Product Description

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress is an enchanting tale that captures the magic of reading and the wonder of romantic awakening. An immediate international bestseller, it tells the story of two hapless city boys exiled to a remote mountain village for re-education during China’s infamous Cultural Revolution. There the two friends meet the daughter of the local tailor and discover a hidden stash of Western classics in Chinese translation. As they flirt with the seamstress and secretly devour these banned works, the two friends find transit from their grim surroundings to worlds they never imagined.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #9674 in Books
• Published on: 2002-10-29
• Released on: 2002-10-29
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 184 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780385722209
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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From Publishers Weekly
The Cultural Revolution of Chairman Mao Zedong altered Chinese history in the 1960s and '70s, forcibly sending hundreds of thousands of Chinese intellectuals to peasant villages for "re-education." This moving, often wrenching short novel by a writer who was himself re-educated in the '70s tells how two young men weather years of banishment, emphasizing the power of literature to free the mind. Sijie's unnamed 17-year-old protagonist and his best friend, Luo, are bourgeois doctors' sons, and so condemned to serve four years in a remote mountain village, carrying pails of excrement daily up a hill. Only their ingenuity helps them to survive. The two friends are good at storytelling, and the village headman commands them to put on "oral cinema shows" for the villagers, reciting the plots and dialogue of movies. When another city boy leaves the mountains, the friends steal a suitcase full of forbidden books he has been hiding, knowing he will be afraid to call the authorities. Enchanted by the prose of a host of European writers, they dare to tell the story of The Count of Monte Cristo to the village tailor and to read Balzac to his shy and beautiful young daughter. Luo, who adores the Little Seamstress, dreams of transforming her from a simple country girl into a sophisticated lover with his foreign tales. He succeeds beyond his expectations, but the result is not what he might have hoped for, and leads to an unexpected, droll and poignant conclusion. The warmth and humor of Sijie's prose and the clarity of Rilke's translation distinguish this slim first novel, a wonderfully human tale. (Sept. 17)Forecast: Sijie's debut was a best-seller and prize winner in France in 2000, and rights have been sold in 19 countries; it is also scheduled to be made into a film. Its charm translates admirably strong sales can be expected on this side of the Atlantic.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal
Adult/High School-This beautifully presented novella tracks the lives of two teens, childhood friends who have been sent to a small Chinese village for "re-education" during Mao's Cultural Revolution. Sons of doctors and dentists, their days are now spent muscling buckets of excrement up the mountainside and mining coal. But the boys-Luo and the unnamed narrator-receive a bit of a reprieve when the villagers discover their talents as storytellers; they are sent on monthly treks to town, tasked with watching a movie and relating it in detail on their return. It is here that they encounter the little seamstress of the title, whom Luo falls for instantly. When, through a series of comic and clever tricks and favors, the boys acquire a suitcase full of forbidden Western literature, Luo decides to "re-educate" the ignorant girl whom he hopes will become his intellectual match. That a bit of Balzac can have an aphrodisiac effect is a happy bonus. Ultimately, the book is a simple, lovely telling of a classic boy-meets-girl scenario with a folktale's smart, surprising bite at the finish. The story movingly captures Maoism's attempts to imprison one's mind and heart (with the threat of the same for one's body), the shock of the sudden cultural shift for "bourgeois" Chinese, and the sheer delight that books can offer a downtrodden spirit. Though these moments are fewer after the love story is introduced, teens will enjoy them at least as much as the comic and romantic strands.

Emily Lloyd, Fairfax County Public Library, VA

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
This deceptively small novel has the power to bring down governments. In Mao's China, the Cultural Revolution rages, and two friends caught in the flames find themselves shuttled off to the remote countryside for reeducation. The stolid narrator occasionally comforts himself by playing the violin, and both he and more outgoing friend Luo find that they have a talent for entertaining others with their re-creations of films they have seen. A little light comes their way when they meet the stunning daughter of the tailor in the town nearby, with whom Luo launches an affair. But the real coup is discovering a cache of forbidden Western literature including, of course, Balzac that forces open their world like a thousand flowers blooming. The literature proves their undoing, however, finally losing them the one thing that has sustained them. Dai Sijie, who was himself reeducated in early 1970s China before fleeing to France, wonderfully communicates the awesome power of literature of which his novel is proof. Highly recommended. Barbara Hoffert, "Library Journal"
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

What a little gem!
Aah, this is a real find. Here's a lovely story with haunting images that will stay with you. It's a story of oppression reminiscent of "Fahrenheit 451" but it also has some harrowing adventure. It is at once charming and startling as we are plunged into the horror of Mao's "re-education" plan for China. It's a love story, yes, but it's mostly about the love of words, the insatiable thirst for stories, entertainment, and escape of any kind, the enormous revolution your life can undertake when introduced to new ideas, old wisdom, and beautiful language. It's especially delightful for those of us who love Asian literature. This translation from the French is a bit awkward in places, but it still manages to transcend language barriers and relate the magic the author intended. Frankly, I was drawn to the book because the cover is so beautiful, and I love the small size. As a former designer of publications, I immediately appreciated the beauty of the package, including the truly lovely typeface. It's a complete experience. And nothing in the book is overdone. It's like dessert for the soul.

