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Dream Of Ding Village. Yan Lianke (2005)

by Yan Lianke(Favorite Author)

3.75 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

1780332629 (ISBN13: 9781780332628)

languge

English

genre

Historical Fiction

publisher

Corsair

review 1: Based on real-life events, this is a haunting novel on greed and how it destroys one family and its community. Ding Village is a township falling into decay, people drop dead everyday from the "fever." HIV/AIDS has contaminated over half of the population which has engaged in blood selling to raise money to develop the local economy and bring its residents out of poverty. Corrupt blood brokers, or blood heads, arise to compete with government blood banks, reusing needles and dirty cotton balls on young and old, men and women, alike. The Ding family is at the center of this controversy - Ding Hui is a local blood head who has made his family rich on the backs of his neighbors; his 12 year-old son is murdered (poisoned by locals) as retribution for the many villagers that D... moreing Hui infected with disease, his brother is dying of AIDS, his mother died of exposure to hepatitis-contaminated blood, and his father, the unofficial town leader is begging Ding Hui to ask the town for forgiveness. But Ding Hui continues to scam the locals, rising in official ranks - when a state official tells Ding Hui that the residents of Ding Village are eligible for free caskets to bury the sick and dying, Ding Hui never delivers the message, instead, he sells off the coffins to the sick from other villages, resulting in his townspeople chopping down all of their trees to build coffins. Death is senseless and without dignity in this book, every life expendable. This is an incredible and profound story that explores virtue, commitment to family, and social harmony - Confucian qualities with a modern twist.
review 2: I got this thinking it was some sort of satire about Communism. I had no idea that the selling of blood in Chinese backwaters and whole villages being wiped out by AIDS had atually happened! So that's pretty horrific but the book itself wasn't that great - some of the sections are too drawn out with odd bits of repetition as though I wasn't reading the final draft. Reviews from papers say things like 'Wonderfully biting satire, brimming with absurdity, humor and wit' and 'A very funny, sexy, satire'. I probably just missed the point entirely but didn't find much to chuckle about at all! less

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