Wu Township is hollowing out. Our most capable sons and daughters have long since uprooted from their birthplace on the central plains to fuel China's economic miracle. The ancient trees now sit in the shade of a modern aqueduct, funnelling even our precious water to the metropolises beyond.
From the marketplace where gossip is traded to the long-abandoned execution grounds, ordinary life carries on. For we who remain, feuds between neighbours compound the burdens shared by increasingly ageing shoulders. But If you know where to look, you'll find the town still clings to its customs and dreams.
Let me show you around. If we're lucky, we'll run into the benevolent doctor or beauty store owner, and if we're not, the corrupt local official, perhaps even the souls of executed ancestors. Why do you want to visit? To see it before it's all gone... of course.
Rezensionen / Stimmen
"Speaks to universal challenges, problems facing not just Chinese villages but also alienated communities around the world." - Ian Johnson, New York Times
"It is in these stories that the universality of people's hopes, fears and frustrations really shines through." - Jo Lateu, New Internationalist
"Stunningly insightful... What makes Liang's study so compelling is the way in which it offers a glimpse of a world in which personal problems ... exist on the same level as broader social and political problems." Mark Rappolt, ArtReview
Sprache
Verlagsort
Verlagsgruppe
Produkt-Hinweis
Gewebe-Einband
mit Schutzumschlag (bedruckt)
Maße
Höhe: 149 mm
Breite: 224 mm
Dicke: 23 mm
Gewicht
ISBN-13
978-1-83890-561-3 (9781838905613)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Klassifikation
Liang Hong is a writer, essayist and professor at Renmin University of China. She is known for narrativising rural China, and is heralded by critics as a trailblazer, focusing on the lives of ordinary rural people and exploring something other than the metropolis. Her own rural upbringing and memories heavily inspire her works, for which she has won a number of literary prizes. Esther Tyldesley is a graduate of Robinson College, Cambridge who teaches Chinese language and translation at the University of Edinburgh. Her published translations include Xinran's The Good Women of China, Sky Burial and China Witness, also by Xinran, Confucius from the Heart by Yu Dan and Little Aunt Crane by Yan Geling. In her spare time she reads far too many books and dreams of China.
1. A Shining Cloud Moving Over the Skies of Wu Town
2. Drifting
3. The Holy Man, Dequan
4. Xu Jialiang Builds a House
5. Swimming in the Second River
6. The Beauty, Caihong
7. Meatheads
8. That Bright, Snowy Afternoon
9. The Exercise Ground
10. The Good Man, Lan Wei
About the Author
About the Translator
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