A cultural revolution, in miniature
"Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress" does exactly what this type of book should do. It offers us a brief window into a part of the world, and a style of life, of which we will never be able to encounter first hand. It allows to walk a few steps in the shoes of a different kind of citizen of life, and thus empathize with their experience. It also provides a moving allegory for the power of fiction, and lets us appreciate something that is so readily available to us, yet so rare for others. The escape of fiction allows for dreams, and is a powerful force.

Being almost ignorant of the Chinese cultural re-education system, this book was educational historically as well. I had known of it in theory, but not details such as the banning of all books other than those written by Mao, or the process behind re-education. I do want to learn more about this chapter in history, of which the world is still feeling the repercussions.

The book itself is gentle, with moving imagery and a quiet sense of humor. The characters in it do not rage against the political machine, but instead make do with what life has forced upon them. There is love, of course, because humans will love in the most desperate of circumstances. To highlight the playfulness of the book, my favorite scene is when the tailor, influenced by the hearing of Count of Monte Cristo, begins to dress the village in fanciful pirate clothes and nautical emblems.

Charming all the way through, and small enough to be a quick read.

A surprisingly charming coming of age story
"Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress" is a sweet, short and whimsical little coming of age story. That it happens to be set during China's Cultural Revolution and revolves around sent-down educated youth is incidental, which is a refreshing change.

One of the editorial reviews labels this a "moving, often wrenching novel"; that it is neither is what makes it so appealing. Dai Sijie's lovely novel is a departure from most the "scar literature" about the Cultural Revolution in so many refreshing ways. The genre is saturated by epic-length wallow fests, equal parts suffering, self-importance and appeal-to-Western-readers exotica. "Balzac" is simple, unpretentious, strait-forward and humorous. The tragic overtones of the time are mentioned passingly and straightforwardly, as through the eyes of a youth more concerned with his own affairs than of the nation convulsing around him. Yet its tragedy is so much more moving with such a sparing brush than those that linger morbidly to flesh out all the gory details.

The story is told through the eyes of a sent-down youth and his bosom buddy Luo. They are typical teenagers, at once cocky and nervous, at first thrown in over their heads in the small village they are assigned to, but soon figuring things out well enough to manipulate the system, and usually get away with it. Much humor is made through the village headman's infatuation with Luo's alarm clock, the first such thing to ever be seen in the town, and how they use the villages blind trust in its accuracy to steal extra hours of morning sleep.

The central characters are not paragons of virtue, and often downright unsympathetic, which makes the plot the more engaging and realistic. With teenage boy duplicity, they both vie to seduce the prettiest girl in the village, the seamstress of the title. Luo's talent for storytelling had won them the task of going to town to see movies and then come back and reenact them for the rest of the village, and first courts the seamstress with his movie tales.

After a friend of theirs, another sent-down youth and the child of writers, grudgingly loans them a Balzac book, Luo discovers that French romanticism gets him further with the girl than Korean Communist propaganda. After much plotting, they steal their friend's secret suitcase of banned Western novels, leading to the book's central conflict: Luo's forbidden affair with the seamstress, and the trio's forbidden love affair with literature.

In the average Cultural Revolution tale, these love affairs would end disastrously. Perhaps playfully alluding to the cliches of the genre, Dai foreshadows such a romantically tragic ending. What happens instead hilariously cements the book as a solidly realistic and cynical portrait of China and of human nature.

It's interesting to note the disparity between the emigrant Chinese writers who went to France and who went to Anglophone countries. While most of the latter, apart from a few notable exceptions, are horrendous writers, those who migrated to France, such as Gao Xingjian and Dai, have honed an elegant literary fusion. This harks back to the 1920s and '30s, when most of the best Chinese writers and artists studied in France. I don't know much about France, but it always does good things to the Chinese.

"Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress" is also a physical pleasure to read, with its flowing old typeface, small size and the elegant cover that lured me in despite my dislike of its genre.

In absolute terms, "Balzac" only deserves four stars, but compared to the other books in its genre, which get so many undeserved raves from naive readers who wouldn't know China from Cochinchina, it is definitely a gem.