What is the meaning of human existence represented by Fugui in Yu Hua's novel Alive?

In a 1998 interview, Mr. Yu Hua said, "One of the people I have met who has the greatest respect for life in this world possesses many more reasons to die than anyone else, yet he lives." This statement points out a fact and makes there a judgment.

A fact: Fugui has many more reasons to die than anyone else, yet he lives. Alive is a day-long account of a life of suffering by an old man named Fugui. In nearly forty years, he has endured much suffering on earth, and has faced parting with four generations of his family. He is a man who has suffered so much that he should have died, but he lived, even just for the sake of living. As the author Yu Hua himself said: to live is to live for the sake of living itself, not for the sake of anything other than living. Fugui's immortality is very confusing, but he lives, has his own value of existence, has his own meaning of living, has his own immortality.

Fugui is the youngest member of the Xu family, but he is a loser, which leads to his life of misery, loneliness, helplessness and "failure" and "success".

"Fugui" is an important and comprehensive factor in Chinese rural culture, and most of the peasants' pursuits are fully realized in these two words, which is, to a certain extent, the sadness of our cattle-plowing nation, and also the sadness of Fugui's life. I hope that my son will be both blessed and noble, but he is both bitter and sad, such a world of difference in contrast, constitute the tragic fate is exactly the reflection of Fugui's life.

Fugui's bad luck began with his fall from grace, and according to most people, Fugui's suffering and guilt were the result of his own doing. He was a real loser, his "reputation" was known far and wide, and he was recognized as a doomed "incorrigible" person. When he grew up, he inherited his father's bad legacy and became a master of eating, drinking, whoring and gambling, indulging in whoring and gambling all day long, and eventually lost his ancestral fortune to the country, and this is where his life of misery really began. First, his father fell into a dung tank and died, then his mother fell ill and died, then his son died of excessive blood draws, then his daughter Fengxia died of postpartum hemorrhaging, and soon his wife Jiazhen died of illness, and a few years later his son-in-law, Erxi, was killed in a disaster, and his grandson, Bitterroot, died of eating beans. One by one, his relatives left one after another, but he is still alive.

Death is extremely tragic doom, let a person incredible is that the weak Fugui even in the blow again and again under the disaster, again and again in the edge of death stop, in the suffering and sadness of the limit of good treatment of life, silently bear the weight of life and live without complaint and without regrets. Not only living, but also living more and more understanding. This makes people have to do some special research on his life.

Yu Hua once exclaimed that Fugui is "the one who has the most respect for life in this world." At the same time, Yu Hua also expressed the idea that "Alive" is about "the friendship between a man and his destiny" and "the ability of a man to bear suffering and his optimistic attitude toward the world.

There is a saying that Fugui is an adept at utilizing "spiritual triumph," which is, after all, one of the basic worldviews of most Chinese peasants today. Fugui's outlook on life is to live, or rather to live only to live, and this is not all his outlook on life, but he is still alive, which is both fatalistic and a bit masturbatory, and is a more common character in Yu Hua's writing to live in fatalism, but at the same time not completely in fatalism to accomplish all his own things. It can be seen here that Fugui's immortality is, to a large extent, the reason for his existence and the meaning of being alive given to him by author Yu Hua. Yu Hua is a vanguard writer who is good at writing about predestination, and his view of predestination tends to bring the characters of his works to a certain height, knocking at the human heart and expounding the meaning of life.

What needs to be traced urgently is Fugui's spiritual history. Fugui's spiritual history unfolds on the level of having a billion human beings, which is a bit surprising to many readers. Alive does not write a history of suffering as a history of revolution or ideology, but as a simple spiritual history of life. Fugui's history of suffering reflects the bloody war, political absurdity, spiritual terror, hunger and poverty, etc., all of which are unfolded in the perspective of Fugui's history of suffering and spiritual history, and all of which can't change our pursuit of Fugui's spiritual history. Fugui's life as a great spiritual history is an ever-present reality, and will be an ever-living reality. Therefore, Fugui's existence as a spiritual history has its own incalculable value, and because of this, he is alive, even if he once hovered on the verge of death.

