It must be exhausting to live as a barefoot doctor in a Chinese village if Can Xue’s latest novel is anything to go by. Not because of your work as curer-in-chief, but because all your patients are either nauseatingly happy or prone to near-constant weeping.
Barefoot doctors emerged in the 1930s, but really hit their stride under Mao, when they spread throughout rural China. They were folk healers with basic medical training who provided healthcare in places where urban trained medics wouldn’t settle. Now one of China’s most feted novelists, Xue is better known for her avant-garde dreamscapes than her acupuncture, but she was a barefoot doctor in her youth. Drawing on this experience, she here portrays a rural village in the shadow of Niulan Mountain, and the business of its master healer Mrs Yi.
This is a mystical realm, animated by a love that flows between mankind, nature and the land.
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