Warm Despair

Yu Hua is a restless writer whose novels constantly bring us surprise. From the works Stars, Bamboo Girl which are as tender and delicate as Kawabata Yasunari’s works, to the cold Go out to Travel at 18", A Kind of Reality, and then to the works filled with struggle of warmth and despair, To Live, Chronicle of a Blood Merchant, or the latest published The Seventh Day which is mocked as "press release", Yu Hua is always surpassing himself on his literary way. Transformation becomes an important label of Yu Hua. However, what never changes is that Yu Hua has a sincere attention to reality, understands it and tries to reveal the real heart of reality. Although the revealed reality is riddled with holes and frustrating, it is much better than the false prosperity. The revealed reality can evoke the return of human nature, and even alert people to pick up the lost kindness, which is very significant to the present society that is full of tragedy but lack of trust.Yu Hua’ s works are " hypocritical" in the narrative form, but its inner spirit is real;in other words, his novels reveal the deep despair and warmth in the real life in some “hypocritical”form. In the 1990 s, Yu Hua published his two important novels, To Live and Chronicle of a Blood Merchant, and these two works established his status in the literary world of the new period, and also established his unique narrative style and spirit.“Suffering ”and “warmth” are not only the two motifs of Yu Hua’s works of fiction but the main direction of his subject research. On the basis of having studied hard in the text and relevant research results, the author confirmed that suffering is Yu Hua’s novel creation life tone while warmth is the emotional tone. The dual tone of suffering and warmth constitutes the theme of Yu Hua novel creation mode. Suffering often makes the Yu Hua’s heroes slide into depression while the warmth would become the life foundation to save themselves and find the pleasure amidst the suffering for victims. Based on such thinking, this paper takes the "warmth of despair" as the starting point of Yu Hua’s novels, restricting the research in the two novels To Live and Chronicle of a Blood Merchant. Through the two works, the extension of the creation of Yu Hua’s suffering mother gave birth to despair and struggle of the hero and states the character’s destiny consciousness. From the suffering of life and death threats, it states the connotation of “suffering of despair " and ”warmth of living”, and reveals the suffering unyieldingness and caring warmth of beauty of the characters from Yu Hua’s works.