In the season when summer just arrived, I met an old man named Fu Gui, and listened to his rough life experience: Fu Gui, the young master of the landlord's family, was addicted to gambling, and finally gambled away all his possessions. In poverty, Fu Gui went to see a doctor because his mother was ill. Unexpectedly, he was caught by the Kuomintang army halfway and captured by the People's Liberation Army. Only when I got home did I know that my mother had passed away. My wife Jia Zhen had a pair of children, but my daughter was unfortunately dumb.
The real tragedy began to unfold gradually. Jia Zhen can't do heavy work because of rickets; The son died because of the same blood type as the county magistrate's wife, and he lost too much blood to save the county magistrate's wife; Xia Feng, the daughter, was introduced by the captain and married Hill, the eccentric in the city. After giving birth to a baby boy, he died of massive bleeding on the operating table. Three months after Xia Feng's death, Jia Zhen died one after another. Hill was a porter, and was killed by two rows of cement slabs because of crane mistakes; Grandson Kugan returned to the countryside with Fu Gui, and his life was very difficult. Even beans taste terrible. Fu Gui was distressed and cooked beans for Kugan, but Kugan ate beans and died. ...
The rare warmth in life was torn to pieces by death again and again, leaving only the old Fu Gui and the old cow to remember in the sun.
Creation background of Extended Materials: From the later period of Kuomintang rule to the liberation war and land reform movement, and then to the iron and steel smelting movement and natural disasters, the author experienced great changes in material life from being extremely rich to destitute, experienced the embarrassment and misfortune brought by many sports, and witnessed his wife and children dying in front of him again and again.
Later, the author heard an American folk song "Old Slave", in which the old slave experienced a lifetime of suffering and his family left him first, but he still treated the world kindly without a complaint. This song touched the author deeply, and the author decided to write a novel like this, so there was 1992 "Living". Write about people's tolerance for suffering and optimism about the world. People live for living itself, not for anything other than living.
The novel To Be Alive is a watershed in Yu Hua's creation. To be alive shows the death process of one person after another, sets off an endless wave of suffering, and shows a possible attitude towards the death process. Living itself is very difficult, and you have to work hard to continue your life. It is precisely because of extreme hardship that living has profound significance. Nothing is better than living, and nothing is more difficult than living.
References:
Alive (Yu Hua's Novel)-Baidu Encyclopedia