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48 pages 1 hour read

Dai Sijie, Transl. Ina Rilke

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2000

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Part 1 Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Chapter 1 Summary

Content Warning: This section of the guide contains descriptions of political oppression and violence, and self-harm.

Two teenage boys, the unnamed Narrator and his best friend Luo, arrive in the isolated mountain village where they have been sent for re-education. Upon their arrival, the village Headman examines their possessions for anything “counter-revolutionary.” He mistakes the Narrator’s violin for a “bourgeoise toy” and almost destroys it, but Luo is able to save the instrument by having the Narrator play a Mozart sonata that Luo claims was written in Mao’s honor.

Luo and the Narrator grew up together, and neither has completed the years of high school education that would see them categorized as “young intellectuals”— a demographic exiled to the countryside en masse. They were instead sent for re-education because their parents were considered enemies of the state. The Narrator’s parents are doctors, whose success meant they were labeled “class enemies.” Luo’s father was a famous dentist branded a “counter-revolutionary” because he bragged about doing dental work for Mao and other high-ranking politicians. The Narrator recalls the only time that he and Luo ever fought: After they watched Luo’s father get denounced and interrogated by a violent revolutionary mob, Luo punched the Narrator for weeping.

Part 1, Chapter 2 Summary

The village that Luo and the Narrator are staying in is one of about 20 small settlements on the Phoenix of the Sky Mountain. The mountain is two days’ journey away from the nearest small town of Yong Jing, and so isolated that only one Westerner has ever seen it, a French Jesuit whose diaries described the mountain and its history. The mountain was once renowned for its copper production, and the fact that it was gifted by an emperor to his favorite eunuch. After the decline of its copper industry, opium was grown on the mountain, until opium was made illegal and the locals were forced to become ordinary peasant farmers.

Luo and the Narrator are housed in a dilapidated wooden hut set over a pigpen. They must work alongside the peasants and are tasked with the unpleasant duty of carrying baskets of animal and human excrement up to the fields each morning. The villagers are fascinated with Luo’s alarm clock, the first timepiece ever brought to the mountain, and regularly consult it with veneration. The Headman is particularly fond of it, using its time to command the peasants to and from work. Luo and the Narrator regularly find consolation in winding the clock forward and backward as their whims dictate—to start their work later or finish earlier—until they are unable themselves to remember the actual time.

Luo, melancholy and unable to sleep, wakes the Narrator and has him play the violin to cheer Luo up. Luo and the Narrator have a three-in-a-thousand chance of being allowed to leave the mountain, although the Narrator hopes that honing his skill with the violin might earn him an escape to work for a regional propaganda committee. Luo has no such valuable skills, although he is a very talented storyteller. The Headman enjoys Luo’s stories, and in addition to having them regale him with the stories of all the films they’ve seen, gives them permission to visit Yong Jing to watch the monthly film screening instead of working for several days each month. Upon their return, they tell the story of the film to the assembled village in an “oral cinema show.”

Part 1, Chapter 3 Summary

The most beautiful girl on the mountain is the daughter of the local tailor, whom they refer to as the Little Seamstress. The sole tailor on the mountain has two sewing machines; one he leaves home with his daughter and the other he brings with him as he travels from village to village. His arrival is always celebrated, and he is treated like royalty by customers who vie for his services and attention.

Luo and the Narrator first meet the tailor as he is being carried in a chair on the road between villages. The tailor teases them with a mangled rendition of the English word “violin,” laughing and bragging that he’s the most widely traveled of the local men.

When Luo and the Narrator visit the Little Seamstress a week later, she explains that her father acts like a child because her mother died too young. She is welcoming and pleased to meet them, charming them with her naïve beauty. She admits that she enjoys speaking with the educated young city men sent for re-education. Luo points out that she and he have something in common: Their second toes are longer than their big toes. Afterward, the Narrator asks if Luo has fallen in love with the Little Seamstress, proclaiming that he does not consider her sophisticated enough to date.

Part 1, Chapter 4 Summary

Luo and the Narrator are forced to spend several months working under terrible conditions in the mountain’s small coal mine. It is hard and dangerous work that makes the Narrator shudder even years later; every excavated load of rock threatens to cause a fatal collapse. Luo admits to the Narrator that he is certain that he will die down there, and the Narrator hears Luo sobbing to himself while working. The Narrator has panic attacks, during which he hallucinates the mineshaft caving in around him.

Luo falls ill with malaria while working at the mine. The other miners laugh at his feverish hallucinations and try to cure him by whipping him with peach and willow branches. Afterward, the dazed and injured Luo asks the Narrator to continue with the whipping because it makes him feel warm. Instead, the Narrator returns to their bunks to fetch Luo a cigarette and finds a letter delivered from the Little Seamstress. It is written with a charming and childlike lack of finesse, inviting them to visit the Little Seamstress’s village, as she has organized for them to stay for a few days to give the villagers an oral cinema performance.

