Katherine O’Connor
6th period
Finley
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress
From 1966 through 1976 Mao Zedong and the Chinese communist party implemented a plan, known as the Cultural Revolution, to rid China of its feudal and bourgeoisie backgrounds by re-educating the intellectuals with vocational skills. In the book Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, by Dai Sijie, the re-education that was forced on the main characters, Ma and Luo, which was supposed to make them less intellectual and more practical, along with their manipulative actions, ironically leads to the uneducated village being influenced by the unwanted Western culture.
When Ma and Luo, two intellectuals, are sent to Phoenix Mountain to be re-educated by the village people, they bring along pieces of their Western past, which results in the villagers being sublimely taught about western culture. After the headman of the village examined Ma’s violin, and could not figure out what it was, Luo says, “It’s a musical instrument” (5), indicating that even the most recognizable of instruments was unknown to the Chinese villagers, and that Ma and Luo were in fact responsible for introducing them to western music. After Ma had played the violin for some time he says, “This was our first taste of re-education” (6). It shows that even on their first day living in the mountains, they were able to not only bring their western culture with them but also teach the villagers about it as well. In addition to the violin, Luo also brings a clock. Ma narrates, “Before our arrival, there had never been an alarm clock in the village; indeed there had been no clocks or watches at all. The people had timed their days by sunrise and sundown” (14). This shows the differences between the two cultures and how much of an impact the boys had on the lives of the villagers, because now they had the technology to tell time accurately.
One of the most ironic ideas in Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress is that Ma and Luo only discover western literature, in the form of Four Eyes’ books, when they are on the mountain, where they are supposed to be stripped of their western ideas. After reading Balzac’s Ursule Mirouët, Ma professes “Picture a boy of nineteen, having heard nothing but blather about patriotism, Communism, ideology and propaganda all his life, falling headlong into a story of awakening desire, passion, impulsive action, love, and all of the subjects that had, until then, been hidden from me” (57). Despite being sent to Phoenix Mountain to be stripped of his intellectualism, Ma actually ends up being introduced to western writers and novels, which he might never have known if not for being sent away.
Luo’s ability to tell stories along with Four Eyes’ books soon influenced the village people. After Ma had told the story of Count Monte Cristo to the tailor, the little seamstress’ father, the tailor started to make adjustments to the clothing he was making to add western style. Ma notes, “Inevitably, some of the details he picked up from the French story started to have a discrete influence on the clothes he was making for the villagers.” There were “mountain men sporting sailor tops with small square collars that flapped in the breeze” (127). Because Ma’s story had such a big impact on the tailor he includes the style and culture in the book into the designs of the villagers clothing. Also, when the headman and the villagers find out that Luo is a good story teller they send Ma and Luo to go see movies in the city and act them out when they get back. “By the time we, or rather he, reached the end of the story, our audience was ecstatic” (19). All the villagers had gathered to be immersed in the culture of the stories the boys had brought back. The influence that the stories had on the villagers was apparent from their reactions when most of them were so emotional that they were crying.
When Luo and Ma teach the little Chinese seamstress