Serve the People!: A Novel Paperback – Illustrated, February 18, 2008

A story that explains in allegory the life of a villager thrust into situations he can’t imagine. It might slip by folks not familiar with China and it villages, but if one does have that experience, it will leave you imagining your entire life and first loves.

Set on a military base during the Cultural Revolution, Serve the People! is a short, incredibly fun, and ultimately poignant satire of Mao’s China. Our protagonist is a good soldier who excels at revolutionary theory, can recite all of Mao’s quotes, and wants nothing more than to earn commendations and advancement so that he can one day move his wife to the city. He assiduously follows the rules of a good Communist; Don’t Do What You Shouldn’t Do, Don’t Say What You Shouldn’t Say, Don’t Think What You Shouldn’t Think, and above all Serve The People! But when the wife of his commander orders him to serve her in the bedroom, two of those rules come into conflict. What follows is a torrid and hilarious love affair that will see the couple trample on their revolutionary ideals in the name of passion. This novel was banned in Yan Lianke’s native China, and you don’t have to be an expert on the region to see why. Well worth the read.

Educational well written and humorous at times.

SPOILERS AHEAD:This book was published in 2005 and translated into English in 2007. Set in the period of the Cultural Revolution (1966-73), it began as a sex comedy, chronicling the development of an affair between an aging general's young wife (Liu Lian) and the handsome male soldier who was her servant (Wu Dawong).The book jacket and many book reviews emphasized the sex and romance ("red hot love story," "crackl[ing] with sexual tension"). But ultimately the novel seemed to be about how an authoritarian society distorted relations between people, the ways human nature found to overcome restrictions, the real meaning of self-sacrifice, and the massive gap in China between past and present values. Judging from the book's ending, the author didn't necessarily approve of all changes since liberalization.Initially there was much humor in the way the affair developed. The author seemed to be poking fun at social characteristics of the old days like permanent mass mobilization in service of national goals, and the need at all times for dedication to something larger than merely oneself, as expressed in an endless stream of national slogans. He seemed also to mock people of the time who paid lip service to national ideals while keenly pursuing self-interest. The woman, for instance, tried to convince her unwilling servant -- a naïve, simple man from the countryside -- that in "serving" her he was ultimately serving the people. (This phrase, "Serve the people!" appeared throughout the book, with multiple levels of irony.) She also tried appealing to his own selfish motives.The couple's yearning and frustration built up until they could be repressed no longer. For a short time, they locked themselves away and enjoyed bliss in privacy -- in a manner recalling the film Last Tango in Paris, except that in Communist China the greatest taboo and pleasure came from smashing busts of Chairman Mao. Ultimately, though, it proved impossible for them to move beyond the satisfaction of physical desire. For one of them, the stakes grew too high.The ending of the book floored me. Here, the story flashed forward to the near-present. The Cultural Revolution was over, and people were in headlong pursuit of material wealth. The action at this point seemed to indicate how bereft of ideals so many had become. Then the book shifted to the faraway past, to a time near the start of China's Communist Revolution, with a speech indicating the fervent beliefs that had motivated the cadres of the day. Here in the last few pages, it seemed that the novel became something much deeper than a clever sex comedy, and much more than a satire of authoritarian behavior. Not that the author approved of the Cultural Revolution; but while contrasting an oppressive society with the progressive beliefs that had motivated its establishment, he seemed also to be contrasting the dreams of that time with the loss of ideals in the present.Excerpts:"Newly Reconstructing the Superstructure . . . Consolidating the Great Wall of Socialism.""To think hard but say little, to channel ingenuity into practical ends and to blunt intelligence into worthy dullness--these were the survival strategies that Wu Dawang picked up from the veterans around him.""'If a person won't Serve the People in practice,' he replied, 'how can he Serve the People in theory?'""A long-hidden resentment at the rigid hierarchy all around him was about to burst forth.""Her breasts maintained an attitude of furious immobility, her nipples jutting forward like the pin noses of two indignant white rabbits, bearing solemn witness to the scene playing out before them.""It was an emotional and biological event that broke down all the moral, social, cultural and political boundaries of their world.""His was a face that admitted failure, its strength sapped by the social transformations that had bewildered and exhausted his generation.""The secret sank without trace, like a piece of gold thrown into the sea."

Read this book while in San Diego. I enjoy writings around the time of the Cultural Revolution in China, one can learn a little history while superimposing a story of adultery on top of all of it. The outcome is always the same, Passionate Love, ending with the question should any of us marry if Passion is only found outside marriage

The translation got me lost and I would rather have a chinese version.

This is a fun read and very well written, the descriptions are rich, and it draws you in. Highly recommended.

There are shades of many things - the Biblical story of Joseph and Potiphar's wife, Edith Wharton's "the Age of Innocence" and "1984," but this work is its own, and it is masterful. This is the portrait of a tyrannical, puritanical totalitarianism, but also of human beings striving to find happiness in an equally degrading and degraded world.

Interessante, lo consiglio per capire meglio la letteratura cinese. Politico, bello a livello stilistico. Personaggi interessanti e veritieri. Fisico e reale

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A very interesting satire on totalitarian society; the use of sex as a staricial device is hallowed in tradition but worka well in this context. One can see well why it was banned by the Chinese authorities.