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Rating: 
Summary: China before communism brought to life
Review: Martin Jarvis is superb in his rendition of these stories. Lu Xun (1881-1936), regarded as the founder of modern Chinese literature, penned these largely autobiographical short stories to document the life and times of pre-revolutionary communist China. Arranged in chronological order, they relate his personal experience and observation of a wide range of social ranks - the peasants, the wealthy, the bureaucrats, the intellectuals, and those in-between. Each story is vivid and sensitive, but objective through and through. He records how even his family, one of fading wealth and position, could be intimidated by a single peasant woman, how his marriage was a source of first strength and later desolate heartache, and how the academics and intellectuals used 'Chinese whispers' to bring down individuals who would not conform. By far my favourite is the sad tale of 'Kong Yi Ji', the bar-room nickname of a poor educated man struggling to make ends meet as a calligrapher and petty thief. Unfortunately, he stole what he valued most, books, and those from whom he stole had their own increasingly violent methods of punishment. The atmosphere of the blue-collar working men's culture is captured so well - it is one of the recognisable social phenomena of the world, seen in bars all over the world today.
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