Bookraft

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie read by Bernard Wong


Can you imagine a story set in China during the height of the Cultural Revolution would be funny? This was the period in the early 1970's [not so long ago]when hundreds of thousands of "enemies of Mao" and the state were sent to the countryside for "re-education". The narrator and his friend, Luo, are sent to Phoenix mountain, near the border with Tibet to work in the fields because their parents - a Dentist , Luo's father, and Doctors in the case of the narrator - were deemed bourgeois and so their offspring needed "re-education" for 2 years or maybe 5 or forever.

But it is how the two survive among the peasantry which provides the humour. Also, the pluck of the two heros who discover access to forbidden fruits - Western books, is a continuing plot twisting . As for the the Little Chinese Seamstress - suffice it to say that her beauty and character is like honey to our heroes. And how she turns is another small parable in one filled with characters, insights, and "yams hot and tasty from the coals". Again the reading - or should I say the performance by Bernard Wong adds much to the delight of the story.