Contemporary Authors

• The Heavenly Hound University of Oklahoma Press (Norman, OK), 2015
• Ruined City CN Times Books (Jericho, NY), 2017
• The Lantern Bearer Valley Press ( Scarborough, England), 2018

1. Earthen gate Type of material Book Personal name Jia, Pingwa, author. Main title Earthen gate / Jia Pingwa. Published/Produced Scarborough : Valley Press, 2018. Description 374 pages ; cm ISBN 9781912436026 (pbk.) Item not available at the Library. Why not? 2. The lantern bearer LCCN 2017295783 Type of material Book Personal name Jia, Pingwa, author. Uniform title Dai deng. English Main title The lantern bearer / Jia Pingwa ; translated by Carlos Rojas. Published/Produced Jerico, New York : CN Times Books , 2017. ©2017 Description xi, 516 pages ; 26 cm ISBN 9781627740616 1627740619 CALL NUMBER Copy 1 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms 3. Ruined city : a novel LCCN 2015027958 Type of material Book Personal name Jia, Pingwa, author. Uniform title Fei du. English Main title Ruined city : a novel / Jia Pingwa ; translated by Howard Goldblatt. Edition First edition. Published/Produced Norman : University of Oklahoma Press, 2015. Description xiii, 520 pages ; 23 cm. ISBN 9780806151731 (pbk. : alk. paper) Shelf Location FLM2016 110477 CALL NUMBER PL2843.P5 F4513 2015 OVERFLOWJ34 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms (FLM2) 4. The heavenly hound LCCN 92146078 Type of material Book Personal name Jia, Pingwa. Uniform title Short stories. Selections. English Main title The heavenly hound / Jia Pingwa. Edition 1st ed. Published/Created Beijing, China : Chinese Literature Press, 1991. Description 306 p. ; 18 cm. ISBN 7507100758 0835120864 CALL NUMBER PL2843.P5 A2 1991 Copy 1 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms

• Turbulence - 1991 Louisiana State University Press, Benson, NC
• The Castle - 1997 York Pr,
• Happy Dreams - 2017 AmazonCrossing,

• Fantastic Fiction -

  Novels
  Turbulence (1991)
  The Castle (1997)
  Ruined City (2016)
  The Lantern Bearer (2017)
  Happy Dreams (2017)

  Anthologies edited
  Old Land, New Tales (2014) (with Chen Zhongshi)

• Wikipedia -

  Jia Pingwa
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  This is a Chinese name; the family name is Jia.
  Jia Pingwa
  贾平凹
  Born
  Jia Pingwa (贾平娃)
  21 February 1952 (age 66)
  Dihua Village, Danfeng County, Shangluo, Shaanxi, China
  Pen name
  Jia Pingwa
  Occupation
  Writer
  Language
  Chinese
  Education
  Northwest University (1971-5)
  Period
  1973 – present
  Notable works
  Ruined City,
  Qin Opera
  Spouse
  Han Junfang (韩俊芳)
  (1979.1.22-1992.11.26)
  Guo Mei (郭梅)
  (1996.12.12– present)
  Children
  Jia Qianqian (贾浅浅)
  Jia Ruo (贾若)
  Jia Pingwa (simplified Chinese: 贾平娃; traditional Chinese: 賈平娃; pinyin: Jiǎ Píngwá; born 21 February 1952), better known by his penname Jia Pingwa (simplified Chinese: 贾平凹; traditional Chinese: 賈平凹; pinyin: Jiǎ Píngwā), is one of China's most popular authors of novels, short stories, poetry, and non-fiction.[1] His most well-known novels include Ruined City, which was banned by the State Publishing Administration for over 17 years for its explicit sexual content, and Qin Opera, winner of the 2009 Mao Dun Literature Prize.[2][3]

  Contents [hide]
  1
  Early life and teen years
  2
  Pen name
  3
  Education and early career
  4
  Turn towards native-place fiction
  5
  After Ruined City and present day
  6
  Style
  7
  List of works
  8
  Awards and honours
  9
  References
  10
  Further reading
  11
  External links

