19 Quotes by Yu Hua

If literature truly possesses a mysterious power, I think perhaps it is precisely this: that one can read a book by a writer of a different time, a different country, a different race, a different language, and a different culture and there encounter a sensation that is one's very own.

Why, when discussing China today, do I always return to the Cultural Revolution? That’s because these two eras are so interrelated: even though the state of society now is very different from then, some psychological elements remain strikingly similar. After participating in one mass movement during the Cultural Revolution, for example, we are now engaged in another: economic development.

Four other old folk emerged one by one to join their brother. All five siblings wore cheap polyester clothes, and standing in a group they looked very much alike. They differed only in their heights, like the fingers of a single hand.

Several times I ran into a crowd of [redacted], dozens of them. They were not like the other [redacted] that sometimes gathered together and sometimes separated--this crowd stayed consistently together as they walked, a little like the moon's reflection on water, which keeps floating in a discrete shape no matter how the waves tug.

My mother often said, as long as a person is happy at work, then poverty is nothing to be ashamed of.

As I look back over China's sixty years under communism, I sense that Mao's Cultural Revolution and Deng's open-door reforms have given China's grassroots two huge opportunities: the first to press for a redistribution of political power and the second to press for a redistribution of economic power.

The residents of the the town are attracted by the words and the pictures on the signs. They know full well the perils posed by overpopulation. Many of them have mastered the use of several types of contraceptives. Now they understand the dangers posed by traffic accidents. They know that even though overpopulation is perilous, the living must do their best to have a good time and avoid being killed in traffic accident.

A parte de la vida misma, no veo otropa motivo para seguir viviendo.

In times like these, who had either the leisure or the inclination to indulge in a touch of elegance?