Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out

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Ximen Nao, a landowner executed during Communist land reform despite insisting that he treated his tenants justly, refuses to confess in the underworld. Lord Yama sends him back to his former village on 1 January 1950, but not in human form. Across successive lives as a donkey, ox, pig, dog and monkey, Ximen watches his former household, his adopted son Lan Lian and their descendants struggle with collectivisation, political campaigns and the changing demands of rural power.

The reincarnations carry the story from the early People’s Republic through the Great Leap Forward, famine, the Cultural Revolution and the market reforms of the late twentieth century. Animal perception makes political slogans appear strange, comic and often brutal, while Lan Lian’s stubborn refusal to abandon independent farming provides a human counterpoint to compulsory collectivism. By the final rebirth, private grudges and family loyalties have become inseparable from fifty years of revolutionary history.

Historical Periods

Cultural Revolution1966–1976 CE Reform and Opening Up in Chinafrom 1978 CE Chinese Communist Land Reform1946–1953 CE Great Leap Forward and Great Chinese Famine1958–1962 CE