  Early life and teen years[edit]
  Born in Dihua Village, Danfeng County, Shangluo, Shaanxi in 1952, only three years after the founding of the People's Republic of China, as the son of a school teacher, Jia Yanchun (贾彦春), Jia had an early role model for his later decision to become a writer. Due to a shortage of qualified teachers in Shaanxi at the time, however, Jia's father was often away from home and so he spent much of his early childhood with his mother, Zhou Xiao'e (周小鹅).[4] With the advent of the Cultural Revolution in 1966, Jia Yanchun was accused of being a counter-revolutionary and he spent the next ten years in a labor camp. Three years later, with the closing of all schools in China following the excesses of the Red Guards, Jia was dispatched with his classmates to build reservoirs in the countryside.[5]
  Pen name[edit]
  Jia's given name, Píngwá 平娃, literally means 'ordinary child', a name suggested to Jia's parents by a fortune teller following the death of their first born child.[6] He later chose the pen name Píngwā 平凹, a play on his given name， as the character for 'ordinary' also means 'flat', and in southern Shaanxi dialect the character for 'concave' (and by extension 'uneven') 凹 is pronounced wā, similar to wá or 'child' in his given name. Because 'uneven' 凹 is pronounced āo in Standard Chinese, however, his name is often misread as Píng'āo.
  Education and early career[edit]
  While working on the production brigade, Jia had the good fortune to attract the attention of local party cadres after volunteering to write revolutionary slogans, and thanks to their support he was sent to study literature at Northwest University in Xi'an in 1971.[5] Two years later, Jia's first short story, "A Pair of Socks", appeared in The Xi'an Daily, and was soon followed by many others. After graduating in 1975 Jia found employment at Shaanxi People's Publishing House editing the monthly magazine Chang’an, and in 1978 his short story "Full Moon" won a national award from the China Writers Association. These early were collected in Soldier Boy and Morning Songs. Like many stories published during this period (but quite different from his later work), Jia's early stories feature brave young men and women committed to the cause of Chinese socialism.[7]
  Turn towards native-place fiction[edit]
  Inspired perhaps by the worsening health of his father, who had fallen into alcoholism, in 1980 Jia published his first collection of rural fiction set in his home province of Shaanxi, Notes from the Highlands, and in 1982, on the strength of his published short stories and essays, Jia was admitted the Xi'an Literary Federation, allowing him to pursue writing full-time. Although he found himself under greater scrutiny, even becoming a target of criticism during the Anti-Spiritual Pollution Campaign of late 1983, Jia's sketches of everyday life in Shangzhou (the traditional name for his native region) were published to greater and greater success, with the novellas First Records of Shangzhou, Further Records of Shangzhou and More Records of Shangzhou appearing between 1983 and 1986.[8]
  In 1986, Jia published his first novel, Shangzhou, an account of a young fugitive who the police who suspect of having committed a robbery in the city. He decides to hide out in his rural hometown, giving Jia a narrative framework around which to structure his popular descriptions of life in the countryside. This novel was quickly followed by two more: Turbulence in 1987 and Pregnancy in 1988. This flurry of activity was interrupted by the death of Jia's father in 1989. Grief would compel Jia to take a more introspective tone with his next project, conceived as a semi-autobiographical account of a morally depraved author from the countryside who has been corrupted by fame. In the 1993 novel Ruined City, frank depictions of various sexual acts (drawing comparisons to the Ming dynasty vernacular classic the Jin Ping Mei) earned the book both a wide audience and a 17-year ban from the authorities, causing it to become one of the most pirated books in modern Chinese literature.[9]
  After Ruined City and present day[edit]
  Despite the ban, Jia continued to write, publishing a trilogy of rural novels: White Nights (1995), Earth Gate (1996), and Old Gao Village (1998). This was followed by the modern fable Wolves of Yesterday (2000), about a Wu Song-like hunter chasing a modern-day environmentalist who turns into a wolf, a historical romance and counter-history Heath Report (2002), and Qin Opera (2005), a challenging work incorporating elements of local Shaanxi operas which earned him the 2008 Mao Dun Literature Award. Over the last decade, Jia has completed five additional novels: Happy (2007), Old Kiln (2011), The Lantern Bearer (2013), Lao Sheng (2014), and Jihua (2016).
  In 1992 Jia was admitted to the prestigious Chinese Writers Association, later being elected Chairman of Shaanxi branch of the organization and in 2003 he was appointed dean of the School of Humanities and the Dean of the College of Arts at Xi'an University of Architecture and Technology.[10][11] Additionally, he is a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference[12] and Xi'an People's Congress, a member of the Presidium of the Chinese Writers' Association, the Xi'an Literary Federation President, an honorary chairman of the Xi'an Writers' Association, the editor-in-chief of the literary journal Essay 《美文》, and writer-in-residence at the Ocean University of China.[13][14][15][16]
  Style[edit]
  Jia Pingwa is known for mixing traditional vernacular story-telling with modern realism in his work, which Carlos Rojas describes as being "explicitly rooted in the breathless modernization of contemporary urban China, while at the same time... [featuring] a nostalgic fascination with the historical tradition which that same modernization process simultaneously threatens to erase."[17]
  List of works[edit]
  Novels:[18]
  Shangzhou (商州, 1986) Shangzhou, currently untranslated.
  Fuzao (浮躁, 1987) English translation Turbulence by Howard Goldblatt (Louisiana State University Press, 1991, republished by Grove Press, 2003). Winner of the 1991 Pegasus Prize.[19]
  Renshen (妊娠, 1988) Pregnancy, currently untranslated.
  Fei Du (废都, 1993) English translation Ruined City by Howard Goldblatt (University of Oklahoma Press, 2016).[20] Also known in English as Defunct Capital and Abandoned Capital.
  Bai Ye (白夜， 1995) White Nights, currently untranslated.
  Tu Men (土门, 1996) Earth Gate, currently untranslated.
  Gao Lao Zhuang (高老庄, 1998) Old Gao Village, currently untranslated.
  Huainian Lang (怀念狼, 2000) Wolves of Yesterday, currently untranslated.
  Bingxiang Baogao (病相报告, 2002) Health Report, currently untranslated.
  Qin Qiang (秦腔, 2005) Qin Opera, short sample translation by Dylan Levi King in Chinese Literature Today. Winner of the 2008 Mao Dun Literature Prize.
  Gaoxing (高兴, 2007), English translation Happy Dreams by Nicky Harman (AmazonCrossing, 2017) .[21]
  Gu Lu (古炉, 2011) Short sample translation Old Kiln by Canaan Morse on Paper Republic.[22]
  Dai Deng (带灯, 2013) English translation The Lantern Bearer (2016) by Carlos Rojas.[23]
  Lao Sheng (老生, 2014), Lao Sheng, currently untranslated.
  Jihua (极花, 2016) Jihua, currently untranslated.
  Short story collections:
  Bing Wa 兵娃 (Boy soldier, 1977)
  Shandi Biji 山地笔记 (Mountain notes, 1980)
  Layue, Zhengyue 腊月，正月 (December and January, 1985)
  Tiangou 天狗 (Heavenly dog, 1986)
  Heishi 黑氏 (Black clan, 1993)
  Zhizao Shengyin 制造声音 (Creating sounds, 1998)
  Jiaozi Guan 饺子馆 (Dumpling restaurant, 2002)
  Yishujia Han Qixiang 艺术家韩起祥 (The artist Han Qixiang, 2006), etc.
  Essay collections:
  Yueji 月迹 (The trace of the moon, 1982),
  Shangzhou Sanlu 商州三录 (Three chapters about Shangzhou, 1986)
  Hong Hu 红狐 (Red fox, 1994)
  Zao Yizuo Fangzi Zhu Meng 造一座房子住梦 (Build a house to live in a dream, 1998)
  Qiao Men 敲门 (Knock on the door, 1998)
  Wo Shi Nongmin 我是农民 (I am a peasant, 1998)
  Lao Xi'an: Feidu Xieyang 老西安：废都斜阳 (Old Xi'an: the deserted capital in sunset, 1999), etc.
  Poetry:
  "Blank", etc.
  Awards and honours[edit]
  1978, Best Short Story of the Year for Full Moon.[24]
  This short story was first published in the literary magazine Shanghai Art, 3rd Volume, 1978.
  1984, The Best Novel of the Third National Novellas for December and January.[25]
  This novel was first published in the literary magazine October, 5th Volume, 1984.
  1991, the Pegasus prize in literature for Turbulence: A Novel.[26]
  1991 August 21, Zhuang Zhongwen Literature Prize.[27]
  1997, French Prix Femina étranger for La Capitale déchue, Genevieve Imbot-Bichet's translation of Ruined City into French.[28]
  2003, Knight of Arts and Literature by the French Ministry of Culture and Communication.[29]
  2004, 3rd Lu Xun Literature Prize in excellent prose and Essays for Jia Pingwa’s Lengthy Prose Selection.[30]
  Published in September 2003 by Shaanxi People's Publishing House.
  2006, Hong Kong The Dream of the Red Chamber Award: The World’s Distinguished Novel in Chinese" for Shaanxi Opera.[31][32]
  2006 June 24, he won the Outstanding Achievement Award from Liu Qing Literature Prize.[33][34]
  2007 September 20, 1st Pu Songling Literature Short Story Prize for Dumpling Restaurant.[35]
  2008, 7th Mao Dun Literature Prize for Shaanxi Opera.[3]
  This novel was first published in the literary magazine Harvest, the book was first published by Writers Publishing House.

