still on your post-apocalyptic kick, it already happened: in China 1966-1976.

[Samo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Spočiatku bolo dosť ťažké sa do knihy začítať, hlavne kvôli úplne odlišnému mysleniu, kultúre a životu číňanov, ale akonáhle sa do toho človek raz dostane, je to skvelá sonda do života ľudí v tejto čudnej krajine.
Plus má u mňa kniha aj za to, že nezobrazuje každého chudáka ako dobráka, ktorému len osud nedožičil, veľa objektov rozhovorov boli vyložene nesympatickí ľudia.

[natalka · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.75 (5.5/10) chciałaby być sensacją, a to chyba tylko z pomocą szczerości i prostoty, których momentami brakowało. było kilka niuansów ale większość to po prostu uzupełnienie podstawowej wiedzy dramatycznymi, emocjonalnymi, ludzkimi tragediami.

[Misiadżdżdżownica · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mega smutne ale też mega ciekawe polecam 10/10

[Agnieszka · Rating 5 out of 5]

FENOMENALNA, nawet nie wpadłabym na tak ciekawe tematy wywiadów

[Iwona · Rating 4 out of 5]

4,5 arcyciekawe opowiadania, prowadzą nas do maloznanych i niepopularnej wersji Chin. Ludzie niepasujący do bogatych, kolorowych, wspaniałych Chin opowiadają o swoim życiu.

[Ondřej Puczok · Rating 5 out of 5]

Už od prvních stránek naprosto neuvěřitelná kniha. Ten, kdo (stejně jako já) nestudoval dopodrobna čínské tradice, zvyky a chování zdejších ekonomicky nejslabších vrstev, musí být zákonitě překvapen tím, co všechno si může přečíst. Asi každý už slyšel o všemožných kampaních, které v Číně druhé poloviny 20. století směřovaly proti škůdcům, pravičákům, nepřátelům lidu, intelektuálům, členům věřícím ve Stranu, vedoucím kádrům, tomu, koho zrovna určil Velký Kormidelník, za lepší tavení železa, kulturní revoluci atd. atp. Ale je naprosto neuvěřitelné číst rozhovory s reálnými lidmi, kteří se setkali s kanibalismem, jedli k smrti hladoví i jíl a pak ho museli "šťourat" lžičkami z míst, kam slunce nesvítí, sami se stali cílem kampaní a tavili železo jako šílení, žili opravdový život zeměplošského Starého Smrdi Ruma, viděli draky, byli vesnickými císaři i obyvateli bouraných císařských center měst, chránili h*vna před krádežemi z veřejných záchodků, léčili se lidským mozkem nebo vodili po čínském venkově mrtvoly. A s tím, jak se kniha dostává ke konci, věnuje se víc i civilnějším "příběhům" (žebráci, vězni, městská chudina...), které už jsou pro Evropany pochopitelnější, ale přesto šílené - včetně toho nejfekálnějšího příběhu, který jsem kdy četl.

Čínu zná každý, každý si o ní něco myslí a zná část její historie - tuhle zemi prostě nejde přehlédnout - ale její kultura, společnost a historie dokáže pořád ohromně překvapit svou odlišností, kterou by člověk ani nečekal. A podobně jako u sovětského Ruska (doporučuji knihu Doba z druhé ruky) mi prostě nejde do hlavy, jak můžou lidé pořád věřit komunistickým politikům a jejich ideologii, která na celém světě stála za smrtí a utrpením desítek milionů lidí.

PS: Zároveň doporučuji k přečtení i autorovu druhou - podobně silnou - knihu Kulky a opium a tematicky doplňující román Čtyři knihy.

---------------

Ke kanibalismu: "Existuje jedna taková návnada, které se říkalo "bonbónek". Byla to třaskavina potřená olejem a dříve se tím odstřelovali vlci. Teď už vlci nebyli, tak to začali používat na děti. Hladové dítko ucítí slastnou vůni tuku a chce se zakousnout, prásk a tělíčko se rozletí na kusy. Než přiběhnou vyděšení rodiče, zůstane po něm jen krvavá kaše."

K pověrám: "Za všechno může ten velký divodrak. Nedlouho potom, co odešla, uhranul i švagrovu ženu, umírala. Vymítač draků říkal, že ji musíme dát lidský mozek. Švagr šel na hřbitov a vykopal ze zarostlého hrobu mozek mrtvoly a nakrmil jím ženu. Když se schovával pod mostem, slyšel draka, jak řve."

Ke krádežím výkalů: "Dřív lidi v noci taky kradli hovna. Občas někoho chytila služba domovního výboru, zavřeli ho a zabavili mu kolo. Za Kulturní revoluce museli zloději výkalů citovat z Rudé knížky předsedy Maa. Všechno patřilo státu. Dřív nebyly k dostání chemická hnojiva, na vesnici se používaly přírodní, výkaly byly poklad. My jsme byli specializovaný úřad, měli jsme skvělé výsledky, výkalů jsme vybrali hodně a prvotřídní kvality, museli jsme se řídit pokyny vedení a posílat to do komuny Rudá záře. Ale to byla panečku značka! Když přijel předseda Mao v roce 1957 do Čcheng-tu, osobně komunu navštívil."

[Dominik Sędziak · Rating 4 out of 5]

Polecam. Można się z niej dowiedzieć bardzo dużo o historii Chin przez pryzmat zwykłych ludzi.

