Getting Used to Dying
By Zhang Xianliang
Harper Collins
In moments of the greatest despair and anguish lies the strongest force within each of us, the will to survive. Despite oppression, fear, and injustice, the human spirit still thrives.
In his novel Getting Used to Dying, Zhang Xianliang explores this fortitude of the human spirit against the backdrop of twentieth century Communist China. The novel follows the author’s own life as an intellectual in China, and gives an accurate portrayal of what it means to be living in China today.
The author is highly suspected of treason by the government for his poetry. In 1957, during the anti-rightest movement, he is sent to a labour reform camp, remaining there until 1961. During this period, china undergoes the Great Leap Forward, led by Mao Zedong to stimulate economic growth in China. The movement fails, leads to divisions within the governing party and contributes to a three-year famine which ravages China.
Xianliang is released in 1961 in the midst of this turmoil and travels around China. He is placed under surveillance in 1963 for writing a book about his experiences. He is then sent to another labour camp for three years. He escapes in 1968 to visit his mother in Beijing but is later recaptured and remains in prison camp until 1979. During this time, China undergoes the Cultural Revolution to rekindle revolutionary and progressive fervor in China. However, this also fails and leads to further violence and repression in objectors.
Upon his realeas, Xianliang travels to San Francisco, New York, and Paris to experience western culture and ideology. At the same time the new leader, Deng Xianoping, has adopted a new constitution which entrenches the repression of intellectuals like Xianliang.
Xianliang returns to China in 1989 to complete the book which has caused his previous captivity. On June 4, 1989 the Tiananmen Square Massacre takes place in which student demonstrations for democracy and freedom of expression are firmly suppressed by both the military and government. It further entrenches the Communist system and causes greater censorship of Xianliang’s work. The book is completed by the reader is given an insight into the pains of such an accomplishment in modern China.
Xianliang provides a compelling depiction of his experiences as a conscientious objector to the present state of China. His graphic descriptions of starvation and depression within the squalid conditions of reform camps depict the injustice of such a system. At the same instance, he provides a picture of hope. Despite such horrors, he survives and continues to detail his thought. In one compelling scene, he is brought before a firing squad and everyone around hi is killed. However, he too receives a bullet, one that “fear and repression has lodged inside his brain,” and one that “every intellectual in China lives with … in his brain.” Despite the bullet, Xianliang continues to write his book and poetry to emphasize the power of his convictions as a stimulus for his survival against his treatment.
Although Xianliang details his travels to the West, he fails to analyze or fully discuss the impact of Western ideology upon his thinking, and views. The reader must determine for her or him self why Xianliang returns to China when he is given an opportunity to remain in the West. In doing so, the reader is asked to recognize the significance of one’s own situation and to accept and survive the ideological “bullets’ found within each society.
Xianliang shed his tears of pain during the years of captivity, but was strengthened by his spirit to survive. Although the Chinese government ironically captured Xianliang to make him suffer, his tears only testified to the reality of his existence. Xianliang and the memory of the student demonstrators have stayed alive.