• Amazon -

  Jia Pingwa, a prominent and celebrated writer and essayist, was born in 1952 into a farming family in Danfeng County, Shaanxi Province. He began to write while studying in the Chinese department of Northwest University in Xi’an. Jia Pingwa first achieved fame in the 1970s and 1980s with his award-winning short stories and novellas, the majority of which are set in Jia’s rural homeland in Shangzhou Prefecture. After Jia graduated in 1976, he worked as an editor at the Shaanxi People’s Publishing House. Since then he has become a full-time writer.

  Jia is known for his realistic depiction of the culture and life of Shaanxi Province. His writing often focuses on peasant life during China’s reforms and urbanization since 1978. He is a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), president of the Shaanxi Writers Association, deputy to the People’s Congress of Xi’an, and president of the Writers Association of Xi’an.

• Global Literature in Libraries Initiative Website - https://glli-us.org/2017/02/20/jia-pingwa-as-global-literature-by-nick-stember/

  Jia Pingwa as Global Literature – by Nick Stember
  Posted on February 20, 2017 by helenwanglondon
  Nick Stember is a historian and translator of Chinese comics and science fiction. In 2015 he completed a Master of Arts in the Department of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia. His work has been featured in The International Journal of Comic Art, Clarkesworld Magazine, LEAP: The International Art Magazine of Contemporary China, and The China Story Yearbook. He is currently working closely with the Jia Pingwa Institute, in Xi’an, to bring more of Jia’s work into English.

  Ruined City, by Jia Pingwa, tr. Howard Goldblatt (University of Oklahoma Press)
  Jia Pingwa would probably be the first to admit that his books make a tough sell for ‘global literature’: of fourteen novels, all but three (Ruined City/Abandoned Capital, The Plague Report, and Happy Dreams) take place in the rural countryside of Shaanxi—and in those three exceptions, the protagonists are migrants from the same. Clearly then, for Jia, the geographical setting and origin of his stories and characters is crucial.
  Bounded by the Qin mountains to the south, and the Ordos desert to the north, this arid province formed the heartland of Chinese civilization from the Warring States (500-221 BC) to the Tang (618-907 AD)—a span of almost 1500 years. While the terracotta warriors of Qin Shihuang, the first emperor to unify the various kingdoms of premodern China, are its most famous relics, so much of Shaanxi’s natural resources have been lost.

  Shaanxi landscape. Photo: W0zny
  Once thickly forested, the landscape of present day Shaanxi is largely made up of dusty loess plateaux irrigated by the Wei River, a major tributary of the famed Yellow River.
  Those ancient forests, once home to elephants and rhinoceroses, provided the timber for the stately palaces and great cities of premodern China—structures which proved irresistible to the torches of the successive waves of invading armies. In other words, the now barren landscape has witnessed more than its fair share of history.
  Steeped in the history and literature of this unique region, Jia’s work is intensely local, featuring everything from regional food and drink specialties like guokui flatbread and guanguancha tea, to opera performances and funeral songs in Shaanxi dialect. But Jia’s work is also steeped in the rich literary tradition of China, and when we read his stories, we cannot help but feel the depth of history and tradition in his writing. Jia draws inspiration from the vernacular novels of the Ming and Qing dynasties (1368–1911 AD) – a period roughly contemporaneous with the Renaissance and Enlightenment in Europe. And, building on the legacy of the May Fourth movement (1919), he carries the torch of a group of literary firebrands who blamed the humiliations of the Opium Wars and foreign concessions at the hand of the European powers on the cultural and intellectual stagnation of the Chinese elite. European fiction flooded into China alongside religious and scientific texts at the turn of the 20th century, at the time when the first generation of Western-educated Chinese intellectuals were beginning to emerge. Unlike their forebears, and the generations that followed them, they were uniquely educated for the modern world – as familiar with the classical Chinese tradition as they were with Western traditions. Most prominent among them was Hu Shi, who once famously advocated, “Speak in the language of the time in which you live.”

