Huadu

Author: Ye Xin
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-03-01
Features: Huadu is the 24th full-length novel written by the renowned author Ye Xin, who also authored influential works such as Chuo Luo Sui Yu (Lost Years) and Nie Zhai (Debt of Love). In a late spring of the mid-to-late 1990s, the famous sociologist Yao Zhengdong, while writing a monograph on marriage and love, inadvertently stepped into the Huadu Building, a witness to historical vicissitudes. The stories of life and death, joys and sorrows that unfolded within the building epitomize the lives of ordinary Chinese people in the 20th century.
Yao Zhengdong, left alone after his wife and daughter left him, struggles with prolonged sexual deprivation, leading him to fall deeply in love with a married woman with a poor marital life. They both become ensnared in an illicit affair.
Three female scholars who lived in Room 406, all tragically short-lived: In the 1930s, a socialite, in pursuit of her true love, drowned herself after being "forced to make dumplings" (a metaphor for being blackmailed into marriage); in the 1960s, a beautiful actress, unable to endure the humiliation of the Red Guards, hanged herself; in the 1990s, a radio host, surrounded by dazzling fame, took her own life after being betrayed by her husband.
The single-handed businesswoman who bought Room 306, though worth millions, is haunted by the memories of her youth. She and her fellow female (sent-down youth) were sent to a remote, impoverished village known as the "Bachelor Village." The tragic fate of her sisters, one by one falling into the "marriage trap," haunts her like a nightmare, stirring deep emotions within her.
The numerous women in the novel, each from a different era and with a unique destiny, reflect the spiritual and emotional histories of countless Chinese people over the past century. They also mirror the evolution of relationships between men and women, the transformation of desires and ideals, and the changing perceptions of sexuality in China over the past hundred years.
The three storylines intertwine and run parallel, seemingly without a direct causal connection. However, the clash between civilization and savagery, the struggle for human rights and dignity, and the allure and confusion of love and lust are themes that permeate the novel.
The author’s brush touches upon all aspects of social life, presenting a long scroll depicting the customs and folkways of China over the past century: the opulence of old Shanghai, the (passionate youth) who fought in the National Revolutionary Army during the war only to be labeled "historical counter-revolutionaries," urban workers sent to the countryside during the three years of natural disaster to lighten the national burden, the "Cultural Revolution" and the mass movement of (sent-down youth) to the countryside, the era of (everyone becoming entrepreneurs) after reform and opening up, the plight of laid-off workers waiting for re-employment, the wave of emigration and cross-border marriages, the twilight romance of (left-behind elderly), parents paying for high school admissions and students skipping school or even taking their own lives due to unbearable pressure, and farmers losing their land and migrating to cities for work.
Through these changes, readers can experience the past and the present, the yesterday and today of China, and feel the relentless grinding of history’s immense, invisible wheel. Everything that has happened in modern and contemporary Shanghai and China can be read and felt in the novel.
The title Huadu carries profound meaning, symbolizing Shanghai and, by extension, China.