Resumen:
A Dictionary of Maqiao.Consider Maqiao: a little village, impossible to find, almost dropped off the map, with a few dozen households...set against a stretch of mountain. Sent here for 're-education' during China's Cultural Revolution, a young man encounters an upside-down world that time has forgotten. The customs are peculiar and the dialect strange; nothing is quite what is seems. In Maqiao, to be 'scientific' is to be lazy; time and relationships are understood using the language of food; to die young is considered 'dear', while the elderly reckon their lives to be 'cheap'. This captivation story is cleverly structured as a dictionary of the Maqiao dialect, through which the young man seeks to understand his new home. As entries build upon one another, illuminating the village and its inhabitants, the narrator reflects on the ability of an outsider to grasp the ways of life of another society. Based on the author's own experience, A Dictionary of Maqiao is a profound, sometimes comic, sometimes tragic meditation on the power of language and its role in creating and defining a community. |