  Terracotta warrior detail, Xi’an, Shaanxi. Photo by Peter Morgan
  For Hu Shi, this meant abandoning the monosyllabic classical language that had developed from the earliest Chinese texts, and employing the vernacular style. There was a precedent – some of the literature of the Tang dynasty had been in a vernacular style, , reputedly based on the oral storytelling traditions of tea house performers and street buskers. Of course, the literati would never accept tea-house tales as being equal to “serious” poetry and historical treatises. But, by the Ming dynasty these sometimes bawdy stories had developed into complex social allegories replete with classical allusions, clever puns, and long passages of descriptive poetry and prose.
  The Japanese invasion of Shanghai in 1937 shifted the tide of influence towards left-leaning political novels in the vein of the didactic short stories of Lu Xun (a popular contemporary of Hu Shi). However, some writers, notably Qian Zhongshu and Eileen Chang, kept the flame of erudite vernacular satire alive well into the 1940s and beyond. Jia Pingwa is very much the inheritor of this tradition.
  Satire has a dangerous edge, and Jia has spent his career skirting the line between the acceptable and the unacceptable. In 1993, this led to a 17-year ban on Jia’s masterpiece Ruined City, allegedly for pornographic content. In fact, like the 16th century novel Plum in the Golden Vase (aka Jin Ping Mei) on which it was based, the book is a complex allegory for the decline of the cultural elite of the People’s Republic during the Reform and Opening era which followed Deng Xiaoping’s rise to power two years after Mao’s death in 1976. As in Plum…, Jia’s Ruined City is a raucous description of how a sudden influx of liquid capital corrupts the bureaucracy, lubricates social climbers, and destroys the bonds between husband and wife (the latter being a longstanding Chinese allegory for the relationship of ruler to ruled as established in the Confucian text, The Great Learning).
  Since the ban on Ruined City, Jia has taken a usual path for a supposed dissident. Rather than choose between abandoning his country or his profession, he has stayed in Shaanxi, and continued to write. If he has made a sacrifice, it has been to focus on the rural fiction which characterized his work before the urban-centred narrative of Ruined City. Through a series of richly drawn novels, starting with the 1995 novel White Nights (untranslated), Jia has pushed rural fiction to its limits, culminating in a second masterpiece with his celebrated 2005 novel Shaanxi Opera (untranslated) On the strength of this work, Jia went on to win both the 2008 Mao Dun Literature Prize (the preeminent PRC literary award, sponsored by the Chinese Writers Association), and the Dream of Red Chamber Award (sponsored by the Hong Kong Baptist University).

  Turbulence, by Jia Pingwa
  Until recently however, Jia’s acclaim among Chinese readers did not result in a rush of translations. Like so many contemporary Chinese authors, his work was first brought into English by Howard Goldblatt, beginning with Jia’s 1987 novel Turbulence (Louisiana State University Press 1991, sponsored by the Pegasus Prize). Six years later, Geneviève Imbot-Bichet’s 1997 French translation of Ruined City [La Capitale déchue] won the prestigious Prix Femina award for best foreign novel. Six years after that, there was a 2003 Grove Press reprint of Turbulence, and then a hiatus of 13 years, until Howard Goldblatt’s English translation of Ruined City was released by Oklahoma University Press in early 2016. Both Turbulence and Ruined City would make excellent additions to any library’s collection of contemporary literature, Chinese or otherwise.
  And now, at last, it seems there is good news ahead! On the immediate horizon are two new Jia Pingwa novels, brought to the English reader by accomplished translators: Happy Dreams, translated by Nicky Harman (AmazonCrossing) and The Lantern Bearer, translated by Carlos Rojas (CN Times Books), both due out in late 2017.

  Ugly Stone seal
  My own involvement in Jia’s work began in March 2016, when I had the good fortune to be invited to take part in the research conference “Bringing Chinese Literature to the World,” at the Jia Pingwa Institute in Xi’an, organized by Professor Ji Jin of Soochow University. A concrete result of this conference was the Jia Pingwa Project, later renamed ‘Ugly Stone: Jia Pingwa in Translation’ after Jia’s famous short story of the same. The first phase of this project has already launched—sample translations and reader reports for four of Jia’s untranslated novels: The Poleflower, Old Kiln Village, Master of Songs, and Shaanxi Opera. The hope is to not only attract the attention of publishers, but also to provide a resource for readers and reviewers looking for contextual frameworks in which to read Jia’s work.
  As a word of warning, Jia’s writing is not for the faint of heart. His most recent novel, The Poleflower, provides a first person account of a bride kidnapping. And the protagonist of Shaanxi Opera is driven insane by his father’s death. Even in his most light-hearted works, there is an overwhelming sense of decline and loss: the pace is grinding, a large cast of characters suffer countless twists of fate, and very few things work out for the best in the end. But they are a damn good read!
  Brief summary of Jia Pingwa’s works
  Shangzhou (商州, 1986) Shangzhou, currently untranslated. — Tragicomic sketches of everyday life in the mountains of Shaanxi’s deep south.
  Fuzao (浮躁, 1987) English translation Turbulence by Howard Goldblatt (Louisiana State University Press, 1991, republished by Grove Press, 2003). Winner of the 1991 Pegasus Prize. — The rise and fall of Golden Dog, an ambitious young man who returns to his hometown on the Zhou River to run river boats and expose corruption.
  Renshen (妊娠, 1988) Pregnancy, currently untranslated. — The philosophy of life via a beautiful dwarf, a tornado, and an old man who sleeps sitting up.
  Fei Du (废都, 1993) English translation Ruined City by Howard Goldblatt (University of Oklahoma Press, 2016). Also known in English as Defunct Capital and Abandoned Capital. — Fading literary star Zhuang Zhidie finds love in all in the wrong places, while his friends spin petty schemes and fight lawsuits.
  Bai Ye (白夜, 1995) White Nights, currently untranslated. — Migrant worker Mr. Qi suddenly returns home ten years after his untimely death to recover an old copper key, setting off a series of unfortunate events.
  Tu Men (土门, 1996) Earth Gate, currently untranslated. — Upstanding cadre Cheng Yi struggles as village gives way to city and his fellow townspeople, once rooted in the soil, lose their way in the pursuit of fame and fortune.
  Gao Lao Zhuang (高老庄, 1998) Old Gao Village, currently untranslated. — During the reform and opening period of the early 1980s, university professor Gao Zilu returns home, where he gets caught up in a tangled web of old feuds born of isolation and ignorance.
  Huainian Lang (怀念狼, 2000) Wolves of Yesterday, currently untranslated. — When the wolves of the southern mountains disappear, the hunters suddenly find themselves transformed into their own worst enemies, forcing the villagers to reexamine long-held beliefs.
  Bingxiang Baogao (病相报告, 2002) Plague Report, currently untranslated. — Shortly after arriving in the communist base camp of Yan’an, propaganda artist Hu Fang falls in love with Jiang Lan, only to be separated by the whims of fate and politics.
  Qin Qiang (秦腔, 2005) Qin Opera, sample translation Shaanxi Opera by Dylan Levi King on Ugly Stone. Winner of the 2008 Mao Dun Literature Prize. — Village outcast Yinsheng pines after renowned beauty Bai Xue, while two powerful families, old and new, fight to leave their mark on a rural village with a long tradition of opera performances.
  Gaoxing (高兴, 2007), English translation Happy Dreams by Nicky Harman (AmazonCrossing, 2017). — Easy-going farmer Happy Liu becomes a trash collector in the big city after selling a kidney, introducing him to a whole new world of opportunities—and challenges.
  Gu Lu (古炉, 2011) Short sample translation Old Kiln by Canaan Morse on Paper Republic, longer sample translation Old Kiln Village by Nicky Harman on Ugly Stone. — Bad class background villagers Mottlegill and Grandma Mulberry do their best to make ends meet and stay out of trouble while dueling Red Guard factions, the Sledgehammers and the Red Swords, duke it out for control of a ceramics kiln during the Cultural Revolution.
  Dai Deng (带灯, 2013) English translation The Lantern Bearer (2016) by Carlos Rojas. — Honest and hardworking university student Firefly reins in disorder and corruption in a sleepy mountain village, dealing with age-old conflicts along the way.
  Lao Sheng (老生, 2014), Lao Sheng, sample translation Master of Songs by Nick Stember in progress. — Funeral singer and local legend the Master of Songs listens to a classic fable of fantastic beasts on his death bed, recalling a lifetime of strife and dramatic change.
  Jihua (极花, 2016) Jihua, sample translation The Poleflower by Nick Stember on Ugly Stone. — When would-be city girl Butterfly is kidnapped and sold into sexual slavery in the countryside, her extended captivity forces her to give up any hope of ever reentering society.
  [Written for the GLLI – Paper Republic collaboration, Feb 2017]

