Little Chinese Seamstress

Following World War II, communism started to take over countries in the east. In China, a great revolution occurred, toppling the government and creating its current communist state. After the induction of the new government, people, typically highly educated, that did not meet the government’s standards were sent to rural areas so the people there could “re-educate” these people. In the 1970s, Dai Sijie, along with the characters in his book Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, had to go through this re-education process. While the book is a work of fiction, the plot heavily draws from Sijie’s own experience with re-education. Sijie never reveals the name of the narrator in the novel, so the reader can interpret that there must be quite a few similarities between Sijie’s

While typically, the reader would not know this beforehand, a brief summary about the author at the beginning of the book lets the reader in on this information. It says, “Born in China in 1954, Dai Sijie is a filmmaker who was himself ‘re-educated’ between 1971 and 1974” (0). Since the events of the novel occur in a remote village, it would be almost impossible to know what kind of events happened there unless the author experienced it.

Next, appeals to logos occur when the author explains China’s history. He includes historical figures and exact dates. For example, when discussing the origins of re-education, Sijie uses specific time frames and people:

“A few words about re-education: towards the end of 1968, the Great Helmsman of China’s Revolution, Chairman Mao, launched a campaign that would leave the country profoundly altered. The universities were closed and all the “young intellectuals,” meaning boy and girls who had graduated from high school, were sent to the countryside to be ‘re-educated by the poor peasants.’”