Chronicle of a Blood Merchant (Google eBook)

Yu Hua, Andrew F. Jones

Random House Digital, Inc., Nov 9, 2004 - Fiction - 272 pages

A soaring literary achievement from internationally acclaimed writer Yu Hua, whose novels are now appearing in English for the first time, Chronicle of a Blood Merchant provides an unflinching portrait of China under Chairman Mao, as a factory worker must sell his blood to overcome every crisis. Xu Sanguan is a Chinese everyman-a cart-pusher in a silk mill struggling under the cruelty and hardships of Mao's leadership. His meager salary is not enough to sustain his family, so he pays regular visits to the local blood chief, followed by stops at the Victory Restaurant, where he pounds on the table and demands his ritual meal: "A plate of fried pork livers and two shots of yellow rice wine. And warm the wine up for me." But fried pork livers and yellow rice wine are not enough to restore Xu Sanguan. With the country in the throes of the Cultural Revolution, his visits to the blood chief become lethally frequent and his obligations to his family press against him mercilessly. At the height of famine, the Xu family lies motionless in bed, rising twice a day to consume increasingly watery rations of corn gruel. Xu Sanguan's wife is forced to stand on a stool in the center of town wearing a sandwich board that reads "prostitute". Yile, his wife's bastard son, forever haunts Xu Sanguan's sense of honor. And when Xu Sanguan sells his blood so he can take his family out to a proper meal, he does not invite Yile, who paces the town, famished and in tears, offering himself as a son to any man who will buy him a bowl of noodles. In a series of heartbreaking reversals, Xu Sanguan decides to risk his own life to save Yile and comes to understand that in a society ravaged by suspicion, hostility, and poverty, blood money not only pays debts, but forgives them as well. With rare emotional intensity, grippingly raw descriptions of place and time, and clear-eyed compassion, Yu Hua gives us a stunning tapestry of human life in the grave particulars of one man's days.

What people are saying

Review: Chronicle of a Blood Merchant

User Review  - CG - Goodreads

I loved the book. It has a lot of that drama and extreme emotion that is common to many other books set in this same hardship era, but I think it plays much better in writing than it does in many of ...

Review: Chronicle of a Blood Merchant

User Review  - Leah de Leon - Goodreads

I saw this bought at Book Sale and bought it because it has a nice cover. I didn't realise what I had was a treasure - a very unique story, memorable characters, witty dialogues and a culture that is peculiarly funny. Truly a gem!

Contents

• Section 1: 3
• Section 2: 17
• Section 3: 20
• Section 4: 30
• Section 5: 33
• Section 6: 40
• Section 7: 42
• Section 8: 55
• Section 9: 59
• Section 10: 69
• Section 11: 75
• Section 12: 80
• Section 13: 89
• Section 14: 95
• Section 15: 101
• Section 16: 107
• Section 17: 110
• Section 18: 113
• Section 19: 125
• Section 20: 129
• Section 21: 137
• Section 22: 146
• Section 23: 157
• Section 24: 163
• Section 25: 182
• Section 26: 202
• Section 27: 211
• Section 28: 244
• Section 29: 253

About the author

Yu Hua was born in 1960 in Zhejiang, China. He finished high school during the Cultural Revolution and worked as a dentist for five years before beginning to write in 1983. He has published three novels, six collections of stories, and three collections of essays. His work has been translated into French, German, Italian, Dutch, Spanish, Japanese, and Korean. In 2002 Yu Hua became the first Chinese writer to win the prestigious James Joyce Foundation Award. His novel To Live was awarded Italy’s Premio Grinzane Cavour in 1998, and To Live and Chronicle of a Blood Merchant were named two of the last decade’s ten most influential books in China. Yu Hua lives in Beijing.

Andrew F. Jones is the translator of Yu Hua’s first collection of short fiction in English, The Past and the Punishments, as well as a collection of literary essays by Eileen Chang. He is associate professor of modern Chinese literary and cultural studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Yellow Music: Media Culture and Colonial Modernity in the Chinese Jazz Age.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Chronicle of a Blood Merchant; Anchor Books
• Authors: Yu Hua, Andrew F. Jones
• Translated by: Andrew F. Jones
• Edition: reprint
• Publisher: Random House Digital, Inc., 2004
• ISBN: 1400031850, 9781400031856
• Length: 272 pages
• Subjects: Chinese fiction; Fiction / General; Fiction / Literary; Fiction / Romance / General; History / Asia / China; Yu, Hua