• China Culture - http://en.chinaculture.org/focus/focus/2010expo_en/2010-04/21/content_377385.htm

  Jia Pingwa

  Born 1952 in Shaanxi Province, China. Lives in Xi’an.

  Jia Pingwa, a contemporary writer, was born in Danfeng County, Shanglue City, Shaanxi Province, on Feb. 21, 1852. Jia Pingwa was born in rural area. His family was not a literary family and was not rich. All his family members were farmers. After his graduation from the Chinese Language Department of Northwest University in 1975, he worked as literature and art editor of Shaanxi People’s Publication House and editor of Chang’an, a monthly magazine of literature. Since 1982, he has been engaged in literature creation wholeheartedly and assumed posts such as councilor of the Chinese Writers Association and vice-chairman of Chinese Writers Association, Shaanxi Branch. His works include Child Soldier Short Stories, Sisters’ Stories, Notes in Mountainous Areas, Wildfire Collection, Stories in Shangzhou, Stories of Xiaoyue, December and January, Dog in Sky, Evening Song, Award-winning Novels of Jia Pingwa, Jia Pingwa’s Self-selected Novel Collection, long novel Shangzhou and Zhouhe, Fickleness, Abandoned City, White Night, autobiographical long novel I Am a Farmer, essay collection Traces of Moon, True Feelings, Trace of Love, Jia Pingwa Self-selected Essays and poetry collection Blankness. His work December and January won the 3rd National Excellent Novel Award of the Chinese Writers Association, and his work Full Moon won the National Excellent Short Story Award in 1978. Jia Pingwa won the Flying Horse Literature Award of the U.S. in 1988 and the Feminist Foreign Literature Award of France in 1997. Novels of Jia Pingwa describe rural areas in northwest China in the new era, especially its changes after the reform and opening up. His novels have wide visual scope, contain rich cultural and psychological contents of contemporary China, and boast regional features and clear structures.
  Main experiences
  Jia Pingwa graduated from the Chinese Language Department of Northwest University in 1975. After his graduation, he had been engaged in editor work for a couple of years. He had worked as literature and art editor of Shaanxi People’s Publication House and editor of Chang’an, a monthly magazine of literature. Since 1982, he assumed a post at Xi’an Art and Literature Union as a professional writer and engaged in literature creation. In 1992, he created the Beautiful Essay magazine. He also assumed the posts such as councilor of the Chinese Writers Association, vice-chairman of Chinese Writers Association, Shaanxi Branch and president of Xi’an Art and Literature Union. Currently, he is also editor-in-chief of the monthly magazine Beautiful Essay and dean of the Department of Humanities of Xi'an University of Architecture & Technology.
  Main works

  Long novels: Shangzhou, Fickleness, Pregnancy, Beautiful Cave, Abandoned City, White Night, Earth Door, Gao Village, Zhouhe, Heizhi, Memory of Wolf, Qinqiang, Happiness and Love Disaster Middle and short-novels: Child Soldier, Sister’s Stories, Song of the Morning, Notes in Mountainous Areas, Wildfire Collection, December and January, Stories of Xiaoyue, Famous Literature Works in New Era (Jia Pingwa Volume), Dog in Sky, Hometown, Stories in Shangzhou, Evening Song, Jia Pingwa Award-winning Novel Collection and Jia Pingwa Self-selected Novel Collection Essay collections: Trace of Moon, Trace of Love, True Feelings, Jia Pingwa Self-selected Essays, Buddha, Friends and My Little Peach Others: Autobiographical long novel I Am a Farmer Poetry collection: Blankness and Jia Pingwa Poetry Collection Related comments: Learning to Live, Building a House Where Dream Lives, Jia Pingwa and Sanmao Awards: December and January won the 3rd National Excellent Novel Award of the Chinese Writers Association; Full Moon won the National Excellent Short Story Award in 1978; Fickleness won the Flying Horse Literature Award of the U.S. in 1988; Abandoned City won the Feminist Foreign Literature Award of France in 1997; Qinqiang won the 7th Maodun Literature Award in 2008. In April 2006, Jia Pingwa won the honorable title of the Outstanding Writer of the Year at the 4th Chinese Language Literature Ceremony.

