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The Corpse Walker: Real Life Stories: China from the Bottom Up
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Customer Reviews
Rating:  - Be advised ...
... this book is little more than a diatribe against the Chinese government. Not that I am a fan of the Chinese government, it deserves many of the hits it receives, but this book seems deliberately edited to make things seem as bad as they possibly could be. I wish we could have heard these people talking in their own words. Many times I was wondering what was true and what was made up. Still, for all of that, it is an interesting read ... just take it with a grain of salt.
Rating: - Disappointing
I wanted the book to be more than it is. It claims to contain the 'real life-stories' of some of China's social outcasts. Are these authentic, first-person accounts of life as it was suffered on the bottom rung? I wish they were. Instead they are recollections (not transcriptions) of conversations, written down after the fact of the author's meetings with his subjects, reworked by the author and others still later, then translated from Chinese into English. The voices of the characters of these tales were hard to hear, and I was left to wonder who was saying what to whom.
Rating:  - Down and out in China
Here we learn how Mao's Cultural Revolution relentlessly destroyed China's civil life and its entire working infrastructure, millions of decent, innocent citizens.
There is so much suffering in these documents of survival on the streets, back alleys and in the desperate countryside that I put the book down many times only to pick it up again the way a tongue seeks the sore tooth. Do not look for a happy ending.
What remains of this debacle is the deep humanity of the Chinese people. Corpse Walker is excellent background for the novels of current Chinese writers such as Ha Jin.
Rating:  - Oral histories tell dark fascinating tales
As Studs Terkel did for American workers in "Working" and other books of oral history, so Liao does for the Chinese in this wide-ranging collection of interviews. From landowners to restroom attendants, from former Red Guards to Tiananmen parents, from professional mourners, feng shui practitioners, and fortune tellers to safecrackers and human traffickers, Liao encourages the ordinary people of China to tell their extraordinary stories.
A dissident poet and journalist who has himself been imprisoned, Liao has talked to everyone. Twin themes of incredible cruelty and quiet endurance run through the interviews. Some of the exchanges are hilarious, many of the accounts are deeply disturbing and tragic, and all of them portray the rapid changes China has undergone since the 1949 communist victory.
A Red Guard tells of torturing a school principal who had dedicated his life to the revolutionary cause, only to be accused at the start of the Cultural Revolution of forcing Western science on his students. The principal committed suicide. When asked if he ever felt he had gone too far the former Guard says:
"I was born into a family of blue-collar workers. The Cultural Revolution offered me the opportunity to finally trample on these elite. It was glorious. I couldn't get enough of it."
The human trafficker, Qian, interviewed in prison, describes how China's shortage of girls led to his success in the kidnapping and forced marriage business. He discovered the money to be made by selling his own daughters. "What do they know about happiness?" Qian responds when Liao expresses distaste. "My daughters are the children of a poor peasant."
Liao does not bother with Western journalism's objectivity. After Qian brags about his lying skills, Liao concludes the interview: "If I were the judge, I would first cut off your tongue as punishment. It deserves to be cut off."
No one has escaped China's political upheaval. The title interview, "The Corpse Walker," describes an old custom in which, back in unpaved China, people who died far from home would be taken on foot back to their families. But what starts out as a rather colorful, curious tale of an outmoded profession turns tragic as mob bloodlust and class hatred intervene.
The Cultural Revolution transformed a generation. Education was devalued, lives were blighted, torture and execution were common. The stories are heart-rending, but most of the tellers are more philosophical and fatalistic than bitter.
There is overall agreement that life in China is better these days, though many find the preoccupation with money ironic and a few lament the passing of their professions. The professional mourner describes how funeral rituals have changed, incorporating pop songs and limos. "People are not what they used to be. They don't even pretend to be sorrowful."
These very particular, individual stories breathe life into swathes of history. A Buddhist abbot describes an old woman's generosity during the widespread starvation of the 1960-61 famine, an old man tells of forsaking his bright revolutionary future for the love of a politically incompatible woman during the Cultural Revolution, a peasant matter-of-factly demonstrates the still destructive power of superstition (and the gulf between city and country) in "The Leper."
Liao's sympathetic and insightful interviews paint a complex, often breathtaking portrait of a convulsive period in a vast land.
Rating: - Deeply memorable collection of stories - highly recommended
I read this book after seeing a positive review in the Chicago Tribune and it did not disappoint. Each story of everyday Chinese citizens and their struggles was very memorable, touching and thought-provoking. As an American, I also found it very enlightening, and thought the stories were so important that I recommended the book to family and friends.
The Corpse Walker is the kind of book you will think about long after you've finished reading it!
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