"Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress" by Dai Sijie is a
wonderful journey into China during the time of the infamous
Cultural Revolution. The story is about two teens that have been
sent to the country side for re-education. Both Luo and the unnamed
narrator of the book are children from educated families, Luo's dad
is a dentist who even worked on Mao Zedong's teeth and the
narrator's father was a lung specialist and his mother was a
consultant in parasitic diseases. Since both boys had educated
parents they were sent to be re-educated.
The journey of re-education is harsh and the villagers are
untrusting of all the items the two boys bring to the village. They
are allowed to keep a rooster alarm clock and a violin. The boys
are sent to watch movies in a nearby town with the expectation of
when they return that they would act out the movie in its entirety
for the whole village.
The book is about the power of story telling and mostly about the
power of the written word.
The boys meet the seamstress' daughter and both fall in love with
her. Luo has a relationship with her and decides she needs to be
educated to better suit him. The two boys read to her western
literature and her eyes are opened to many possibilities.
The two boys and their cache of forbidden Western literature
including, of course, Balzac opens their eyes to a new world. The
literature proves to be a double edged sword, however, for the boys
lose the one thing that was making their life bearable.