  Jia Pingwa won three national literature awards, “Chinese Language Literature Award – Outstanding Writer of 2005”, Flying Horse Literature Award of the U.S., Feminist Literature, highest honor of France for foreign art and literature, and Dream of the Red Chamber Literature Award. His works were published in more than 20 languages such as English, French, German, Russian, Japanese, Korean and Vietnam.
  Winning of 7th Maodun Literature Award
  Prize-awarding words for long novel Qinqiang that wins the 7th Maodun Literature Award:
  Writing style of Jia Pingwa is both traditional and modernized, both realistic and far-sighted. Although his languages are simple and naïve, they raise storms in readers’ hearts. His work Qinqiang successfully narrates the truth situation of daily life and elaborates the conflicts and puzzles of changing China with his patriotic hearts. His heart-touching languages contain a kind of distress and behind his busy description is a kind of silence. When time passes by, all we can face is great silence only. Qinqiang is an outstanding work in contemporary novel creation and a vivid reflection of this era.
  Award winning speech of Jia Pingwa, winner of the 7th Maodun Literature Award
  It’s of great honor to be awarded the Maodun Literature Award in the hometown of Mr. Mao Dun. After knowing this news, I only said four words: the sky is bright! The weather was really good on that day, and so did my mind. I burned joss sticks for figure of Buddha in the house and portrait of my deceased parents. Then, I went to the street to have a bowl of mutton soaks. Among all my works, Qinqiang is the book that I want to write most and also the more painstaking one. When I started writing this book, I didn’t know fate of the book. However, it swore in front of tomb of my father that it will set up a memorial stele for the past of my home town. Now, Qinling was confirmed. I am happy for this and for my hometown. Thanks to the care of god of literature! Thanks to members of the appraisal committee! Winning an award likes meeting a bridge when facing a river or meeting a spring when feeling thirsty in the way of creation. There is still a long way ahead. I am fortunate to born in China and witness the great changes of China. The reality creates imagination for my creation. As a writer, I will make more efforts to write better work. Thank you!
  Comments on Jia Pingwa
  Jia Pingwa had been engaged in literature editing work for a couple of years, such as working as an editor of Shaanxi People’s Publication House. Now, he is a professional writer in Xi’an Art and Literature Union. His wife Han Junfang was also born in Lihua Town of Danfeng County. Their happy marriage is reflected in Jia Pingwa’s works. His daughter Qianqing is his deepest love. Jia Pingwa likes eating miscellaneous grains and wild vegetables and never ear meets. He also no special interests except for writing articles. Domestic and overseas persons in literature circle called him as “lone ranger” in literature circle of Mainland China. Contents of Jia Pingwa’s essays are rich and colorful. In terms of contents and tones, essays of Jia Pingwa can be divided into five categories: (1) emotion essay, which narrates special emotions, such as One Night at Dawadi; (2) scene essay, which describes all kinds of scenes, such as Story at Jingxu Village and Loess Plateau; (3) character essay, which mainly portraits a character, such as Fish and Turtle Catcher and In Mizhi; (4) informal essay, which talks about life and ways of the world, such as Diseases of People and Card-playing; (5) customs essay, which introduces customs of a place such as Notes about Snacks of Shaanxi and Plaything. Jia Pingwa makes great breakthrough in traditional essay writing method. His works include his special opinions on the society and the life, his personal emotions (loves or hates) or philosophies he thought suddenly. His frankness, easy-going and low-pitched writing style is one the tools for him to attract readers. In his works, Jia Pingwa’s patriotic hearts can be found easily. This is uncommon in today’s complicated society. Besides, Jia Pingwa’s pursuit for beauty can be seen clearly in his words. He not only likes enjoying the beauty by himself, but also wants to introduce the beauty appreciation way to the readers.
  Source: shaanxi.gov.cn
  Editor: Feng Hui

Happy Dreams

Publishers Weekly. 264.36 (Sept. 4, 2017): p61.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
* Happy Dreams
Jia Pingwa, trans, from the Chinese by Nicky
Harman. AmazonCrossing, $14.95 trade
paper (456p) ISBN 978-1-61109-742-9

Pingwa (I Am a Farmer), winner of the 2009 Mao Dun Literature Prize, again explores China's rapid industrialization, the prospects of rural workers, and the consequences of deepening class inequality in this optimistic yet heartbreaking tale of the life of Hawa "Happy" Liu. The novel follows Happy as he moves from his hometown of Freshwind to the bustling city of Xi'an to find both the man to whom he donated a kidney and the better life he believes he deserves. Along with best friend Wufu, he slowly integrates into the city, finding work first as a trash collector before moving on to other, less menial jobs. While Happy works hard to be mistaken for a native of the city and an educated man, Wufu misses his rural life and a world that made sense to him. Through Happy's adventures in the city, Pingwa introduces the reader to a China still reeling from its recent modernization; Happy studies the class divisions in his new urban environment almost like an anthropologist as he tries to achieve his lofty ambitions. Interwoven with references to China's tumultuous political history and rich artistic tradition, Pingwa's novel captures a nation undergoing change and brutally illustrates what that change might actually cost. (Oct.)
Caption: A laborer moves from China's countryside to the metropolis Xi'an in Happy Dreams. Jia Pirigwa's novel depicting the effects of industrialization.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Happy Dreams." Publishers Weekly, 4 Sept. 2017, p. 61. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A505468041/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=82c3f3c1. Accessed 17 May 2018.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A505468041

