International bestseller Binu and the Great Wall by Su Tong is a retelling of a classic Chinese fable. Full of myth and ancient fantasy, it's the tale of the dedication a wife has for her husband conscripted to build the Great Wall of China.
When the king's brother dies, he is buried high atop North Mountain and visited by the villagers living in the valley. So unloved by the king, it is forbidden to cry over him, and those who did were killed. The villagers thereafter learned from birth to never show tears, and developed other ways to shed them through their hands and feet. Binu sheds them through many parts including her hair. She was married to Qiliang, an orphan born under a mulberry bush, so perhaps he was a mulberry in a past life. Taken in the night as a builder, Binu finds he carried no coat, and so, begins a walk of many months to Great Swallow Mountain to deliver it. The village witch claims she will not make it. Binu was a gourd in her previous life, and finds one to bury - in case she does not survive, she will spout and her soul be born again as a gourd. Along the way she finds a blind frog, whom she discovers is Qiliang's blind old mother reborn, and the two travel together.
Through many adventures, Binu is mistaken for a living ghost, a sorceress who tells fortunes, captured by the wild Deer Boys who roam the forest, is caught and married off to a coffin-bound corpse travelling to his birth place, and captured again by a Prefect's mansion to be milked for her tears - brewed for medicine as the tears of the saddest woman are the largest - tasting bitter, salty, sweet, sour and spicy.
Even in this fantasy world, filled with superstition and strange creatures, Binu is alone; a woman searching for her husband with a frog searching for her son. Word spreads as she travels that she is a weeper with tears flowing as strongly as a river and the power to cause great sadness.
A heroic character, Binu's determination is unrivalled, and I found this a captivating read.
Unexpected and really enjoyable.
Su Tong is the author of Wives and Concubines, which was made into a 1991 film Raise The Red Lantern.
2006 / Hardcover / 291 pages
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