The Corpse Walker: True Tales from China’s Underbelly

"Story Time for Grownups" presents true tales of the underside of life in Communist China.

In 1989, poet Liao Yiwu published two long poems that criticized the government in allegory as paralyzed and consumed by leukemia. He received a four-year prison sentence. Tortured and placed in blazing sun and solitary, he nearly went mad and twice attempted suicide. Once out, he began to collect and publish interviews with ordinary people who had been crushed by the Communist system under Mao in the 1950s and 1960s, Deng Xiaoping in the '80s and'90s, and more recently. Yiwu's accounts--from a classical composer, village teacher, and former member of the Red Guard to a human trafficker, professional mourner, and a traditional corpse walker (paid to carry the body of a deceased person back to his or her native village for proper burial)-may bring to mind Orwell's /984 and Animal Farm.

David Loftus has read to listeners in libraries, coffee shops, Powell's Books, Borders, and Umpqua Bank, on the streets of Portland, and for recordings for the blind. He has performed Gandalf, Bilbo, and Gollum live with Willamette Radio Workshop, and Sherlock Holmes on KBOO. David voices principal characters for the science-fiction podcasts "Exoplanetary" and "253 Mathilde.