CHINA BOOK WEEKLY 2021| Volume 2 Issue 2

Yu Hua candidly said that he had started writing Wencheng in the late 1990s, and underwent several interruptions after that. At that time, he had just finished To Live and wanted to write another story from the era before it. He attributed this to an “unrelenting ambition” of this generation of writers—the desire to picture a history of 100 years with their works. “After writing more than 200,000 words, I found it more and more difficult to go on, so I stopped immediately. I started writing it again after the publication of Brothers, and again after the publication of The Seventh Day. It was not until last year’s pandemic that I finally finished it.”

“Writers of my generation have one thing in common: they always want to express their relationship with the times. They don’t want to become writers in an ivory tower, nor do they want to become Borges, Woolf or Proust. We idolize Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Kafka and Marquez,” Yu Hua said, “I started writing Wencheng when the 20th century was coming to an end, and To Live is set in the 1940s, so I wanted to write about the period before that. The late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China were troubled times, so I want to bring them to light.”

With 500,000 copies in its first print run, Wencheng had another 100,000 copies printed on the day of pre-sale, and topped the Douban List of Bestselling Books for six weeks. The book received mixed reviews from readers and critics, with much debate. Indeed, Yu Hua has proved to be the most influential writer of this era, if not one of them.

Title: Wencheng

Author: Yu Hua

Publisher: Beijing October Literature and Art Publishing House

ISBN: 978-7-5302-2109-9

ABOUT THE BOOK

As the latest full-length novel by Yu Hua, a celebrated Chinese contemporary writer, in eight years since the publication of his last work, Wencheng tells the story of love, resentment, and sorrow of various characters in a small town in southern China, the ups and downs of whose lives epitomize a time characterized by conflicts between warlords and banditry. This is a preposterous epic about fate, subtle yet bold, comforting and daring, with the fragility and tenacity of life perfectly defined.

The protagonist of the story, Lin Xiangfu, was first thought of by the people of Xizhen County as a man clad in snowflakes, his face shrouded by his hair and beard, modest like a weeping willow and reticent like a paddy field. Even after he became the owner of Wanmudang and the woodworking cooperative, his modesty and reticence remained unchanged. His past was tied to an enigmatic city, and no one knew why he was looking for a place that did not exist.

As a man whose hometown was in the far north, he didn’t belong here. For a promise he uprooted himself and settled down here. Since then, he had seen passionate, gentle souls as well as ice-cold, merciless hearts. In the end his efforts proved futile, but he kept the memories and stories of many people alive.

“Where is Wencheng?”

“It is always there, somewhere in the world.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Yu Hua, born in Hangzhou, Zhejiang on April 3, 1960, is a contemporary Chinese writer and a member of the 9th National Committee of the China Writers’ Association. After graduating from high school in 1977, he attended the Lu Xun Literary Institute in Beijing to further his studies and began writing in 1983. In the same year he started working in the Cultural Museum of Haiyan County, Zhejiang Province. He began publishing his novels in 1984, and his representatives include short story collections The Boy in the Dusk, Blood and Plum Blossoms and One Kind of Reality, and full-length novels Cries in the Drizzle, To Live, Chronicle of a Blood Merchant and Brothers. In 1998, he was awarded the Italian Grinzane Cavour Prize, and in 2005, he received the Special Book Award of China.

EXCERPT

It was a bleak day, with cries and sighs echoing over and over, and a gust of cold wind howling. Lin Xiangfu and Xiao Mei were shrouded by these desolate sounds and disoriented by last night’s incident. Both of them said nothing. As Xiao Mei’s loom started to rattle, Lin sat there in silence. Later Lin got up and went into his room and laid down on the bed. Xiao Mei’s loom was still rattling, as if it were a constant source of her voice. After a while the rattling sound ended abruptly, and Lin heard the sound of Xiao Mei’s stool moving when she got up. With footsteps as careful as if she was walking on thin ice, she walked into another room.

This night Lin was anxious and restless, and the moonlight flowed down through the holes in the roof left by the rain and hail, as if they were columns of water, glittering like crystals. The village in sorrow became silent in the darkness of the night, only the sound of the wind whistling against the eaves and flitting through the night sky. These sounds swished away as if they were the sound of a whip, driving Lin to get up and walk to Xiao Mei’s room. As he looked up through the watery columns of moonlight, he saw a patch of abysmal darkness in the holes on the roof, through which the wisps of chilling air attacked him. He walked out of the house, and went over to another room to the front of Xiao Mei's bed. With the help of the moonlight, he saw Xiao Mei wrapped in a quilt, lying on her side. Her curled up body was motionless. Lin hesitated for a moment, lying down quietly beside Xiao Mei, listening to her slight and even breathing. He pulled over the quilt on Xiao Mei little by little and covered himself. It was then that Xiao Mei turned around and swam onto him like a fish.

CONTACT

For more rights information and reading samples, please contact:

[e-mail]

Rights Notice

Editorial Team: 

Lei Jianhua,

Zhao Daxin, Wang Yuyan,

Zhou Jia, Yin Mengling, Cao Shan

Intern: Zhao Yixuan

Launched in February 2020 by International Business Center of CNPIEC, "CHINA BOOK WEEKLY" is a weekly English E-Journal to introduce and promote China books.

This article is edited by International Publishing Department, CNPIEC. 

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