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He has managed to give a kaleidoscopic view by presenting memoirs from his life and presenting stark political observations. Hua is by profession a dentist who grew weary of his profession and found solace in the art of writing; that gave him the space to be more innovative and flexible. His work is valued around the world and is translated in to several languages. One of the reasons that hold the reader’s attention is the detailed description of the violence that prevailed in Mao’s reign.
During the Cultural Revolution Mao Zedong’s excellent and successful ploy to rule china worked amazingly well until his death. This era in the history of China was the time where the entire country was turned upside down (Hua, 2012). Thus, the book entails a collection of essays written where Hua very artistically gives a critique to the government by self-reflecting on his own situation and scenarios in his life. He has introduced the reader to the book with the word ‘people’. The essay contains a lethal confrontation for democracy, which initiated the political passions that surfaced during the Cultural Revolution.
In one of the essays Hua narrates that during 1978 he was consigned the task of supervising a vaccination in the Southern China. The needles that were used for the purpose of vaccinations were barbed due to over usage and every time a child was pricked with it, a fragment of skin was hauled out and the child would cry aloud due to pain. The cries of children troubled Hua to the extent that after vaccinating the child he would prick his own fingers with the same needle until his own fingers were wounded.
Therefore, he blamed himself for causing the children pain and mentions that he should have examined the needles on himself – which he should have given up his own flesh. A very shrew critique indeed that he has presented to the government without bringing down the anger of the authorities by speaking his mind out about self-criticism (Hua, 2012). However, despite being true to its every word China in Ten Words did not seem to please the censor board in china. Therefore, the book was never published where the concept of the book came in to being; Hua portrays China as an ethically compromised homeland that is cursed by the galloping unemployment, class polarization, prevalent corruption, and waste of resources.
Furthermore, he says that there is a stark and visible difference between the elite and the working class. Where the peasant is ready to trade its blood to the highest bidder, the multimillionaires have constructed manors that are exact copy of the White House. Furthermore, he writes that during the day the executives sit in the duplicate of Oval office and as the day changes course to night the executive takes his secretary to bedroom that is also a copied version of the Lincoln Bedroom (Hua, 2012).
What makes the book stand out is that each word in the book is dedicated to the topic of the essay. Thus using ten words Yu Hua has summed up the history of half a century that China has possessed. Nevertheless, while reading the book the reader finds some of the interpretations rigid and drawn from personal experience. He expressed that the classes discrimination is prevalent in China and to back this he states the example of the Olympic Park in Beijing in 2008 where the poor were banned to the games due to
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