[Jesse Field · Rating 4 out of 5]

First off, what is a corpse walker? As an old fengshui master named Luo told author Liao Yiwu:

When a traveling businessman died of a sudden illness or accident, it was hard to transport the body back to his village to be buried in his native soil. And if a dead person is not returned to his hometown, as custom dictates, he would be called a lonely soul and a homeless ghost. So, since buses or trucks weren't available, if the family could afford it, they hired professional corpse walkers.

Mr. Luo actually witnessed corpse walkers at work in the early 1950s:

…one dark and overcast afternoon I was strolling along the village road when a bulky, black object suddenly passed me, sending a chill down my spine. The thing was covered with a huge inky-colored robe. The bottom hem of the robe was splattered with mud, and from time to time a leather shoe poked out below. The footsteps were heavy and made a repetitive, thudding noise, like someone knocking the ground with a block of wood. Just then, my friend Piggy scurried up to me and whispered in my ear: That's a corpse.

Piggy's words spooked me, and I ran around in front of the robe. A man was there, walking a few paces ahead of the corpse, wearing a beige vest and carrying a basket filled with fake paper money. In his other hand, he held a white paper lantern. Every few minutes, he would reach into the basket, grab some money, and toss it high in the air. You know the ritual, don't you? It's called “buying your way into the other world.” People in the countryside still believe that the fake money is used to bribe the corpse's guardian ghosts so they don't block the road to heaven.

What’s the secret of the tall walking thing? It’s so strange it boggles the mind:

Inside the black robe, there are two bodies: the corpse and a living person who carries the dead one on his back. During the trip, the person who carries the corpse has to use two hands to secure the body so it doesn't slide off. As you probably know, the body of a dead person becomes as stiff and as heavy as a stone. It takes eight people to carry a coffin. Imagine how tough it would be for one person, wrapped up in a large black robe, to walk hundreds of miles with a dead body on his back. Since it is hard for him to bend his knees, each move must be very stiff and awkward. On top of that, the black robe prevents him from being able to see what is ahead of him. Remember the white lantern that we talked about earlier? The light from the lantern is used to guide the corpse carrier.

It’s like something from a Pu Songling story, which just goes to show that the border between documentary and fantastic does at times grow thin.

And this is merely the most dramatic entry among more than thirty interviews profiling characteristic occupations in China. Corpse walker was an occupation on the margin in traditional China; in the Communist era it was systematically eradicated, as Lou’s story goes on to tell. The trajectory of the occupation fengshui master was more complex: downward during the revolutionary years but upward again once the reform era began. Fengshui was important for building and other real estate developments, once the liberalization of the economy was underway, but fengshui masters could also be dragged into government corruption cases, too, as another story illustrates.

The downward, or downward and upward status trajectory applies to almost every occupation described in every interview. The subtitle of the book calls the interviewees “social outcasts,” but that doesn’t ring true. There are criminals and political prisoners, but they select their own society. There are musicians and a Buddhist abbot, each with a niche his own. At least one, a neighborhood committee member, has communist party pedigree. What should we call this group? Not outcast, but not elite, or even middle class, for the most part. Many were marginalized by circumstance, but others made choices that put them in strange positions.

Perhaps there’s no need to classify such a heterogeneous group after all. It’s just a collection of narratives by a remarkable journalist. Liao Yiwu brings a writer’s memory and power of observation along with a strong regional and social identification with many of his subjects: he sticks to men, many but not all of them significantly older than himself, and he mines his own experiences as a protester and political prisoner.

Each story is packed with moral and historical content, all so thrilling that the book really can’t be read too quickly. One interview is with a man convicted of human trafficking:

LIAO: What was your first experience like?

QIAN: I couldn't sell anybody, so I married two of my daughters to two guys in a village in Gansu Province. My in-laws were considered relatively rich in the area. I received six hundred yuan and eight sheep. I sold the sheep to a peasant at the train station for fifty yuan each. So I ended up getting a thousand yuan [about $120]. I had never felt so rich. I was exhilarated beyond control. But a couple of days later, my daughters told me that they had met a few other Sichuan wives in the village. Those women were brought to the village by human traffickers, and guess the price those bastards asked for each woman: over two thousand yuan each. Basically, I lost money in the deal. Damn.

The moral situation of this one is clear, but the trafficking criminal still comes off as human, and ultimately a person driven by needs and self-deceit. This is literarily compelling, to say the least. Another interview is with a man who thinks he is emperor of his own dynasty. He relates a fantastic story, and Liao intercedes with a comment on the use and abuse of history:

LIAO: Allow me to be frank with you. According to the court document, you had reenacted an ancient story mentioned in the Records of the Grand Historian, written by the famous historian Sima Qian. Based on the tale in the Records of the Grand Historian, Chen Sheng, a peasant rebel in the Qin dynasty [221 bc–206 bc], attempted to rally public support against the emperor and justify his claim to the throne by inserting a yellow ribbon inside a fish. Then, the cook “accidentally” discovered the fish and the ribbon, which said “King Chen Sheng.” Everyone believed it was a message from the Heavenly God and they all joined Chen's uprising, which eventually led to the downfall of the Qin dynasty. Apparently, Ma Xing reenacted every detail.

The whole text is peppered with such historical Easter eggs, a real feast for any devoted student of the craft.

I could go on quoting and listing. Is there any critical thesis in my mind? I’m not sure. Perhaps something about the power of the interview to create human portrait. All such oral histories are well worth the read. And maybe more of us should consider the unique voices we could record, if we took up the practice, even in a more limited form.