To Live

AUTHOR’S POSTSCRIPT

In the introduction to the 1993 Chinese edition of To Live I wrote, “I once heard an American folk song entitled ‘Old Black Joe.’ The song was about an elderly black slave who experienced a life’s worth of hardships, including the passing of his entire family — yet he still looked upon the world with eyes of kindness, offering not the slightest complaint. After being so deeply moved by this song I decided to write my next novel — that novel was To Live.”

For an author, the act of writing always begins with a smile, a gesture, a memory on the verge of being forgotten, a casual conversation or a bit of information hidden in the newspaper — it is these tiny pearl-like details that sometimes transform one’s fate and spread like waves into magnificent vistas and scenes. The writing of To Live was no exception. An American slave song with only the simplest lyrics grew into Fugui’s life — a life imbued with upheavals and suffering, but also tranquility and happiness.

Old Joe and Fugui are two men who could not be more different. They live in different countries and different eras; they are of different nationalities and cultural backgrounds; even their fundamental likes and dislikes are different, as is the color of their skin — yet sometimes they seem to be the same person. They are both so very human. Human experience, combined with the power of the imagination and understanding, can break down all barriers, enabling a person truly to understand that thing called fate at work in his life — not unlike the experience of simultaneously seeing one’s reflection in two different mirrors. Perhaps this is what makes literature magical; it is precisely this magic that enabled me — a reader on the other side of the world in China — to read the novels of Nathaniel Hawthorne, William Faulkner and Toni Morrison, and through them, to discover myself.

I would like to thank Ha Jin for recommending To Live for publication, my friend Michael Berry for translating it, my agent Joanne Wang for her diligence in placing it and my editors at Anchor Books for publishing, at long last, this English language edition.