In the process of interpreting Fugui, the reader is often prompted to ask: Why does Fugui not die? Why does Fugui live?

The following is again from the author Yu Hua's side, why Fugui does not die. When Yu Hua created "Alive," he did not intend for Fugui to carry the grand significance of society-history and enlightenment-revolution. Fugui was just an ordinary man, an ordinary young master of a landlord's family, an ordinary peasant, an ordinary sufferer living in that period of suffering. Fugui's life is a relatively normal phenomenon, and everything in Alive revolves around Fugui's life. Without Fugui's life, Alive, as Yu Hua's most representative and most accomplished work, would have lost its significance. Fugui's living is destined to be a kind of suffering, a kind of sorrow and a phenomenon. Therefore, there is another reason for Fugui to be alive. Fugui is a representative image of an era, an image with existential significance of an era, and Fugui's being alive represents the living or existence of a group of people - peasants - in that era. Although this seems to violate the meaning of existence given to Fugui's image by the author, it carries more meaning of social existence without carrying the grand meaning of society - history and enlightenment - revolution.

Fugui's consciousness of life and spiritual history unfolds in the dimension of suffering and death, and his "living" is always subjected to the coercion and temptation of suffering and death, but he does not submit to it, nor does he yield to it; he takes the way of patience and endurance, i.e., the way of "the struggle without struggle". He took the way of patience and bearing, that is, the way of "fighting without fighting," to fight against suffering and death. In this sense, it seems that Fugui has more reasons to live. This is a kind of nature of human existence, a kind of human attitude that human beings approve and appreciate, and an important manifestation of the reason why human existence is different from that of other creatures. Here, what Fugui represents is a higher level of human existence, a questioning of the meaning of existence, such questioning and such a meaning will make Fugui's living more reason to live, Fugui's significance at this level beyond the original significance of Fugui's existence of Yu Hua.

Fugui's life is largely connected to the two greatest women in his life. His mother and his wife, Jiazhen, each had an immeasurable impact on the first and second half of his life. Fugui's mother for Fugui's doting, beyond the common people can imagine and accept the scope, but also because of his mother's great "initiative" makes Fugui the first half of his life is very happy, but also buried Fugui uneducated inherited his father's bad legacy, eating, drinking, whoring and gambling all kinds of proficiency, indulged in whoring and gambling, and eventually Fugui loses his ancestral fortune to the country and begins a life of misery. Fugui was a real loser in the first half of his life, and it was his mother's over-indulgence that brought his strengths in this area into full play. His mother's greatest wish in life was for her son Fugui to live, and to a large extent it was her wish that caused him to give up his first thought of death, so that he was on the brink of death without ever thinking about it. The desire to live occupied most of the space in his thoughts. The influence of his wife Jiazhen on Fugui is also very profound. His wife Jiazhen's love for Fugui can be seen in many ways, especially in the fact that Jiazhen did not mind Fugui's poverty after his downfall, and returned to Fugui after giving birth to his son, Youqing, so that Fugui could live well in the midst of his hardships. Jia Zhen is a good wife, and is more in line with the image of the so-called good wife and good mother in the eyes of most people, but the image of Jia Zhen has a more important significance in Alive, that is, she lets Fugui's desire to survive defeat everything, so that Fugui can live more and more open-minded, and live more and more flavorful. Fugui, under the influence of his wife Jiazhen, also finally understands what living is all about for his own existence. Behind every successful man there must be a successful woman, not to mention that Fugui has two "successful" women, so Fugui's image of "living" is also logical.

Why Fugui is not dead and why he is alive, I am afraid that the deepest reason is the traditional cultural character. If we start from the theory of life constructed by Confucianism and Taoism, the two mainstays of traditional Chinese culture, and inquire about Fugui's attitude towards life, which is to endure suffering, and then to resolve and transcend suffering, we will find the historical roots of Fugui's life and the source of his spiritual strength. Fugui's living is an important manifestation of a very important characteristic of our traditional culture. With this starting point, especially the doctrine of Taoism, elaborated "nothing", "do nothing to rule" and other points, Fugui here as a small country, living is a normal phenomenon, but also a normal cultural effect.

This makes Fugui alive, and has a special characterization of its existence.