To Live
by Yu Hua
An old farmer tells how he lost his fortune, his family and nearly everything else, and kept living anyway.
Watch the video: Bilibili · 抖音 Douyin
5 key ideas
Living is the point
The novel offers no lesson for Fugui's suffering. Simply continuing to live is presented as its own meaning.
History arrives as private loss
Wars, land reform and famine never appear as big events, only as the people who disappear from one family's table.
Plain telling, heavy weight
Yu Hua writes the worst moments in the calmest voice, which makes them hit harder than drama would.
The listener matters
A young man collecting folk songs frames the story. Telling a life to someone else is how Fugui carries it.
An ox named after everyone
Fugui calls his old ox by the names of his lost family, keeping them alive in daily speech.
Who it's for
Readers who want to understand 20th-century China through one family, and anyone who has gone through loss.
Try this week
Ask an older relative to tell you about one ordinary year of their life, and just listen, the way the narrator does.
