The Corpse Walker: Real-Life Stories, China from the Bottom Up

By Liao Yiwu

Forward by Philip Gourevitch

Translated and with an Introduction by Wen Huang

2004, Trans. 2008)

Pantheon

(Non-fiction, Oral History)

Liao Yiwu is a novelist, poet, and screenwriter. In 1989 he wrote and performed a poem about Tiananmen Square called “Massacre,” for which he received a four-year prison sentence. The author presents “recreated” interviews he conducted with Chinese citizens who are at the bottom or edges of society. To some extent, Liao is a Chinese Studs Terkel. There are twenty-eight interviews in the collection, including “The Corpse Walkers,” which tells the story of men who supplement their living by carrying those who die in remote rural areas to be buried in their ancestral homes. When possible, they use a wheeled cart, but in the mountains, they often carry the deceased on their backs. Other titles include “The Former Landowner,” “The Former Red Guard,” “The Tiananmen Father,” “The Leper,” and “The Migrant Worker.”

These stories would be appropriate in a Social Studies class or in a class discussing creative non-fiction. The stories are beautiful and poignant, and a strong corrective for Crazy Rich Asians.

 “Then the authorities did a political background check. Soon, an acceptance letter arrived from the People’s University of Beijing. I held the letter and burst out crying. Like I said, generations of my family had been working class. He was the first one in the Wu family to be a local champion in the national exam and to be enrolled in a prestigious university in the capital city. I sincerely believed that my family’s fortune was finally changing for the better.”  (218 “The Tiananmen Father”)