Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress

—Overview

Words and ideas can change lives. Each time we open a book or watch a film, the stories have the power to alter us. So it is understandable that China has banned Sijie Dai’s semi-autobiographical book and film, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress. The story deals exactly with the way ideas can transform lives.

The story tells of Luo and Ma, two young men from middle class families in Beijing who are sent to a distant rural village during the Cultural Revolution for reeducation. There they work in the fields and mines. They also have to submit to the rule of the town chief whose job it is to teach them that their bourgeois lifestyle was inappropriate for China under Mao. When they first get to the village, they have to have all their belongings judged for their appropriateness. They have a cookbook that is trashed (the village didn’t need bourgeois chicken). Luo’s alarm clock survived (it’s the first the villagers have seen), as does Ma’s violin after Luo tell the chief that Ma plays “Mozart is Thinking About Chairman Mao� so beautifully.

In time, they steal a set of forbidden books from another youth being reeducated in the village. These books (translations of classic Western literature) become their world. They pour through the stories.

They also meet the granddaughter of the tailor in a nearby village and both fall in love with her. The two city boys take it upon themselves to educate her so she won’t be like the country people they loathe being with. They read her the books. Those books do far more to teach her about the world and herself than all the other things they teach her. In time, she is set free from the restraints of her society through the stories that she has heard. In setting her free, it also takes her away from both Luo and Ma. Their attempt to make her “worthy� of them comes back in their face.

Perhaps it might be appropriate at this point for us to consider the words and ideas that have changed each of us. Our lists will vary. What are yours? John Steinbeck? C. S. Lewis? Dietrich Bonhoeffer? Bono? Bob Dylan? e. e. cummings? Martin Scorsese? Lars von Trier? The Gospel?

In The Gospel According to John, Jesus is called “the Logos.� Often translated “word,� logos is the root from which we get the word logic. Christ is seen in John as the kind of word or idea that changes not only lives, but the world.

Of course the whole Cultural Revolution was designed to remove ideas and words from society to allow Maoist ideas to be inculcated without competing concepts. The Communists knew that words mattered, so they sought to eliminated words and ideas that would undermine their own ideas. But as is often the case, those words and ideas continue to find their way into people’s minds. It isn’t easy to stop words from creeping in.

As I said, even though China allowed the film to be shot there, the film and the book it’s based on are banned. But I understand that the extensive bootleg video industry in China has copies of the film circulating. It really is hard to stop words from creeping in – into a country or into our lives.

—Overview