Yu Hua, a prominent writer in contemporary Chinese literature, has garnered widespread attention for his distinctive narrative style and profound insights into human nature. Chronicle of a Blood Merchant centers on the protagonist Xu Sanguan's life of selling blood, chronicling the survival struggles of an ordinary family across China from the 1950s to the 1980s. It constructs a world of suffering filled with existential paradoxes. "Blood" serves as the narrative motif of Chronicle of a Blood Merchant. Through the chain of "blood debt—blood selling—blood repayment,"Yu Hua deconstructs the moral sublimity of traditional suffering narratives and reconstructs a philosophy of survival where humanity sacrifices flesh to confront an absurd fate. This article analyzes the metaphorical cycle of existential debt embodied by "blood debt" and the collective psychological mechanisms underlying "blood repayment," revealing the novel's deep-seated structure of recurring suffering and the ethical dilemmas of collective unconsciousness.
Han Jiaxuan (2025) studied this question.