Chronicle of a Blood Merchant

I have read many children's books that were originally in Chinese, translated to English. I always thought it was funny the way the children end up with numbers for names in the stories. I was a bit surprised that this book used the same convention (Yile, Enle and Sanle = 1st Joy, 2nd Joy, 3rd Joy). At times I felt that I was reading a children's book and wonder how much of that is because of the translation or is this the Chinese convention for writing? It was often very simple and repetetive. Overall, though, once I finished it, I felt that it was a good story and gave me a little peak through the eyes of the average Xu on a time of political turmoil. Interesting.

Blood is certainly one of the most graphic and potent of literary symbols: a life-sustaining fluid, a product of injury or death, a signal of feminine fertility and virginity, a salable commodity, a gift of life via transfusion, and a genetic and metaphorical bond among children, parents, their extended families, and prospective descendants. Each of these meanings plays a significant role in CHRONICLE OF A BLOOD MERCHANT, Yu Hua's harrowing tale of one father's relentless efforts to survive and provide for his family under the most difficult of circumstances. Set in a small town in mainland China, CHRONICLE OF A BLOOD MERCHANT follows three decades in the life of Xu Sanguan, a cocoon deliverer in a local silk factory, as he marries Xu Yulan, fathers three children (more of less named One, Two, and Three), learns that he has been cuckolded, is in turn unfaithful to his own wife, and helps his family survive the Cultural Revolution, ruinous famines, the "sending down" of two sons to the countryside, and the critical illness of his oldest son, the one he has long known is not his own. Along the way, Xu Sanguan learns to sell his blood at a local hospital as a way to raise emergency funds. Symbolically, of course, Yu Hua is portraying the burdens and hypocrisies of a system in which the lowly and honest can only barely survive by resorting to the extreme measure of selling their energy, their strength, and in some cases, their very lives. This novel works for several reasons. First, the language is simple and direct, almost choppy and childish at times, a reflection of its uneducated protagonists. Second, the author has created a small cast of characters whose fates are inextricably linked to one another, and among whom actions both good and bad eventually create unplanned or unintended consequences. In particular, the relationship between Xu Sanguan, Xu Yulan, their son Yile, Yile's blood father He Xiaoyong, and He's wife, creates a series of alternating and humorous interdependencies. Third, Yu Hua has skillfully recreated the peasant atmosphere of Chinese village life, complete with gossiping and public lamentations, traditions and superstitions, the importance of connections (guanxi, as the Chinese call it) with higher-ups, and horrific misinformation about human health and personal care. Finally, CHRONICLE OF A DEATH MERCHANT is a story of fatherly devotion and filial piety. Xu Sanguan is so devoted to his family that he nearly sacrifices his own life to ensure theirs. The last fifty pages describe Xu Sanguan's horrifying physical descent to the edge of death, slowly yet so inevitably that I wanted to shout at him to stop. I was reminded of the similar, sick to the stomach sense of dread I felt watching Morgan Spurlock's SUPER SIZE ME. Curiously, one is about eating and intake, while Xu Sanguan's danger arises from the blood he is selling to raise money. While I would not classify this book as one of China's great novels, CHRONICLE OF A

I'm surprised at the negative reviews here. This book was not depressing at all. It was a quick enjoyable read with the subtle humor I find only in Chinese works.

(****1/2) It was 1950s, the time China under the throes of Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward, decades of traumatic history that provides the architectural background to the intimate details of Yu Hua's characters' lives. The novel explores an aspect of poverty that very few Chinese readers would miss the way in which the story engages the social and economics havoc of contemporary Chinese life under the red flag. Everyone, especially men, who were strong enough went to sell a bowl of blood for 35 yuans (roughly US$5). In the countryside men who had not sold blood could not even get themselves a wife, for blood selling was more than a gesture of showcasing one's masculinity and health. Xu Sanguan was the blood merchant. His meager salary as a cart-pusher at a silk mill was not enough to sustain his family, which included his wife Xu Yulan and three sons. The impregnable Xu Sanguan had got himself on the good side of a local Blood Chief and gave blood in a frequent interval that was otherwise forbidden by hospital. In over 40 years, the impregnable Xu Sanguan had overcome every family calamity by selling his blood that he might as well had sold his life along with it. Each and every time he sold blood was for his sons.For example, he sold blood to pay hospital bills of the blacksmith's son whose skull was cut open by his eldest son Yile, whom he had cuckolded for 9 years. As Mao directed all youths to be exiled to the countryside for reeducation by the farmers, Xu Sanguan again sold blood for money that would ease the austerity of lives of his sons. At the height of the three-year famine that claimed lives of 5 million Chinese, Xu Sanguan sold blood in exchange for food more nutritious than plain corn gruel, as the Xu family would lay in bed all day to conserve energy. In a series of heartrending drama and reversals, Xu Sanguan reconciled with his cuckolded son and decided to risk his life to save Yile, who had contracted hepatitis.Chronicle of a Blood Merchant follows faithfully Xu's life during the early 1950s when socialism burgeoned in China, then the disastrously ambitious economic collectivization of the Great Leap Forward in 1958 and its aftermath of a 3-year famine (as recalled by my grandfather and father, whose herb house converted into a steel smelting ground by order of local bureau), to the factional violence of Cultural Revolution in 1966 to 1976. Yet the novel is not necessarily, or exclusively, historical in focus. It does not present itself as a rebutting critique of the political upheaval but rather a tapestry of human life and sufferings in the grave particulars of a very ordinary man's days. Yu Hua's realistic style bears much resemblance and affinity to that of Lu Xun (Diary of a Madman), another contemporary Chinese literary master whose work had induced the May 4th Movement in 1919. Like Lu Xun, and the more recent Su Tong, Mo Yan, Ha Jin, and Gao Xinjian, Yu Hua returns obsessively to the violent, excruciating s

This is the best book I've ever read. Yu Hua is a master literary craftsman. His books have been bestsellers in China for more than a decade and have been translated into many languages. Now, finally his Chronicle of a Blood Merchant appears in English for the first time along with his first novel, To Live. The story chronicles the vicissitudes of an ordinary Chinese man living a life of quiet - and not so quiet - desperation. He struggles to overcome his chronic poverty by selling his blood to the local hospital, enabling him to overcome one finacial crisis after another. The story sweeps the reader away and drops him right smack into the middle of the Chinese countryside. We not only see the intricacies of Chinese society but the genesis of China's modern AIDS crisis. A masterful tour de force - 5 stars!