Endure hardship

Author: Yan Lianke
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-01-01
Features: Yan Lianke's meticulously crafted long work, following Sunlight Years and Hard as Water, is a foundational piece of "Crazy Realism" in contemporary Chinese literature. In the chaotic history and society, a rural periphery that has sacrificed greatly and finally integrated into the modern human process, under the leadership of an utterly bizarre county magistrate, experiences an extreme "classic entrepreneurship" journey—using the money earned from tours by the "Absolute Skill Troupe" composed of over a hundred deaf, mute, blind, and crippled residents in Shouhuo Village, to build a "Lenin Memorial Hall" on the nearby Soul Mountain, and to travel far to Russia to buy Lenin's remains to be placed on Chinese soil, thereby hoping to realize the paradise dream of Chinese villagers. The currently most explosive writer in China, Yan Lianke, with his extraordinary and bizarre imagination, unparalleled coldness and depth, portrays the passionate yet delirious life pursuit of a "political person," dissecting the essence and origins of the complex political and social lives. The novel's bold exploration and innovation in structural form, its absorption of Eastern ancient concepts in the timeline, its daring excavation and mastery of regional dialects in language, and its creation and application of "Crazy Realism" in writing style place the entire work side by side with reality and fiction, blending the present with history, intertwining reality with nightmares, constructing a bizarre and surreal artistic realm that is both real and illusory, thus giving the text a certain classic value. This politically nightmare-filled novel is undoubtedly Yan Lianke's most adventurous work to date, as well as his most successful one, and is a shocking masterpiece in contemporary Chinese long novels with the most idealistic impact and profound artistic connotations.
The novel fictions a place called Shouhuo Village, an isolated and little-known village where all residents are born with disabilities, viewing the healthy as outsiders. The protagonist, Liu County Magistrate, has a wild idea to buy Lenin's remains for tourism development, and in the process, Shouhuo Village is miraculously discovered by Liu. Thus, this village of disabled residents embarks on an irreversible path toward the outside world: the villagers form the Absolute Skill Troupe, each possessing extraordinary skills, and they showcase their talents to the fullest. Led by Liu County Magistrate, the troupe becomes famous within a hundred miles. In addition to painting vivid pictures of the troupe's astonishing performances with ink like waves, the author also focuses on shaping Liu County Magistrate as a representative figure—sharp-minded, daring to think and act, and placing greater dreams beyond his lifetime. He wants to be buried in the Lenin Memorial Hall and inscribe "Immortal and Everlasting" on his coffin.
The story and character fates in the novel have a clear sense of absurdity and distortion, yet they engage in a sharp, complex, and intense dialogue with certain familiar scenes of our contemporary society. Throughout the writing process, the author maintains a continuous passion, expressing it poetically and with a wild, untamed spirit.