Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #314941 in Books
• Published on: 2008-02-18
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 217 pages

From Publishers Weekly
This spare, enigmatic novella of Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution tells the story of the brief love affair between Wu Dawang, general orderly for a local division commander, and Liu Lian, the commander's bored wife. An ambitious model soldier of peasant origin, eager to move his family to the city, Wu Dawang is repeatedly instructed by his superiors that to serve the Division Commander and his family is to Serve the People. While the commander is away in Beijing for a two-month conference, Liu Lian initiates the affair with Wu Dawang through her subversive take on that Maoist slogan: whenever a sign saying Serve the People is moved from its accustomed place in the household, Wu Dawang is to attend to her needs immediately. Their delirious sexual liaison culminates in an orgiastic desecration of the images and words of Chairman Mao. Yan's satire brilliantly exposes the emptiness of Maoist ideals and the fraudulent ends for which they were used, but also relates a sorrowful tale of compromised relationships and modest hopes left unfulfilled. It was banned in China in 2005 for slander and for overflowing depictions of sex. (Mar.)
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Customer Reviews

serve the people serves you nothng but pleasure
Serve the People is a great book. It is well written like a lot of Chinese literature. The words are smart, sparse and full of emotion. The story is one that is both political and a love story at the same time. Apparently, according to the book jacket, this book was banned in China because it made fun of Mao and was sexual. The writing reminds me of Ha Jin in that it gets to the point by using few words and not using a bunch of big words just to fill up the pages. Once I got into it I couldn't put it down because I wanted to know what was going to happen to the characters next. It kept me on the edge of my seat and didn't necessarily take the path I thought it would to get to the end. I recommend this book because the writing is so good. The writing makes you feel at home, it makes you feel comfortable, not like you need a masters degree to read it. Also, the story is a good love story and the politics of it all is subtle and nuanced. You do not feel as if you are being preached at.

A Bawdy and Hilarious Satire of Life in Mao's China
While there's doubtless no worse governmental regime under which to live than totalitarianism, there is also no other easier (and more dangerous) to skewer with satire. Such is indeed the case with Yan Lianke's marvelously spot-on short novel, SERVE THE PEOPLE! Written in 2005 in a relatively more open China, this book certainly did little to endear author Yan to his country's party and leadership.

The book's title derives from one of the Chinese Communist Party's central tenets, "Wei renmin fuwu," a sentiment toward selfless service to the country expounded by Mao himself as the title of a speech he delivered in 1944, five years before his ascendancy to the role of Great Leader. "Serve the People" remains an everpresent admonition for China's current leadership, still inscribed in Mao's brushstrokes at the entrance to the Communist Party's leadership compound Zhongnanhai in Beijing. However, author Yan Lianke takes serving the people to a whole new and decidedly bawdy level in his exposition of Maoist China in 1967.

Wu Dawang is a typical Chinese country boy who joins the Army in order to secure enough promotions to make good on a pre-marital vow to move his wife and child to the big city someday. Finding himself trapped in a loveless marriage to which he strives to be faithful, Wu lives most of his days at the military base where he has risen to General Orderly (primarily cook and gardener) to the Division Commander. In that role, Wu lives with his company comrades but works every day at the Division Commander's standalone residence. Winner of multiple awards and commendations for politically correct service, Wu strives to live outwardly by the People's Liberation Army's three rules of thumb - don't say what you shouldn't say, don't ask what you shouldn't ask, and don't do what you shouldn't do. In reality, he follows the survival rules he's learned from army veterans, "To think hard but say little, to channel ingenuity into practical ends and to blunt intelligence into worthy dullness."

Young Wu's plans are turned upside down one day shortly after the Division Commander has left for a two-month conference in Beijing. A wooden sign lettered "Serve the People" in bright red characters has moved from its normal spot on the dining table to the kitchen counter. It takes Wu little time to discover the reason: the Division Commander's beautiful young wife, Liu Lian, has elected to use the sign as a signal that she "needs [Wu Dawang] upstairs for something." He timidly approaches her room only to discover her naked in her darkened bedroom, holding a copy of The Selected Works of Mao Zedong. Thus begins Wu's bawdy adventures in serving the people by serving the Division Commander by, in turn, servicing his wife (at her insistence).

The story elevates to hysterical bedroom farce in short order, with the two main characters becoming wholly consumed by their physical relationship in the Division Commander's absence. Yan takes repeated satirical swipes, both small and large, at Mao, the Communist Party, and the People's Liberation Army, culminating with an outrageously slapstick scene where Wu Dawang and Liu Lian smash and desecrate every Mao object in the household (a crime punishable by death at that time) in order to prove whose love for the other is stronger. The reasons behind this two-month orgy and how it plays itself out over the next fifteen years of Wu's life are left for the reader to discover, along with the fate of the "Serve the People" sign. Alternately sensual and hilarious, it's well worth the effort to read SERVE THE PEOPLE! to find out more.

Nothing special; interested to read his other works
The design and moving opening to this short novel are enough to keep you reading, especially when the author draws his ideas of fiction into a few opening sequences, however the ending rushes by and is followed by an annoyoing melodramatic epilogue, though an intersting postscript.