The Dark Road - Ma Jian

      

 

In the backdrop of rural China, in the villages and waterways, Ma Jian has crafted a tale both alarming and distressing on the abuses of China’s one-child policy.
“…Meili remembers seeing Yuanyuan hobbling back from the school the day they left. Her mother-in-law was beside her, one hand supporting her round the waist and the other gripping the aborted fetus by the arm. Yuanyuan went into labour as soon as she was strapped to the school desk, but by the time the baby was born the disinfectant had already killed it. The Family Planning Officer dropped the dead baby into a plastic bucket, but it was so big it toppled out. It lay sprawled on the ground for hours. No one bothered to pick it up. When her mother-in-law came to fetch her, she scooped it up from the floor and refused to let go of it…”
Meili has already had her one child. A girl. But her husband Kongzi is determined to continue his line which he believes goes back to the great philosopher Confucius and demands a son. When she becomes pregnant they flee their village and travel the rivers in rural China to hide from the Family Planning Police. The enforcers of China’s one-child policy.
…”What a fine voice you have,” the man says coldly. “Your cries won’t change anything, though. We’ve seen it all in this room: vomit, faeces, blood, urine, screaming tantrums. But however much the women curse and resist, they must all surrender their babies to us in the end. You think you can defy the state? Don’t waste your breath.”
“When we tied you to this table there were two of you, but when you get off there’ll be just one,”….
Meili suffers greatly in her duty to provide Kongzi with a heir. She is beaten, raped and suffered the horror of watching her newborn child strangled in front of her. But an even greater indignity is in her realization that although she and Kongzi were once respected and held in esteem in the village they came from. That now. They are no better than the peasants they once looked down upon. That now they are the outcasts in their own country. This in turn changes the way she sees herself and her husband.
“…The village teacher she once worshipped has become a man who fills her with disgust. She looks down at him now and spits: “What were those sayings you kept rattling off? Cultivate yourself and bring order to your family, and the nation will be at peace…”
The abuse and tyranny Meili suffers at the hands of the government and the husband she loves is as tragic and horrible as the truth that leaks from this novel. You want to believe that much of what is written here is not true, but in your heart, you know it is.