RollnSmoke Reviews: THE CORPSE WALKER by Liao Yiwu

The Corpse Walker: Real Life Stories, China from the Bottom Up
by Liao Yiwu (Anchor Book, 2009)

Yiwu stitches together a series of 28 interviews with common, hard-working, down-trodden Chinese citizens that reveals a full and often sad portrait of Contemporary China. All of the interviews share common threads: Mostly elderly, male citizens work at the bottom of society – as The Human Trafficker, The Public Restroom Manager, The Abbot, The Former Red Guard, The Migrant Worker -- and usually suffer under a (failing) Communist system. In the course of telling these stories, Chinese customs and superstitions come to light and history unfolds, from Mao’s takeover, to the Great Famine of 1960, to the Great Leap Forward, to the present shift in political power. The stories are sometimes so similarly ghastly that the reader has a hard time believing they can possibly be true; alas, they are (8/10).