Pingwa, Jia: HAPPY DREAMS

Kirkus Reviews. (Aug. 15, 2017):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Pingwa, Jia HAPPY DREAMS AmazonCrossing (Adult Fiction) $14.95 10, 1 ISBN: 978-1-61109-742-9
Dreaming of success, hapless peasants move to the big city in Jia's newly translated 2007 novel.Liu, after optimistically changing his first name to "Happy," arrives in the booming metropolis of Xi'an, in central China, with his friend Wufu in tow. Both men are part of a vast wave of displaced rural Chinese who can no longer make a living farming small plots in their home villages. First-person narrator Liu has a particular reason for choosing Xi'an: he sold a kidney to raise money for a marriage that never happened, and he knows his organ went to a Xi'an man. He also keeps a pair of high heels as a souvenir of his dashed conjugal hopes. Once in Xi'an, Liu and Wufu run up against the harsh realities of income inequality. The only work they can get is scavenging garbage, and they move into a ramshackle tenement shared with fellow trash pickers. Scatological slapstick runs throughout this rambling, episodic, and largely plotless tale. The first chapter begins with a flash-forward: Liu lugs the dead Wufu on his back as he offers explanations to police. Consequently, the manner of Wufu's death is the main, if not the only, source of suspense. Many anecdotes illustrate the vagaries of culling and selling trash, a lucrative shadow enterprise existing alongside municipal waste management. References to obscure regional cuisine occasionally spice things up--noodle porridge, anyone? Liu's stated reason for moving to the city, finding his "alter-ego," the kidney recipient, is soon subsumed by his daily grind, until he encounters Mighty, an exemplar of China's growing entrepreneurial class. Liu's new love, Meng Yichun, who wears stilettos identical to his own, is a prostitute working out of a beauty salon on a street where all such salons are fronts for brothels. Although the characters suffer the socio-economic upheavals of contemporary China, they accept their plights and muddle through--this is not a novel of pointed political commentary.Easily digestible but bland.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Pingwa, Jia: HAPPY DREAMS." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Aug. 2017. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A500365002/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=d05594d2. Accessed 17 May 2018.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A500365002

Turbulence

Publishers Weekly. 238.39 (Aug. 30, 1991): p66.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 1991 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Winner of the 1991 Pegasus Prize, this ambitious novel depicts the struggles of Chinese peasants during the '80s, when the People's Republic began shifting toward a market economy. Along the Zhou River, in such places as the tiny village of Stream of Wandering Spirits and the larger Crossroads Township, the persistence of traditional superstitions and lack of modern conveniences make the setting seem closer to the 19th century than to the 21st. Add I Ching philosophy, Buddhist scripture and Communist Party teachings, all of which Jia adroitly weaves into his tale, and you come away with a fairly accurate picture of the beliefs and forces that motivate Golden Dog, the peasant protagonist of this novel. The plot, however, is fairly standard: one man against the corrupt system, represented by clans which dominate the Communist Party structure and use it for personal agrandizement and also by those peasants who manipulate the already shaky economy. It is Golden Dog's fate to walk a thin ethical line as he seeks to loosen the grip of the clans while simultaneously engaging in free enterprise under the auspices of the Party. Jia's strength lies in characterization. His serviceable prose, like the Zhou River itself, moves slowly, carrying the reader to an ending that is predestined and unremarkable. (Oct.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Turbulence." Publishers Weekly, 30 Aug. 1991, p. 66. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A11223784/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=4b29d46c. Accessed 17 May 2018.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A11223784

The Castle

Philip F. Williams
World Literature Today. 71.4 (Autumn 1997): p863.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 1997 University of Oklahoma
http://www.worldliteraturetoday.com
Full Text:
Along with his fellow regionalist writer Chen Zhongshi, Jia Pingwa (b. 1952) is living proof that Shaanxi province has given rise to a disproportionate amount of the finer recent literary chronicles of Chinese rural life. Although for most of two decades Jia Pingwa has lived in Xi'an, formerly the imperial seat of government and still the provincial capital, the great bulk of his fiction takes his native Qinling mountain region in rural southeastern Shaanxi as its setting. It was there that he grew up in an extended family where three aunts and uncles and all their children shared a residence with Jia Pingwa's parents and siblings.
Like West Hunan's Shen Congwen and southeastern Anhui's Wu Zuxiang a half-century earlier, Jia Pingwa spent little more than the first two decades of his life in the countryside before moving to a city, yet has continued to feature the home region he knows best in most of his fiction. The Castle (Gu bao, literally "The Ancient Fortress") is one of the ten well-received short novels Jia Pingwa wrote and published during 1985-86 under the general rubric of "Shangzhou Chronicles," a somewhat mythicized portrayal of the region known in ancient times as "Shangzhou" (now Shangxian). Though gritty socioeconomic realities pervade Jia Pingwa's literary portrayals of this impoverished upland locale, his interests in myth, symbol, and stymied heroism have imparted an epic quality to his novels that has attracted a large readership and inspired half a dozen films based on his fiction.
The Castle features the doomed struggle of a talented and industrious young nonofficial named Zhang Laoda, who strives to reopen an abandoned mine and enlist his fellow villagers in the extraction and marketing of the plentiful antimony ore. An imposing hilltop fortress built long ago as a refuge from marauding bandits looms ominously over both village and mine, while the furtive meanderings of deer through the fortress inspire fear among most of the superstitious locals.
Too busy to take such superstitions very seriously, Zhang works hard and lives frugally, earmarking almost all the mine's profits for reinvestment in equipment. Still, even though he becomes the major employer in the village and pays fair wages, most of the villagers envy him and are quick to jump to harsh conclusions whenever anything goes wrong. The local officials tend to be of little assistance to an entrepreneur like Zhang, and sometimes demand to be bribed for doing something within their normal line of duty. However, when Zhang goes over their heads to request some assistance from the county administrator, the villagers give this official all the credit for the mine's success and fail even to mention Zhang's contributions. The novel concludes with a series of reversals, including the burning of the castle in a natural disaster and Zhang's three-year prison-camp sentence for having been at the wheel during a traffic accident involving a fatality. In spite of Zhang's final success in having secured a crucial truck for the mining operation, the villagers appear to have abandoned the mind project and totally forgotten Zhang's leading role in it. Ironically, Zhang's contributions leave the deepest impression on a visiting urban film crew whose ways are exotic to the local villagers.
The Castle suggests that however impressive China's cultural inheritance may be in its embodiment of the old fortress, at another level it can destroy individual initiative and deny the achievements of both talented contemporaries like Zhang Laoda and famous ancient visionaries like Shang Yang (390?-338 BCE), the Legalist thinker and overlord of this very locale in Shaanxi who was cruelly executed on the flimsiest of pretexts after a distinguished career as a court advisor. Jia Pingwa admittedly presses poetic license very far when portraying a group of area Taoists as the locals who are singing the praises of a Legalist like Shang Yang, but the reader prepared to suspend disbelief can appreciate this episode on a purely mythic level.
The major problem with The Castle is the insufficient editing of the translation for errors in idiomatic English usage, such as finishing a drink "in one breath" instead of one draught and the omission of the verb were in "the flint crew . . . complained that the local people here too uncivilized." Shaanxi province is also erroneously typeset as "Shanxi," a different province altogether, and the lack of both a source for the translation as well as paragraph indenting within dialogues poses needless inconveniences to the reader. On the other hand, this translation still marks an improvement over some others of Jia Pingwa, and the quality of the novel and the importance of its author itself make The Castle a worthwhile read.
Philip F. Williams Arizona State University
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Williams, Philip F. "The Castle." World Literature Today, vol. 71, no. 4, 1997, p. 863. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A20417886/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=f39d8150. Accessed 17 May 2018.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A20417886

