Dante's Purgatory China Analysis

thrown into the river. In Yu Hua, the anti-allegorical version of realism, doesn’t have the same sick violence of the previous avant-gardist Past and Punishment (1996) but violence, though a rationalized form of violence, remains somewhat the common thread linking the two decades. Nonetheless in this modern Chinese vision of Dante’s Purgatory, the equality of death is only apparent, even in its Purgatory China has a VIP zone with armchairs besides the plastic chairs for basic arrivals. It is here, behind the realism of the plot, within the aimlessly roaming of the skeletons and the regrets of their accounts, that Yu Hua concedes a valuable outline of some casualties of today’s China -the estrangement from the market dominion of the organ sellers

Lianke’s case can be explained by recalling what he himself defines as ‘amnesia with Chinese characteristics’, the state loss of memory that the regime sees as essential to its survival. Outraged by Chinese censorship and moved by anthropological truth, Lianke has consistently explored, disjointed and mocked the whole history of the People’s Republic: in, Lenin’s Kisses, the government’s plan to purchase Lenin’s embalmed corpse from Russia and use it as basis for a tourist site in the mainland is a mockery to China’s move to capitalism. To Serve the People, which closely reminds of Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover, it’s a parody of Maoist rhetoric, the tale of a young woman who takes an older lover who can be aroused only when she smashes portraits and statues of Chairman Mao. Dream of Ding Village explores the AIDS blood-contamination in Henan province, not much of a fiction but the outcome of Lianke’s three years research in ‘AIDS villages’ in Henan. It starts as an attempt of bribery and bullying to collect blood from as many people as possible, as often as possible, to be sold to government blood banks. Once the business is on the move the disease spread unchecked because of local ‘blood-heads’ who used contaminated needles. The final image