A Thousand Years of Good Prayers – YiYun Li
In 21st Century Britain, how much do we really know about what life is like in China? How much of our knowledge is framed by the media, rumour and ignorance. I hold my hand up – like most people, I know very little about modern China. I feel anger when I hear about censorship and human rights abuses. I feel confusion when I hear about poverty. But China feels like such an alien place that reading A Thousand Years of Good Prayers was like reading about people from another planet – and yet, in so many ways, the stories that YiYun Li has written are stories which could almost be set in any time, in any country, beneath any regime.
Li writes as an exile from her country which is why she can write with such honesty about the way of life. However, she is never directly critical, nor does she denounce how the government functions or how life is controlled. This was partly because the author still has family in China and wants very much to have the opportunity to see them again, but I also feel it is because it wasn’t her intention to write a book of political short stories. She writes about people. She writes about family. She writes about love, loss and hope. And in that, she simply writes about the human condition.
There is no doubt that the people about whom she writes have had to come to terms with combining their tradition with the prevailing political thought, and overcoming horror and hardship in order to get on with life and survive. Every story deals with death in some way but despite the vast population in China, each death brings pain and sorrow to someone, whether they can demonstrate it visibly or whether they are forced to hide it. Whether it is the villagers who are trying to come to terms with the execution of one of their own, the couple who are finally faced with the death of their severely disabled daughter or simply an elderly woman facing the death of a brand new husband she doesn’t even know, the end of life is very much a part of life in Li’s writing. It gave the whole book an air of poignant beauty, emphasised by the delicate writing and palpable atmosphere in each and every story.
Irrespective of what culture someone lives in, there will always be misunderstanding between generations, and things will always move on. I found this collection of short stories acted to open my eyes that these things are just as true in China as they are in my own country. I am almost ashamed at my lack of knowledge about this enormous country, but if it continues to produce authors like YiYun Li, that ignorance will hopefully soon start to go.
Rating: 9/10
ISBN: 978-0007196630
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Year: 2006
Date Finished: 6 January 2008
Pages: 221
