Abstract: Since the author YuHua's works Living has been published, gets a great echo, and acquires many great awards in domestic and overseas. This book is translated into various foreign languages, wins widely good comment from readers all over the world. This works deduces that "one do not know the living, then how to know the death ".[1] And it escapes from the surface of the life which we are accustomed to ,then discusses the survival problem which everyone must face from a object point of view. The protagonist FuGui is gradually numb to death after a series of unfortunate experience. The detached attitude that FuGui takes to death exposes the optimism of existentialism; compared to the same name movie, it also depicts FuGui faces the survival problem, but Zhang Yimou puts the center of gravity on the social background of that times, the movie scans carefully to political status of that times ;Zhang Yimou accedes the shadow play into movie, it alludes the life is just like a drama; this movie focuses on politics, so decreases the attention on tragedy of life, protagonist of movie suffers tribulation, but at the same time he enjoys the joy of life; the images of FuGui from two texts each has his own strong point, and also have some resemblances; the two FuGuis reflect each other, create a new image.
Key words: Living; FuGui; Existentialism; Tragedy
