Two people's vastly different experiences during the Cultural
Revolution are the subject of this beautiful, sad novel by an
internationally renowned Chinese writer and dissident not
previously published in English. The protagonists are Liang Riu, a
former university student and Red Guard who has lost his faith in
the revolution, and Sunamei, a beautiful girl coming of age in a
rural matrilineal community, home of the Mosuo people. Liang's and
Sunamei's lives run parallel - but in sharp contrast - to each
other. While Liang is being reeducated by tending water buffalo on
a farm along with other intellectuals, Sunamei celebrates her
skirt-wearing ceremony, a ritual that marks the beginning of
adulthood. Liang is imprisoned as a counterrevolutionary; Sunamei
takes her first axiao (lover). The Cultural Revolution, which
dominates Liang's world, has barely touched Sunamei's: Forces that
subdue an entire nation fail to exert the slightest influence over
a small, backward community, though they try repeatedly. The
government sends officials to enforce Communist morals, including
traditional matrimony, among the Mosuo, but when they leave, things
continue as before. One official, however, convinces Sunamei to
join the county singing and dancing troupe. It is in the village
where she lives with this troupe that she and Liang meet - he has
been relocated there after being released from prison - and fall in
love. Liang insists that they wed, although the concept of marriage
doesn't exist in the Mosuo culture, and Sunamei never understands
Liang's need to "own" her. The relationship is impossible because
neither partner is willing or able to live in the other's world.
Eventually, Sunamei goes back to her loving and peaceful community,
Liang to his modern China, and the reader is left to decide which
of the two is in fact more "primitive." A lyrical work, both tragic
and uplifting. (Kirkus Reviews)
In altering chapers, the novel tells the stories of Sunamei, a
young woman from a rural matriarchal community, and Lian Rui, a
self-absorbed man who is also weary witness to the Cultural
Revolution. Through his two protagonists, the author addresses
themes of the repression and freedon of sexuality, the brutality of
modernity, and the fluidity of gender roles as the novel moves
hypnotically and inevitably toward a collision between two worlds.
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