‘To Live’ is like a child who is
sobbing and smiling in between because there is someone tickling her. ‘To Live’
is a story of human frailties and the celebration of them. The village, the ox
or the loss, nothing is permanent. Fugui looks back with a common objectivity
shared by many like him because it happened to a lot of them, because he is
nearing his end too. All the experiences he lived through and made his family
go through are alive only because he is telling it all, and after him there
will be no one to tell. That is the beauty of him looking back. This book is
looking back at a wife who sacrificed everything, a father who was angry but
generous, a kid who ran every day, then suddenly stopped and a country going
through civil war. As you read Michael Berry’s translation of Yu Hua, the
lightness of words makes you fly till you are suddenly grounded by death, plain
and simple without much analysis of grief. Life moves on as you read on with a
sense of loss in your heart. The politics and the horror of it get buried under
the beauty of human life. Fugui has lived this story a long time back and all
the characters he narrates stare at you, asking you, what do you make of their
lives? What do you make of your own life?