Part 1, Chapter 5 Summary

Luo remains unwell and feverish, but is determined to visit the Little Seamstress. The journey is hard, and he arrives shaking, delirious, and crimson in the face. The Little Seamstress immediately cancels their performance and installs Luo in her bed. She and the Narrator forage for a medicinal plant, which she makes into a poultice and applies to his wrist.

With the Narrator’s permission, she organizes for the local sorceresses to keep vigil at Luo’s bedside overnight. The sorceresses are four old women, one with a bow and arrow, who promise to fight off the evil spirit of the little coal mine which they say is assailing Luo. The Little Seamstress encourages the Narrator to tell the women a story so that they don’t fall asleep while watching over Luo.

By this time, Luo and the Narrator have visited Yong Jing thrice, and of the three films they’ve related to the villagers, the most popular by far is a propaganda film from North Korea named The Little Flower Seller. Performing this story always made the audience cry, but the Narrator is unable to evoke the same emotion in the old sorceresses until Luo—still feverish—interjects with a quote from the film. The old women begin to weep, and keep crying through the remainder of the story. The Narrator notices the Little Seamstress lean over to kiss Luo secretly in the dark.

Part 1 Analysis

The opening part of Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress introduces the three main characters of the novel, establishing both the context that brings them together and the setting in which the story takes place. The story is told in the first person, in the voice of the unnamed Narrator, as though he were recalling the events years after the fact. This echoes Dai’s perspective, using his own memories of the Cultural Revolution (See: Background) and re-education as a basis for the novel. The first-person perspective allows the reader to perceive the Narrator’s thoughts and emotions as well as his actions, greatly illuminating his character.

In this part, the three main characters are presented as they are prior to the influence of the forbidden Western literature that they later encounter. This clearly establishes the baseline characterization of the characters, setting the stage for Dai to introduce the theme of The Transformative Influence of Literature through their upcoming character development. Neither Luo nor the Narrator have had much education due to the Cultural Revolution, and in this part they are focused more on surviving the perils and hardship of re-education than on intellectual pursuits.

Meanwhile, the Little Seamstress is introduced as beautiful and charming but dismissed by the Narrator as lacking in sophistication. However, she already shows the seeds of traits that will soon come to blossom under the influence of literature. Her enjoyment in meeting with educated city boys shows her inquisitive nature and yearning to learn about life beyond the mountain. Her time spent living and working alone when her father is away harkens to the independence and entrepreneurial spirit that will ultimately lead her to seek her fortune elsewhere.

The relationship between Luo and the Narrator is central to this part of the narrative, and key to the theme of Loyalty and Trust in Love and Friendship. The Narrator is shown to esteem Luo above himself, emphasizing the prestige of Luo’s father and the superiority of Luo’s storytelling ability. The Narrator follows Luo’s lead, putting Luo’s needs ahead of his own by caring for him in sickness and despair. From the first chapter, the strength of their friendship and its importance to both of them is emphasized. For instance, the opening shows them united against the village Headman and the power of the Cultural Revolution that he wields, and their ultimate success in saving the Narrator’s violin.

The two characters are rarely parted, providing support and consolation to each other as they navigate the hardships of the unfamiliar and often-hostile realm of re-education. Much of the hardship they face is a result of the poverty of rural areas during this time, and the lack of technology or resources to mitigate the strains and dangers of a modern agricultural society reliant on manpower over industrial development. The most concentrated and frightening example of this hardship is the little coal mine, wherein they must work under terrible conditions, facing the constant threat of collapse and death. This traumatizes both boys and leads to Luo’s sickness.

Already in these early chapters, the connection between Luo and the Little Seamstress becomes apparent. Luo creates the initial sense of connection between them by noting the similarities of their feet, a connection which is reinforced by her writing to him and inviting the two of them to visit. Additionally, she cares for Luo during his illness and seems impressed by his interjection in the tale of The Little Flower Seller, ultimately kissing him as he lies in her bed. The treatment that Luo undergoes for his malaria is another important symbol that represents the hardships imposed by the Cultural Revolution and the necessity of relying on superstition and folk wisdom when access to modern medicine and technology is barred (See: Symbols & Motifs). The Narrator’s impotence to help Luo speaks to the negative impact that the Cultural Revolution had on the transmission of skills, because the uneducated Narrator is unable to provide medical aid himself despite the fact that his parents are doctors.

The symbol of Luo’s alarm clock is also introduced in this part (See: Symbols & Motifs). It represents bourgeois technology and mechanical modernity, which should be shunned by adherents of the current regime, but which instead fascinates the locals. The clock is some consolation to the boys in their powerless state, because it grants the boys some measure of autonomy by allowing them to manipulate their working hours. This symbol contributes to Dai’s presentation of the theme of The Power of Art and Knowledge by showing that access to knowledge and technology grants one freedom. The power of art is also shown in the fact that Luo and the Narrator both find solace and respite through their respective artistic talents: the Narrator in his skill with a violin, and Luo in his penchant for storytelling. Additionally, the tailor’s superior status on the mountain is granted by his unique ability to create clothes—a profession that requires both specialized knowledge and creative skill.

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