The Seventh Day () is a 2013 novel by Yu Hua. It was published in China by New Star Press in June 2013. An English translation by Allan Hepburn Barr was published by Pantheon Books in January 2015.
Kirkus Reviews stated that Yu Hua "is certainly commenting, often acerbically, on how life and death are valued in contemporary China".
Background
An absurdist fiction novel, The Seventh Day finds Yu Hua comparing the real world to the world of death, and narrating the experiences of the main character, Yang Fei, in the seven days following his death. In The Theory of Yu Hua, Wang points out that The Seventh Day compares the world of life and death. The Seventh Day breaks through the world of life and death, and describes the two completely different worlds.
It is believed that some of the characters' stories (Yang Fei and Yang Jinbiao, Li Yuezhen, Mouse Girl) are based on true stories that were reported in China such as forced relocation, the hospital which treated dead infants as clinical waste, and selling a kidney to buy electronic devices. In the novel, Li Yuezhen exposed that the hospital treated 27 dead infants' remains as clinical waste which was dumped into a nearby river. This is similar to an event that occurred in the Shandong Province, where 21 dead infants' remains was found in the Guangfu river in 2010. In the novel, Wu Chao sells his kidney for money to buy Mouse Girl a new cellphone. This was also similar to news reported in 2012, in Hangzhou, a group of illegal kidney-sellers were exposed by an internet blogger, who went undercover in the group as a kidney seller for fifteen days and later, on May 28, 2012, called the police. During the fifteen days undercover in the house, he recorded his conversations with the kidney-sellers and asked them why were they selling their kidneys. One of them said that he sold his kidney so that he could afford to purchase a new cellphone for his girlfriend, and be able to support his family. In a part of the novel, a man disguised as a woman is caught working as a prostitute. This is similar to an incident reported in the autonomous Guangxi region in 2010, where local police in Liuzhou arrested three people who were engaged in prostitution. The prostitutes were discovered to actually be middle-aged men dressed as women.
Plot
On the first day, after Yang Fei died, he went to the funeral parlour to be cremated, but no urn was prepared for him and no cemetery, so he left the waiting hall and tried to recall the last scene before he died. He remembered he was sitting in the Tan Jia Cai restaurant when he read the report of his ex-wife, Li Qing, cutting her wrist at home in the bathtub. At this time the restaurant kitchen caught fire, his memory stopped with a loud bang.
On the second day, he met his ex-wife, Li Qing, who rejected many chasers but married him. However, Li Qing divorced him and married a new man because Li Qing wanted to get higher achievement on her business. They brought up the memory and Li Qing told Yang Fei that he was the only husband she had. Finally, she left and rushed to her funeral.
On the third day, Yang Fei continued to wander on the street, he remembered his adoptive father Yang Jinbiao who found him as a newborn baby at the edge of the railway track. Yang Jinbiao raised him up alone and even rejected his girlfriend because of Yang Fei. One day Yang Fei's biological mother found him and brought him to his original family. However, he returned after few days. When Yang Jinbiao knew his disease could not stay for a long time, he left secretly. Yang Fei kept looking for his father for a long time. When he returned from his father's hometown, his nursing mother Li Yuezhen was dead.
On the fourth day, Yang Fei met Mouse Girl. She and her boyfriend Wu Chao were the neighbor of Yang Fei in the rental house. It was a big news when Mouse Girl suicided because her boyfriend gave her the fake Iphone 4S as her birthday gift, she jumped off from the top of the Pengfei Building. Mouse Girl led Yang Fei to the land of unburied, and Yang Fei kept looking for his father there.
On the fifth day, Yang Fei met a lot of familiar people in the land of unburied, including the girl he was gonna to teach and Tan Jiaxin's family. Then he met Li Yuezhen there, she told him the truth that his father is the receptionist at the funeral parlour, and his father actually went to the stone where he left Yang Fei once.