Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress

“This cry, raised by two thousand voices, was like the rumble of thunder breaking over our heads.

‘I started it…’ Luo’s father confessed.

‘Go on! The details!’

‘But as soon as I touched her, I fell…into mist and clouds.’”

The threat of the simile associating the crowd with thunder reflects the use of mob violence during the Cultural Revolution (See: Background). The contrast between the harsh insistence of the mob—shown by the short, sharp imperatives and use of exclamation marks—and the dentist’s obvious reluctance and strain through the repeated use of ellipses emphasizes the stress of denunciation for supposed “counterrevolutionaries” persecuted during the Cultural Revolution.

“‘The district of Yong Jing is not lacking in interest,’ the Jesuit commented in his notebook. ‘One of the mountains, locally known as “the Phoenix of the Sky” is especially noteworthy. Famed for its copper, employed by the ancients for minting coins, the mountain is said to have been offered by an emperor of the Han dynasty as a gift to his favorite, who was one of the chief eunuchs in his palace.’”

Setting plays an important role in the novel. The fact that only one Westerner ever saw the mountain emphasizes its remoteness and isolation, as does its name, which associates it not with the everyday world but with legend and the distant sky. This isolated, rural setting is where Luo and the Narrator’s re-education takes place.

“When the light suddenly reappeared, it hovered in the air like the eye of some nightmarish animal whose body had been swallowed up by the darkness. It was Luo, wearing an oil lamp secured to his forehead, at work in what was known as ‘the little coal mine.’”

Dai captures the horror of the little coal mine through the simile comparing Luo’s lamp to the eye of an unseen monster. Underground, even the comfort of company and light creates a frightening impression. Luo and the Narrator’s toil in the mines reflects the harsh nature of their re-education program.