Dream of Ding Village, by Yan Lianke
Stacey Civello
CHN-101, Summer 2017
The Sage Colleges
The novel Dream of Ding Village by Yan Lianke tells the grim story of China’s blood-selling frenzy and the ensuing AIDs epidemic which wiped out entire villages in rural Henan province. Beginning in the early 1990s, the booming biotech industry in China raised demand for plasma donations, to which the provincial Henan government responded by heading a campaign for blood plasma donations in exchange for money. For more than 3 million rural and impoverished Chinese, the opportunity was too good to pass up; for millions of poor Chinese, represented in the novel by the residents of Ding Village, the campaign offered a rare shot at …show more content…
Still, though, Yan offers a glimpse at the most touching aspects of humanity in several haunting portraits: the love story of an infected couple who will go to any length to be officially married so they can be buried together; a dying man’s last wish to fulfill his wedding vow and give his wife a red silk jacket at any cost; a disgraced mayor, his entire life destroyed by the blood trade, who dies still devastated by the loss of the village’s official seal; and, most tragically, the story of a father and respected villager elder so deeply shamed by the consequences of his blood merchant son’s profiteering and his own participation in the scheme, that he personally takes on the care of the entire village’s dying and ultimately kills his own son, leaving him alone as the sole survivor in the ghost town that was once a prosperous village.
Works Cited
Jiang, C. An interview with Yan Lianke. Words Without Borders, November 2012. Retrieved from http://www.wordswithoutborders.org/article/an-interview-with-yan-lianke
Watts, J. (2006, October 8). Censor sees through writer’s guile in tale of China’s blood-selling scandal. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/oct/09/books.china
Yan, L., & Carter, C. (2011). Dream of Ding Village. New York: Grove
Stacey Civello
CHN-101, Summer 2017
The Sage Colleges
The novel Dream of Ding Village by Yan Lianke tells the grim story of China’s blood-selling frenzy and the ensuing AIDs epidemic which wiped out entire villages in rural Henan province. Beginning in the early 1990s, the booming biotech industry in China raised demand for plasma donations, to which the provincial Henan government responded by heading a campaign for blood plasma donations in exchange for money. For more than 3 million rural and impoverished Chinese, the opportunity was too good to pass up; for millions of poor Chinese, represented in the novel by the residents of Ding Village, the campaign offered a rare shot at …show more content…
Still, though, Yan offers a glimpse at the most touching aspects of humanity in several haunting portraits: the love story of an infected couple who will go to any length to be officially married so they can be buried together; a dying man’s last wish to fulfill his wedding vow and give his wife a red silk jacket at any cost; a disgraced mayor, his entire life destroyed by the blood trade, who dies still devastated by the loss of the village’s official seal; and, most tragically, the story of a father and respected villager elder so deeply shamed by the consequences of his blood merchant son’s profiteering and his own participation in the scheme, that he personally takes on the care of the entire village’s dying and ultimately kills his own son, leaving him alone as the sole survivor in the ghost town that was once a prosperous village.
Works Cited
Jiang, C. An interview with Yan Lianke. Words Without Borders, November 2012. Retrieved from http://www.wordswithoutborders.org/article/an-interview-with-yan-lianke
Watts, J. (2006, October 8). Censor sees through writer’s guile in tale of China’s blood-selling scandal. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/oct/09/books.china
Yan, L., & Carter, C. (2011). Dream of Ding Village. New York: Grove