Rating: 8.5/10.
A very tragic novel — the protagonist is an old man telling the story of his life when he was young. In the beginning, he was born into a rich family, he gambled all day. He lost all his family’s property gambling and they had to move into a small hut. At this time, he was arrested by the Kuomintang to fight in the Civil War, and after returning home, communism started and everyone’s property was confiscated. Under communist rule, they had a hard time without food, and then the family began to die one by one: the son, the daughter, the wife, the grandson, all died. In the end only the old man was left with a cow to keep him company.
I really liked this book, which describes many events in Chinese history from the perspective of ordinary people: the Chinese Civil War, Great Leap Forward, Great Chinese Famine, Cultural Revolution Revolution, etc. The old man was irresponsible when he was young, so I did not sympathize with him very much, but like the Book of Job, disaster upon disaster fell upon. The book is fairly easy to read, but the content is deep, not like a child’s book.
