To Live

Fugui’s father is wealthy and of high status, though when he “squat[s] down to take a shit he [is] just like a poor man” because he relieve[s] himself outside on the manure vat instead of inside in the chamber pot (9). Fugui lives on 100 mus of land (1/7 acre) with his mother, father, pregnant wife, and young daughter. His wife, Jiazhen, is the daughter of a wealthy rice store owner: “A wealthy woman marries a wealthy man—it’s like piling all the money up” (10).

Fugui is the “prodigal son of the Xu family—or, as [his] dad would say, [he’s] a bastard,” and like a “rotten piece of wood that could not be carved” (10). When he was young, Fugui failed at school and would find enjoyment by riding on the back of Changgen, his family’s hired worker. Now that he is older, he finds pleasure going into town. He “go[es] up to the whorehouse to listen to those loose women moaning and groaning all night long” (11). Despite his father’s wishes for Fugui to bring honor to their ancestors, Fugui becomes addicted to gambling and visiting sex workers and spends weeks at a time away from his family in town. Fugui’s mother secretly admits to Fugui that his father had the same tendencies when he was younger. Despite this fact, his father beats Fugui and curses at him for wasting his life and the family’s resources.

During this period in Fugui’s life, he treats his wife unjustly. He calls her “ugly” because she’s six months pregnant with their son, and he continually sleeps with a sex worker who is overweight. He rides on her back around town just like he did Changgen. Fugui recounts, “The wildest time was just after the Japanese surrender, when the Nationalist troops entered the city to recover their lost territory” (14).

Despite Fugui’s unfaithfulness, Jiazhen is always submissive toward him. She never speaks out against his affairs or gambling, but she does try to subtly teach him a lesson. One night she cooks him a meal. Each dish is vegetarian and seasoned differently, but underneath each one is a piece of meat. Fugui understands that she is trying to say that each woman may look different on the outside, but they’re all the same on the inside. This doesn’t stop him from seeking out other women.

Fugui begins to lose everything at The House of Qing, the gambling and sex worker establishment he frequently visits. Fugui comes to find out that an elder, Mr. Shen, and then Long Er, both cheat by pulling the needed cards out of their sleeves. Fugui doesn’t know this and ends up losing everything, including his family’s house and farm, to Long Er.

At seven months pregnant, Jiazhen comes to The House of Qing to bring Fugui home. She has never done this before, and it upsets Fugui. He hits and kicks her, trying to force her to leave, but she refuses to go home unless he comes with her. Fugui pays two men to carry her outside, and she walks home alone in the dark.

After losing everything to Long Er, Fugui stumbles around aimlessly, contemplating suicide, before he finally decides to go home and face his family. His mother and Jiazhen cry upon hearing the news, but his father goes to bed and stays there for three days. On the third day, his father calls him into his room and tells him that he’s selling the farm to pay for the debt. Instead of lighter silver coins, his father gets paid for the farm in copper. Fugui carries load after load of the heavy copper to Long Er to pay the debt. By the end of the day Fugui’s shoulders are bleeding, and he realizes that his father “want[s] [him] to know that money does not come easily” (34).

The Xu family moves out of the brick house and Long Er moves in. Fugui’s father tells Fugui, “A long time ago, our Xu family ancestors raised a single chicken. When that chicken grew it turned into a goose, the goose turned into a lamb, the lamb became an ox. This is how our family became rich” (36). He admits that he lost everything once, and now Fugui has done it again. He says, “The Xu family has begotten two prodigal sons” (36).

Shortly after moving into the thatched hut, Fugui’s father dies after falling from the top of the manure vat. Ten days after that, Jiazhen’s father comes and takes Jiazhen away. Her father has always hated Fugui, and he tells Fugui that Fugui can keep his and Jizahen’s daughter, Fengxia, but that he himself will raise the son in Jiazhen’s womb. Fugui doesn’t think he will ever see his wife again, nor ever meet his soon-to-be son.

The narrator says, “When Fugui’s story got to this point, I couldn’t help but let out a little giggle. This scoundrel of forty years ago was today sitting bare-chested on the grass, the sunlight filtering through the gaps between the tree leaves and into his squinting eyes” (43). The narrator continues by recalling that Fugui was the first person he met while working as a folk song collector, saying, “Never before had anyone so completely confided in me the way he did when he vividly recounted his story” (44).

The narrator says that he ended up meeting a lot of old men like Fugui—men with wrinkled faces, droopy pants, and few teeth who had lost nearly everything throughout their lives. However, no matter how similar the men may have seemed to Fugui, Fugui was the most memorable because he “was the kind of person who could see his entire past. He could clearly see himself walking as a young man, and he could even see himself growing old” (44). The narrator says that while other old men seemed to want to forget the hardships of their past, Fugui “liked talking about his life. It seemed that in this way he could relive his life again and again” (45).