Yu Hua’s novel Huozhe, To Live, first appeared in 1992 in the literary magazine Shouhuo. In the first version, Fugui watches seven relatives across four generations die one after another, until he is left alone. In 1994, Zhang Yimou’s film of the novel won the Grand Prize of the Jury and the award for Best Actor at the 47th Cannes Film Festival.
In the preface to the Korean edition, Yu Hua wrote: “People live for the sake of living itself, and not for anything beyond living.”