The book is banned in China,[1] but Yu Hua reworked some of his essays for publication in the mainland China market in the 2015 essay collection We Live Amidst Vast Disparities (simplified Chinese: 我们生活在巨大的差距里; traditional Chinese: 我們生活在巨大的差距裡; pinyin: wǒmen shēnghuó zài jùdà de chājù lǐ).

[citation needed] Structured around the ten two-character words, Yu Hua’s essay collection narrates a personal account on momentous events, such as the Great Leap Forward, Chinese Cultural Revolution and Tiananmen Square Protest, while accentuating the proliferation of graduate unemployment, social inequality and political corruption in accompaniment with China’s rapid change into a modernized nation.

The ten words are: people (人民), leader (领袖), reading (阅读), writing (写作), Lu Xun (鲁迅), revolution (革命), disparity (差距), grassroots (草根), copycat (山寨), bamboozle (忽悠).

Disparity (差距): The gap in infrastructural development between cities and villages, income level between the rich and the poor and other aspects of the Chinese society.

"[7] Laura Miller wrote in Salon that "Yu Hua has a fiction writer's nose for the perfect detail, the everyday stuff that conveys more understanding than a thousand Op-Eds.... Perhaps the most bewitching aspect of this book is how funny it is....

"[8] Lagaya Misha assessed it in the New York Times as "an uneven mixture of memoir and polemic, farce and fury, short on statistics but long on passion.

[15] Another scholar propounds that Yu Hua’s decision to publish China in Ten Words’ Chinese version in Taiwan accentuates the political repressiveness of the PRC in comparison to the ROC.

[17] A list of the several real-life incidents and people Yu Hua mentions in China in Ten Words that is referenced in his other works, such as Brothers, The Seventh Day, Chronicle of a Blood Merchant, and To Live.

[18] Around 2010-2012: Mass protests and demonstrations against "environmental degradation, moral collapse, the polarization of rich and poor and pervasive corruption," (p.17)[2] reflected in Television report in The Seventh Day (p.23).

[18] Huang Shuai and Yu Hua’s manuscript exchange and shenanigans (p.52)[2] mirrors Writer Liu and Song Gang’s situation in the metal factory in Brothers (p.224).