Little Chinese Seamstress

LCS Research Essay

In the novel Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie there is a stress on knowledge. It is powerful and there are all different types of knowledge. The novel focuses on intellectual knowledge versus practical knowledge. Both are very important in their own way. Dai Sijie uses these aspects and explains the cultural revolution, Mao’s life, and his own to stress the power of knowledge.

The cultural revolution was an event in the 1960’s and 70’s encouraging the lower peasant class and bringing down the upper class(Anderson 1). The power of the knowledge of peasants is powerful. It is different from book smarts, but is just as useful. Before Mao came to power, he was “born in a small farming village in the province of Hunan” (Anderson 1). This shows that even though Mao was a smart man intellect-wise, he had rural backgrounds. The intellects were denounced so Mao could maintain power and bring the poor with him to help him achieve power.

Re-education was an event in the cultural revolution. As Allen states “The young men and women forcibly taken by the Mao government from their schools and families and sent to work as laborers in small rural villages across China.”(Allen 1) In most cases the kids would complete their

They use it in different ways and achieve different goals with it, but it is all the same. Their knowledge seems to make them superior to the peasant workers but they soon learn they are not much more powerful because they lack the rural knowledge. Sijie was the son of two doctors, Ma and Luo had professional parents as well. As Sijie states “Luo’s father, a famous dentist whose name was known all over China” (Sijie 8). This made them entitled, but during their re-educations they realized they had much more to learn. Mao recognized the power of the peasant class and had them support his party which led him to power.(Anderson