China's Underclass Interview Records

Author: Lao Wei
Publisher:
Publication Date: 2001-01-01
Features: From laborers, laid-off workers, rural school teachers to beggars, drunks, and gamblers; from sex workers, clients, death row inmates, and killers to wandering painters, folk artists, old right-wingers, and old landlords, there exists an overlooked and hardship-ridden world of the weak in our society. Here, human desires and instincts are suppressed to an extreme yet also released to an extreme. Both the goodness and evil, beauty and ugliness of human nature seem fully manifested. This book is a highly realistic portrayal of the myriad people discarded in the fringes of society over the past one to two decades due to various reasons. The interviewees of the author come from all walks of life, displaying a world that is unfamiliar yet strangely familiar to us. In fact, these people are often overlooked or avoided by past news reports, yet they are genuinely and widely present in both urban and rural areas. The author's "folk memory" recording method has been praised by many scholars, who believe that the characters he writes about are never recorded in general history. Especially notable is the author's writing attitude: "While intellectuals in the 1990s leisurely sit in cafes, squinting at the glittering lights and red wine outside the windows, the renowned poet Lao Wei from the 1980s takes step-by-step strides towards the masses and the grassroots, dedicating years of effort to complete an 'interview that has never existed in the history of Chinese journalism.'" Lao Wei's working method is unique—he engages in laughter and cursing with his interviewees, speaking the language specific to that stratum, allowing the tragic and deformed stories to naturally flow out like a wine bottle overturned on a table.
(All other Chinese text has been translated into English as requested.)