Raise the Red Lantern, Three Novellas, by Su Tong

This is a collection of stories by Su Tong, a well-known contemporary Chinese writer. The most famous story of the collection is Raise the Red Lantern because a very popular film was made from it starring Gong Li and directed by Zhang Yimou. The stories, novellas really, are based in the time of Republican China to the time of the revolution (1949). Raise the Red Lantern is the story of a young, educated woman who falls on hard times and ends up as the 4th concubine of an older wealthy man. The story is different from the movie and I thought the story better in some ways but other reviews I've read thought the movie superior. The four paramours of the master vie for his attention and through that attention, material gains as well as power within their small and claustrophobic world. It truly is a condemnation of all the worst aspects of women's oppression under a feudal or semi-feudal system. The other 2 novellls concern life in a small, seemingly unchanging village somewhere in the southern part of China. 1934 Escapes concerns a family history of cruelty and abandonment against a background of poverty, famine, disease, and repression. In many respects, what's being described is what millions of people have experienced as serfs, slaves. or peasants of a despised class. I think 1934 Escapes and the next novella Opium Family both describe the internal and external subjugation of entire peoples and the great difficulty in changing it in any profound way. 1934 Escapes is written more from the POV of the peasant family, Opium Family is from the POV of the landlord family. Su Tong destroys both in the end or he lets them destroy themselves. The author has been described as dabbling in a bit of magical realism ala Latin American fiction and I can see that as an element. But, there is also a strong Chinese literary legacy of ghosts, haunting, and fate that's very evident in all three of the stories. Overall, I found them fascinating and repulsive. There's really no one to like or identify with but the reader is forced to confront human behavior in all its' varied presentations. I think, and I've read this in other reviews that's Su Tong is overly negative but I can kind of see his point. His writing is an outpouring of poison in a way i.e. draining a wound to heal.