“It would be the worst thing that could happen to them, worse than the Cultural Revolution!

”(Sijie

91).

The novel’s setting explores various kinds of conflict such as man versus society, man versus

environment, and man versus man.

The oppressive nature of the Cultural Revolution also affects the novel’s societal conflicts.

After the village headman returns from his Communist party conference, he tells the protagonists of

his bad tooth. He asks Luo, whose father is a prominent dentist, to fill the tooth with tin, but Luo

refuses. Later in the novel, the tailor makes his annual visit to the village and requests to lodge with

Luo and Ma. He knows they are storytellers and wants to hear a story. Ma recounts The Count of

Monte Cristo; the tailor loves it, so Ma stretches it out over nine days. On the third night, the village

headman overhears the story and threatens to report Ma “for spreading reactionary filth” unless Luo

can cure his tooth (73). This shows how the boys end up in a conflict with society because of their

retelling of “reactionary” stories. Throughout the novel, the village headman acts as the

representative for communist society on Phoenix Mountain. Because of the Cultural Revolution and

its persecution of intellectuals, China lacks competent dentists, and the village headman is left with

no choice but to ask Luo. Additionally, the banning of non-communist books also affects this

conflict. If the novel was set in a different time period, nobody would have particularly cared about

the stories Luo and Ma were retelling. The Little Seamstress’ abortion is also a conflict sparked by

the novel’s temporal setting. When Luo receives news of his mother being ill, he goes on a month’s

leave and asks Ma to guard the Little Seamstress from her other admirers. One day, the Little

Seamstress confesses to Ma that she is pregnant. Eventually, they decide that he should travel to

Yong Jing to get help from the gynecology department. After Ma arrives at the hospital, he realizes

that the “bourgeois intellectuals” are “no less strict morally” than the communists (91). This

indicates that hardships inflicted on the “intellectuals” and “class enemies” have also influenced
their decisions and way of thinking. This conflict is a result of the beliefs being promoted during the

Cultural Revolution. Ma worries that no one will help him because abortion is prohibited and it is

also illegal for women to have children before they marry. At the end, he gives the gynecologist two

Balzac novels in return for performing the Little Seamstress’ abortion. Another kind of conflict that

is

The development of environmental conflicts is attributed to the novel’s various physical

settings. This is seen when Luo gets malaria from strenuous work in the coal mines. At the

beginning of the novel, the boys are sent to work in the local coal mine as part of their reeducation.

During the third week, Ma hears “the groans of a wounded man” and later discovers that “it was

Luo” (17). This demonstrates that the work of pushing carts and poor support of the mine generates

a constant fear for the boys of being crushed by the mine.

The temporal setting of the Cultural Revolution creates conflicts between characters. Firstly,

the discovery of Four-Eyes’ stash of books increases Ma and Luo’s interest in Western literature and

sparks an argument between the group of friends. After Ma and Luo find Four Eyes’ suitcase, they

offer to collect the region’s folk songs for him in exchange for Western books. However, when they

return successfully from their journey, Four-Eyes refuses. This leads to a disagreement as Ma

suddenly “hated him,” but waits “until he had kept his promise” (41). It is clear that Ma and Four-

Eyes are fighting because Ma’s hatred towards him is directly stated. During the Cultural

Revolution, almost all foreign literature found in China was either burned or confiscated. By the

time Ma and Luo learnt how to read properly, all that was left were communist books. The

censorship of foreign literature, combined with the untimeliness of the Cultural Revolution, is what

stimulates the protagonists’ interest in Western novels and ideologies. Similarly, the temporal setting

affects the Little Seamstress’ decision to leave the mountain. When Ma and Luo first met the Little

Seamstress, they thought she was uncivilized. After stealing Four Eyes’ suitcase of foreign books,

they shared their readings with her in hopes that she would become more like a girl from the city. At
the end of the novel, the Little Seamstress leaves the mountain, saying that the one thing she had

learned from Balzac was “that a woman’s beauty is a treasure beyond price” (103). Under an

oppressive government, the Little Seamstress’ attraction for Western and adult concepts only grows.

Her contact with the forbidden books leads her to an epiphany about her beauty, and this realization

in turn triggers her decision to leave for the city.

Our experiences are shaped by the setting in which they occur and the circumstances of our

story influences its outcome.