I found this book in the University’s library. The book itself is very very small. So, It takes like a half day to finish.
This novel is originally written in French, and was once taken to make a movie. Frankly, I don’t like this book, and I am glad that I didn’t buy it. Before moving to the details of the story, I would say that this honest dairy proves that socialist ideology was failed in China; the one who is educated no matter by confucian style or western style still look down on their up country fellows. It’s true that these rich kids were forced to carry the excrement( organic fertilizer) to put on vegetable. But that’s what 90% of the people have to do in the period of hardship.
The book talks about how the teenagers were sent to be re-educated with the peasants in the country( Phoenix Mountain). The text tried to make fun of local people. They also lied to the villagers that Mozart composed songs for chairman Mao. Well, the headman in the village tried to bribed Luo, one of the boys to fix his teeth in exchange of going back home early. " What’s wrong about that?"
Or the headman should have forced him to fix the teeth for free, then he will be happy?
If you don’t pay much attention, you might agree with these kids that the peasants are not nice. What I am not happy about is that the teenagers still think of own pleasure. For example, 2 boys like the same girl, and what they want is just to have sex. There’s a girl who they called the little seamstress. Both guys think they should modernize this local, why? why? why?
They still look up to Western civilisation. In the story, there’s a guy who used the connection to get the French books, his name is four eyes. Four eyes is highly literate person, he is sent there to make a report on a mountain folksongs for communist party.
One day, the 2 boys plan to steal all books and they know that four eyes will not be able to do anything because having western books are forbidden. For me, I don’t like classical western books so I don’t think it’s a treasure.They don’t care about the society. What I am questioning here is why all critics say it is a good book. Is it OK for a country like China to maintain their wide gap. At the time, 97% of Chinese people are going to die because of War, natural disaster, diseases.
It’s partly true that intellectual didn’t have enough space for creation. But in the rough time, intellectual should help people, not just get away from all trouble to countries who invade them. When intellectual became stupid, they are more stupid than ordinary people as they still believe that what they do is right.