Dream of Ding Village [Hardcover]

In 'Dream Of Ding Village' Yan Lianke, one of China's most pre-eminent and controversial novelists, tackles the harrowing topic of AIDS in his country's impoverished rural regions.
Longlisted for the 2011 MAN Asian Literary Prize, 'Dream of Ding Village' is as gruelling as you might expect given its subject matter. But Lianke lends it an extra dimension by employing his trademark satire and black humour to devastating effect.
Lianke's most famous work, 'Serving The People', about an affair between a red army soldier and the wife of a high-ranking Party official, was banned in his homeland and 'Dream Of Ding Village' went the same way, accused of painting an unnecessarily bleak and alarmist picture of the epidemic afflicting millions of rural Chinese.
In fact, Lianke's book acts as much as an allegory of the Chinese economy's clumsy lurch towards capitalism as it does a damning indictment of a system which preaches equality but is riddled with corruption, and whose selfish clamour extends, in Lianke's expert hands, as far as the after-life.
'Dream Of Ding Village' is based on the true story of an horrific period in which ruthless free-marketeers coerced villagers into selling their blood and in the process infected them with the AIDS virus, wiping out entire communities.
It is narrated by the ghost of Xiao Qiang, a young boy who has been killed by his family's neighbours as retribution for the role of his father, the most prominent of the so-called blood-hounds, in spreading the disease.
Entirely unabashed by the mounting tragedy, the boy's father continues to exploit the villagers, first by selling them the coffins that are meant to be given to them free by the state, then, ultimately, by convincing them to pay to marry off their dead sons and daughters so as not to leave them lonely in the after-life.
He succeeds because this is a society long since rendered hopelessly naïve by the bludgeoning force of multi-layered, single-party rule. As the villagers fall ill and prepare to die in increasing numbers, they blithely accept changes in authority based on nothing more than ownership of the village seal. Blackmail and corruption is endemic even among the stricken: one man even schemes to be buried with the seal so as to retain his authority after his death.
This blend of hard fact - Lianke is from the province of Hunan, where the scandal was at its most devastating, and spent time living with AIDS victims and corroborating their stories - and fiction, works well in such expert hands, exposing the inherent futility of a fast-changing nation's grasp at the best of both worlds.
If Liang's choice of narrator is a little contrived, and if the story is so devoid of hope and corrupt of morals so as to be hard going at times, it is also a remarkable and unforgettable book. Lianke's beautiful descriptions of such a desolate landscape sustain the reader through this gut-wrenchingly sad tale, and give a voice to the victims of the hidden tragedy he has brought so brilliantly to light.
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Dream of Ding Village by Yan Lianke. Translated by Cindy Carter
Corsair £12.99
Reviewed by Leyla Sanai

It was prescient that Chinese literary award winner Lianke's novel was
published within weeks of his fellow outspoken creative, the artist Ai
Wei Wei, being arrested. Wei Wei is now free, though cowed - possibly
by threats of reprisals against his family if he criticises the Chinese
totalitarian system again. Lianke's novel, based on a true
blood-selling scandal, was banned when first published in China, which
is ironic because he self censored it by toning down his initial idea
to try and avoid the ire of the censors, having previously been banned
for fierce satires criticising the authorities. He was left feeling as
if he'd compromised his initial idea in vain.

Lianke's dedication to truth is clear: he worked undercover for years
assisting a Beijing anthropologist studying the destruction of a
Chinese village in Henan Province by AIDS in order to obtain the facts
on which this novel is based.
The tale is narrated by a dead child, poisoned by villagers resentful
of the decimation caused by his father Ding Hui's actions: Hui pounced
on an initiative introduced by county officials to generate money by
paying villagers to sell blood. Hui's father, the narrator's grandpa,
is decent and worked as caretaker and teacher at the school, but his
sons are weak, Hui becoming rich by unscrupulous blood-selling and
Liang causing gossip by having an affair with his cousin's wife.

Hui milks the villagers of blood, sapping their strength, and his
immoral cost cutting, re-using needles and swabs, leads to the spread
of AIDS. As the villagers become too sick to tend their crops, Hui
generates more income unethically by selling coffins donated for the
sick by the authorities, and offering costly post-humous match-making
services for victims. Grandpa has premonitory dreams which, together
with his sagacity, place him in the role of wise village elder, but the
villagers pay scant attention because of the behaviour of his sons.

Lianke's portrait of a small rural community hurtling to its demise
through the greed of a few is powerful, sobering and untinged by
sentimentality: even in the throes of terminal illness, villagers still
scrabble for power, engage in petty conflicts, steal, bribe and
blackmail. Lianke's concession to the censors is obvious - blame is
deflected from the authorities onto the avaricious criminal Hui, and
the authorities are shown to implement measures to try and compensate
villagers for the devastation wrought by AIDS. But at best, the
authorities still appear naive, and the unspoken sub-text is clear -
pushing high-tech medicine as a way of generating income without
providing resources and expertise is so foolhardy it's
indistinguishable from amorality.

The contrast between the simplicity of village life and the ravages
that follow lend a cinematic quality to the prose: `Across the plain,
those well enough to work were out in the fields. Their figures stood
out beneath the distant sky like scarecrows swaying in the wind. And
now, blowing in from the village, was another small figure, dragging a
child behind her.'

Occasionally, Lianke's tendency to repeat key events seems superfluous,
but this is a compelling and shocking story of a traditional village
pillaged by the greed of a few. Lianke is masterful at capturing the
red tape of bureaucracy: `a sheaf of documents...mainly memos about
memos, notices about notices, all sent down from higher levels of
government.' And he is brutally honest about the difference money and
power make, buying everything from an easy life to a sumptuous death in
an ornately engraved tomb.

Carter's translation is fluid and natural, the only fault being that
her avoidance of stilted speech leads to western
colloquialisms/cliche's (`moth to a flame', `mark my words', `if looks
could kill', a dog running off with its `tail between its legs', `get
your arse out here', `has the cat got your tongue?') which occasionally
sound out of place in the rural Chinese setting. But there are also
wistful poetic images in keeping with the mood - grandpa dropped off by
the bus `like a fallen leaf'; a philandering husband left by his wife
and son thinking `if I die tomorrow, they'll find me with two tears in
my eyes: one for every good thing I've lost.'

Both as faction specific for this scandal and as allegory for other
tragedies that occur wherever egregious appetites of the elite lead to
devastation of the many, this beautifully evocative novel can't be
faulted.