Best 13 quotes of Yu Hua on MyQuotes

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

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.

As times change and social mechanisms evolve, it seems to me, different survival instincts come into play. In social terms the Cultural Revolution was a simple era whereas today's society is complex and chaotic. One of Mao Zedong's remarks sums up a basic characteristic of the Cultural Revolution. 'We should support whatever the enemy opposes,' he said. 'and oppose whatever the enemy supports.' The Cultural Revolution was an era when everything was painted in black and white, when the enemy was always wrong and we were always right; nobody had the courage to suggest that the enemy might sometimes be right and we might be sometimes be wrong. Deng Xiaoping, in turn, said something that captures the zeitgeist of our current age: 'A cat that catches the mouse is a good cat, no matter whether it is black or white.' In so saying, he overturned Mao's system of values and pointed out a fact long evident in Chinese society: right and wrong often coexist in a single phenomenon and interact in a dynamic of mutual displacement. At the same time, his comment put an end to the argument about where socialism and capitalism belong in China's economic development. So China moved from Mao Zedong's monochrome era of politics-in-command to Deng Xiaoping's polychrome era of economics above all.

As times change and social mechanisms evolve, it seems to me, different survival instincts come into play. In social terms the Cultural Revolution was a simple era whereas today's society is complex and chaotic. One of Mao Zedong's remarks sums up a basic characteristic of the Cultural Revolution. 'We should support whatever the enemy opposes,' he said. 'and oppose whatever the enemy supports.' The Cultural Revolution was an era when everything was painted in black and white, when the eney was always wrong and we were always right; nobody had the courage to suggest that the enemy might sometimes be right and we might be sometimes be wrong. Deng Xiaoping, in turn, said something that captures the zeitgeist of our current age: 'A cat that catches the mouse is a good cat, no matter whether it is black or white.' In so saying, he overturned Mao's system of values and pointed out a fact long evident in Chinese society: right and wrong often coexist in a single phenomenon and interact in a dynamic of mutual displacement. At the same time, his comment put an end to the argument about where socialism and capitalism belong in China's economic development. So China moved from Mao Zedong's monochrome era of politics-in-command to Deng Xiaoping's polychrome era of economics above all.

El tiempo nos impulsa hacia delante o hacia atrás y va alterando nuestro aspecto.

I could offer any number of reasons. I could talk eloquently on the subject for days on end, until my tongue was sore, only to find there was still more to say, yet more answers clamoring for attention. Experience tells me that too many answers are the same as none at all; perhaps only one can constitute a real answer. So I will supply just a single explanation, one that I think may be the most important; whether it is the true answer is impossible to know. It's your experience while growing up, I believe, that shapes the direction of your life. A basic image of the world is planted deep in your mind, and then, like a document in a copy machine, it keeps being reprinted again and again throughout your formative years. Once you reach adulthood, whether you're successful or not, whatever you accomplish can only partially revise that most basic image; it will never be entirely transformed. Naturally some revise the image more and some revise it less. Mao Zedong, I'm sure, made more revisions than I have done.

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.

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

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

Our leader was dead. My eyes too filled with tears, and I wept like the thousand other. I heard heartrending screeches and earthshaking howls, people gasped for breath and choked in anguish - and then my mind began to wander. Grief no longer held me in its sway; my thoughts started moving in another direction entirely. If it had been just a few people weeping, I would certainly have felt sad, but a thousand people weeping at the same time simply struck me as funny. I had never in my life heard such cacophony. Even if every living variety of beast were to send a delegate to our auditorium and they were all to below in unison, I thought to myself, they surely could not make a stranger chorus than the din of a thousand people crying their heads off. This untimely fancy might have been the death of me. I couldn't help but smile, and then I had to fight back the laugh that was pushing its way out. If anybody were to see me laughing, I would be labeled a counterrevolutionary on the spot and life would not be worth living. Hard as I tried to bottle up my laughter, it insisted on spilling forth, and knowing I couldn't stifle it any longer, I desperately threw myself forward, hugging the back of the chair in front of me and buried my head in my folded arms. Amid weeping of a thousand people I was in the throes of uncontainable mirth, my shoulders heaving, and the more I tried to stop myself from laughing, the more laughs kept coming. My classmates, through a curtain of tears, saw me sprawled over a chair, racked by agonizing spasms of grief. They were deeply moved by my devotion to our fallen leader, and later they would say, 'Yu Hua was more upset than anyone - you should have seen the way he was crying

Our leader was dead. My eyes too filled with tears, and I wept like the thousand others. I heard heartrending screeches and earthshaking howls, people gasped for breath and choked in anguish - and then my mind began to wander. Grief no longer held me in its sway; my thoughts started moving in another direction entirely. If it had been just a few people weeping, I would certainly have felt sad, but a thousand people weeping at the same time simply struck me as funny. I had never in my life heard such cacophony. Even if every living variety of beast were to send a delegate to our auditorium and they were all to below in unison, I thought to myself, they surely could not make a stranger chorus than the din of a thousand people crying their heads off. This untimely fancy might have been the death of me. I couldn't help but smile, and then I had to fight back the laugh that was pushing its way out. If anybody were to see me laughing, I would be labeled a counterrevolutionary on the spot and life would not be worth living. Hard as I tried to bottle up my laughter, it insisted on spilling forth, and knowing I couldn't stifle it any longer, I desperately threw myself forward, hugging the back of the chair in front of me and buried my head in my folded arms. Amid weeping of a thousand people I was in the throes of uncontainable mirth, my shoulders heaving, and the more I tried to stop myself from laughing, the more laughs kept coming. My classmates, through a curtain of tears, saw me sprawled over a chair, racked by agonizing spasms of grief. They were deeply moved by my devotion to our fallen leader, and later they would say, 'Yu Hua was more upset than anyone - you should have seen the way he was crying

Seen in this way, it represents a challenge of the grassroots to the elite, of popular to the official, of the weak to the strong... More than twenty years have passed since Tiananmen protests of 1989, and from today's perspective their greatest impact has been the lack of progress in reforming the political system. It's fair to say political reform was taking place in the 1980s, even if its pace was slower than that of economic reform. After Tiananmen, however, political reform ground to a halt, while economy began breakneck development. Because of this pradox we find ourselves in a reality full of contradictions: conservative here, radical there; the concentration of political power on this side, the unfettering of economic interests on that; dogmatism on the one hand, anarchism on hte other; toeing the line here, tossing away the rule book there. Over the past twenty years our development has been uneven rather than comprehensive, and this lopsided development is compromising the health of our society. It seems to me that the emergence - and unstoppable momentum - of the copycat phenomenon is an inevitable consequence of this lopsided development. The ubiquity and sharpness of social contradictions have provoked confusion in people's value systems and worldview, thus giving birth to the copycat effect, when all kinds of social emotions accumulate over time and find only limited channels of release, transmuted constantly into seemingly farcical acts of rebellion that have certain anti-authoritarian, anti-mainstream, and anti-monopoly elements. The force and scale of copycatting demonstrate that the whole nation has taken to it as a form of performance art.

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.