Mr. China's Son: A Villager's Life

No other book so poignantly reveals the travails of the common person and village life under Chinas tempestuous government. He Liyis saga of poverty and hardship is told with humor and a surprising lack of bitterness. Yet his struggle to embrace citizenship speaks for an entire generation of men and women who survived Maos labor camps and the many failed experiments of the Communist revolution. }He Liyi belongs to one of Chinas minorities, the Bai, and he lives in a remote area of northwestern Yunnan Province. In 1979 his wife sold her fattest pig to buy him a shortwave radio. He spent every spare moment listening to the BBC and VOA in order to improve the English he had learned at college between 1950 and 1953. For further practice, he decided to write down his life story in English. Humorous and unfiltered by translation, his autobiography is direct and personal, full of richly descriptive images and phrases from his native Bai language. At the time of He Liyis graduation, English was being vilified as the language of the imperialists, so the job he was assigned had nothing to do with his education. In 1958 he was labeled a rightist and sent to a reeducation-through-labor farm. Spirited away by truck on the eve of his marriage, Mr. He spent years in the labor camp, where he schemed to garner favor from the authorities, who nevertheless shamed him publicly and told him that all his problems belong to contradictions between the people and the enemy. After his release in 1962, the talented Mr. He had no choice but to return to his native village as a peasant. His stratagems for survival, which included stealing nightsoil from public toilets and extracting peach-pit oil from thousands of peaches, personify the peasants universal struggle to endure those difficult years.He Liyis autobiography recounts nearly all the major ev ents of Chinas recent history, including the Japanese occupation, the Communist victory over the Nationalists in 1949, Maos disastrous Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, the experience of the labor camps, and changes brought about by Chinas dramatic re-opening to the world since Deng Xiaoping came to power in 1978. No other book so poignantly reveals the travails of the common person and village life under Chinas tempestuous Communist government, which He Liyi ironically refers to as Mr. China. Yet he describes his saga of poverty and hardship with humor and a surprising lack of bitterness. And rarely has there been such an intimate, frank view of how a Chinese man thinks and feels about personal relationships, revealed in dialogue and letters to his two wives. }

What's Going On With My Family After The Book Published?
Dear Friends: After having read the book, you might now wonder, "How is Mr. He now?" "What happened to his family after he retired?" You may also want to know something about the book itself. Here, before I finish my writing to bring the book up-to-date, I'll tell you a little more. I returned to Dali from the BBC Summer School in September 1988. He Lu-jiang, my older son, had become a teacher of English at Dali Medical College in my absence, thus fulfilling my 40-year-long wish to give younger generations a hand in learning a foreign language. In 1993, Lu-jiang married Miss Lou Yu-qiong, who is also a teacher, at the college's kindergarten. In February. 1995 Lou gave birth to my grandson, He Xing-cheng. This "Little Emperor" of the family has already entered the kindergarten last autumn, he comes to my cafe almost every weekend and to run here and there like a lovely, naughty puppy. My younger son, He Lu-zhong, studied hard at high school and in 1992 won a 14-day honorable and free trip to Germany in a competition organized by Beijing's German Embassy. Upon graduation from Yunnan's Institute for Minorities in 1996, he was accepted to work in Yunnan Provincial Government in Kunming. He was sent to study in Thailand during May 1997--May 1998. To live in a city and enjoy a city way of life is not Mrs. He's cup of tea. Even today she still likes to stay at home in the village. Like me, she is getting older and has stopped planting rice and climbing up high mountains. However, she enjoys knitting and always keeps good company with her chickens and several geese. Ten years ago she often said to me, "You must be very careful with our two sons' education. You are a 'big student', you work in our county, you are good; Lu-jiang is a 'big student', if he could work in the Dali Prefecture City, that is better; if Lu-zhong became the third 'big student' in our family and worked in the provincial city, that would be the best of all. I dream for better and best." She is very happy now because her life's dream has all come true. As for myself , I retired in 1989. I was then invited to train guides and translate for Dali's Prefecture Museum, and later to teach English at Dali Teacher's College. In my spare time I continued to write my life story. Now I would like to say something about how I first got the idea to write it. In 1984, I got my first book (The Spring Of Butterflies) published in Britain. The publisher, Neil Philip, asked me to write something about myself, and appeared in the book as a "Biographical Note". The book was sold in English speaking countries, and many readers began to write me, not because of the tales but of the "Biographical Note". They encouraged me to add some more details and write out the whole story. So early in 1985, I began to write. In 1992 with the help of an English lady Claire Chik, we found a publisher in New York and signed a contract. However when the publisher gave me an advance copy (the title they gave the book was The Red Field), the more I read the more angry I got ---- the New York editor had rewritten (changed) my life history! I wrote back and told them, "I'd rather give up than change my life...It is a true autobiography not a fiction...If you insist on your own imagination of my life I will have to find another publisher who is willing to keep everything true for the future readers..." Later we found another publisher, the Westview Press in Colorado. They would keep it true and only to correct the grammatical mistakes. They planned to sell mostly to students of social science. In May, 1993, the editor(Dean Birkenkamp) came to visit me in Dali. I showed him around the places. After a week, he returned home, quite satisfied. Three months later, in August 1993, the book Mr. China's Son was coming off the press. Before long, I began to receive many letters. Readers asked me to answer questions. Some sent me money and invited me to meet them in Guilin, Chengdu or in Kunming. But most of them wanted to meet me here in Dali. So, almost every month, I would go here or there to meet my reader-friends from all over the world. It seemed that I could not be a part-time teacher anymore. I said good-bye to the Teacher's College and went to stay with Lu-jiang in his college, writing letters and going to meet my many friends. In May 1994, a friend from Australia came to Dali. She suggested that I open a small cafe so as to meet my friends here. It was a great idea! In June 1995, with help and encouragement from some kind-hearted foreign friends, we managed to open a cafe, and we used the title of my book as the name of the cafe. I called it "Mr. China's Son Cultural Exchange Cafe". I like to emphasize on cultural exchange. At first, the book was just used as a special book for my customers to read, but later many of them want to buy a signed copy or copies for their friends as a special gift. My publisher posted me several packages of the book but somehow I did not received the packages. Later they gave me permission to photo-copy in Yunnan. So, now I can run this cafe as well as meet my reader-friends and sell the singed photo-copies of my book. Now, I have become what they call a "Cultural" businessman. Competition among the cafes is very strong. But instead of hoping making a lot of money I hope my guests walk out of my cafe with a satisfied smiling face. My experiences of life has taught me hard and honest work will pay in the end. I am happy and contented. Every day I meet smiling faces. I still find it so interesting to venture on this or that. This young cafe gives me the opportunity to learn more from different people of different countries. And so I'll try to carry on. Lastly, having finished the book, I think you may have many questions to ask. Please don't hesitate to write to me and if you travel to China, please come to Dali, Yunnan to visit me! Your friend He Li-yi