I recently read some of Yan Lianke’s works, and this “Ding Zhuang Dream” is one of them.
The novel is said to be created in the background of Henan AIDS Village. It tells the tragic story of ignorant villagers in a place called Dingzhuang who made money by selling blood, and then a large number of villagers were infected with AIDS.
The book writes about the ignorance of the villagers:
“Hey – motherfucker, I’ve started selling blood too.” “It’s fine now, you’re like a man.”
The book writes about the ravages of AIDS:
The paulownia trees used to make the coffins were all cut down, the old carpenter got sick from the back pain, and the wreath-makers had more than a dozen large blisters.
It took me five hours to read this book on and off, and it’s still quite a long novel. Yan Lianke wrote in his postscript that after he finished writing this book, he urgently needed someone to chat with, but no one could listen. So he ate a bowl of instant noodles and fell asleep, and slept until dawn the next day. Maybe it was because he had been immersed in this absurd story for so long, and suddenly he came to the end, exhausted, just like after a long run.
He once said in the introduction to “Serving the People” that the trouble that book brought him made him shrink back, otherwise he could have written better, and now he has only written seven points.
To be honest, as a reader who just finished Serving the People, I believed what he said. Even, for me, this book is only six points, because in addition to being intimidating, there are too many forms and writing skills , such as:
Ma Xianglin was buried. Also buried.
Another example:
After three to five days, three to five days, people were calm and peaceful in the school.
This kind of sentence pattern has appeared countless times in the novel, which is very annoying and greatly affects the reading experience. If you have watched “Journey to the West”, an action is repeatedly edited, and the impression is when I read it. feeling. In contrast, “Serving the People” is concise enough, the story is just right, and the characters are not procrastinating. And “Ding Zhuang Dream” is long, but the characters are not very full… A very good story framework, it should have been written better, which is a pity.
By the way, this book was banned in mainland China . No one knows why. It seems that many things are gone now, and we don’t know why.
Coincidentally, I re-read “Alive” over the weekend. I thought both books were miserable, but “Ding Zhuang Meng” was banned, but “Alive” lived well. Probably because the former writes about the misery of the group and the misery of the group , while the latter writes about the misery of the individual ; the former is full of misery in the absurd, and the latter is a persistent misery with upward optimism.
If you look at it this way, it is understandable to be banned. After all, everyone wants to be positive.
This article is reprinted from:https://aaronnick.github.io/posts/the-dream-of-dingzhuang/
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