To Live (novel and film)

What is the novel about?

A narrator travelling the countryside to collect folk songs meets an old farmer, Fugui, and hears his life. As a landlord's son he spends his time gambling and whoring until he loses all the land; his father, in shock, falls from the privy and dies. Conscripted by the Nationalist army, he comes home and lives as a peasant with his wife Jiazhen.

What follows is a list of deaths. His son Youqing dies after too much blood is drawn for the county chief's wife in childbirth, and the chief is his old comrade from the civil war, Chunsheng. His mute daughter Fengxia finds happiness with the kind Erxi but dies in childbirth because the doctors are under denunciation. Jiazhen dies of a bone disease, Erxi crushed between concrete slabs, and the grandson Kugen by choking on beans. Fugui vanishes at dusk with an old ox he has also named Fugui.

Yu Hua says the American song "Old Black Joe" moved him to write the book, and that his grandfather was the model for Fugui. He said Fugui had no room for ideas like resistance: "he lives simply to live."

What did the film change?

Zhang Yimou changed a great deal. The setting moves from the rural south to a small northern town, Fugui becomes a shadow-puppet player, and the first-person retrospect and the ox disappear. The most famous passage is the steel campaign of the Great Leap Forward. Fugui carries his sleepy son to school on the day the village hands in its scrap iron; the boy falls asleep behind a wall and is killed when the district chief's car hits it. That chief is Chunsheng. Fengxia's death gains an unforgettable scene: the family buys a starving doctor seven steamed buns, and he lapses into a stupor from overeating.

The ending is the opposite. In the novel only Fugui survives; in the film Fugui, Jiazhen, Erxi and the grandson live on, visit the graves and sit down to eat. Fugui says that life will get better and better. The grandson of the novel is Kugen, "Bitter Root"; in the film he is Mantou, "Steamed Bun". One assessment holds that the novel's ending shows human helplessness before tragedy, while the film's is more optimistic and open.

Why was it banned?

The authorities refused theatrical release for its critical treatment of policies and campaigns. Zhang's entering it at Cannes without permission caused anger, and its timing after Farewell My Concubine and The Blue Kite was bad. Still it won the Grand Prix, the Ecumenical Jury prize and best actor for Ge You at Cannes. Roger Ebert reported that Zhang and Gong Li were barred from co-productions for two years and from discussing the film, and Zhang is said to have written a self-criticism. It circulated widely on video and even played in some theatres. The official ban was reported lifted quietly in late 2008, though the Chinese Wikipedia says it has again been unavailable online since 2020.

The novel, by contrast, was not banned. First published in the literary journal Harvest, it was translated into over twenty languages and adapted for television as Fugui (2005) and for the stage (2012).