Today, I read one of Yu Hua's works "Alive", the preface of the Korean version is like this, the work tells about the friendship between a man and his fate, which is the most touching friendship, because they are grateful to each other, but also hate each other; Neither of them can abandon the other, and neither has any reason to complain about the other. They walked together on dusty roads when they were alive, and turned into rain and dirt together when they died. At the same time, "Alive" also tells how people endure great suffering, just like a Chinese idiom: a thousand times a strike. Let a hair bear the weight of three catties, and it will not break. I believe that "Alive" also speaks of the breadth and abundance of tears; tells about the non-existence of despair; It tells the story of people living for the sake of being alive itself, and not for anything other than being alive. Of course, "Alive" also tells how we Chinese have survived these decades. I know there's so much more to "Alive" than that. Literature is like that, it tells about what the writer is aware of, but also about what the writer is not aware of, and it is at this time that the reader stands up and speaks.
The summary of the foreign language version of the commentary is excerpted in two paragraphs.
All the disasters that have occurred in China in the past 60 years have befallen Fu Fei and his family. The ensuing blows may be beyond the sympathy of today's readers, but Yu Hua's sincere and sincere pen and ink have shaped Fugui into an existential hero. When this heavy ** ends, the will to live is the only thing that cannot be taken away from Fufei. (Time Magazine, November 9, 2003).
"Alive" is a simple and crude epic, a story of struggle and survival, leaving an indelible image of cruelty and kindness, in Yu Hua's pen, the characters struggle between animal instinct and human nature. The kind of cold concern that Yu Hua imposes on the narration makes Xiao beyond the norm. (Washington Post, 2 November 2003).