"Happy Dreams." Publishers Weekly, 4 Sept. 2017, p. 61. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A505468041/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=82c3f3c1. Accessed 17 May 2018. "Pingwa, Jia: HAPPY DREAMS." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Aug. 2017. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A500365002/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=d05594d2. Accessed 17 May 2018. "Turbulence." Publishers Weekly, 30 Aug. 1991, p. 66. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A11223784/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=4b29d46c. Accessed 17 May 2018. Williams, Philip F. "The Castle." World Literature Today, vol. 71, no. 4, 1997, p. 863. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A20417886/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=f39d8150. Accessed 17 May 2018.

• Asian review of Books
  http://asianreviewofbooks.com/content/happy-dreams-by-jia-pingwa/
  Word count: 1005

  Brian Haman 17 December 2017 Fiction, Reviews
  “Happy Dreams” by Jia Pingwa

  O
  n November 18th of this year, a blaze killed nineteen people in a textile manufacturing district of Beijing. Most of the victims were migrant workers, scores of whom continue to live peripheral lives in makeshift, pop-up neighborhoods on the outskirts of major cities across China. In response to the tragedy, the city government instituted a forty-day effort to demolish the capital’s “unsafe” buildings, the result of which has been mass evictions with tens of thousands of homeless migrant workers freezing in wintry Beijing temperatures. Described in official documents as the “low-end population”, these workers—battalions of couriers, cleaners, day laborers, trash collectors—provide the essential service jobs upon which Beijing’s more affluent residents rely.
  When read against this tragic backdrop of how the other half lives, Jia Pingwa’s recently translated novel Happy Dreams has assumed an unforeseen timeliness. Narrated by its central character, the migrant laborer-turned-trash picker Hawa “Happy” Liu, Happy Dreams recounts his arrival in Xi’an as a migrant in search of work, a wife to fill the pair of high heels that he carries with him, and the recipient of his donated kidney (who, he has been told, is from Xi’an). He is joined by his fellow Freshwind villager Wufu, whose death both opens and concludes the novel, and the two live and work together amidst the other denizens of Xi’an’s “low-end population.”
  Wufu’s earthy unpretentiousness marks him as a Sancho Panza-like character to the more quixotic Happy, and both eke out a hand-to-mouth existence collecting, selling, and recycling trash, variously bartering with locals, re-selling used medical waste, and laboriously unloading bags of concrete in order to supplement their meager incomes. In an apparent further nod to Cervantes, the reader learns that Happy’s love interest, whom he inwardly idolizes, is actually a prostitute. Insofar as there is a clearly-defined plot, it is episodic in nature, driven by the various schemes that Happy and Wufu concoct, the people that they encounter, and the places that they visit.

  Happy Dreams, Jia Pingwa, Nicky Harman (trans) (AmazonCrossing, October 2017)
  Nicky Harman’s free-flowing translation of Jia’s prose swiftly ferries the reader through the four hundred and fifty-page novel, capturing its Rabelaisian-like humor and colorful tableaus of migrant workers with their diverse personalities, aspirations, and shortcomings. Whereas recent news reports of migrant deaths in Beijing dehumanize through the banality of numbers, the imaginative richness of Jia’s fiction humanizes his characters and allows them to develop within specific contexts according to a variety of experiences. He endows Happy, for example, with an indomitable tendency towards a positive outlook (“Our life in the city, it’s like this shop window. If you’re angry, it’s angry too. If you smile, it smiles with you!”), and here one is reminded of the optimism of Voltaire’s Candide but without his folly. Jia’s eschewal of satire in favor of a neorealist insistence on imagining (and indeed imaginatively experiencing) the world through the eyes of others encourages us to consider how we relate to ourselves the world around us.
  And yet for all of the novel’s considerable humor, compelling character studies, and blending of literary and cultural traditions, dark waters remain. In its faceless indifference, the city proves unforgiving (“The city never considers our needs”). One migrant worker laments:

  I just can’t get my head around it. The city spends a billion on a park, millions on a concert in a stadium, and even more on this or that exhibition. But if they’ve got money to burn, why do they only spend it in the city? The villages get poorer and poorer, and we don’t have a cent to rub together!

  With onlookers below jeering “Jump! Go on, jump!”, another migrant worker protesting his unpaid wages plummets to his death from the roof of an eight-story building, the momentary spectacle of individual suffering amidst teeming plurality glimpsed and quickly forgotten. Empathy soon hardens into cynicism (“It was hard to do a good deed nowadays”) and resentment (“It’s true that those who earn don’t labor and those who labor don’t earn”). Even the middle class are not immune from the ill effects of their affluent, aspirational lifestyles, but suffer from the “Three Highs” (high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and diabetes). As one of them explains: “In the past, we were short on food. Now there’s no end of good things to eat, and we eat ourselves sick.” Excess and privation have always sat comfortably alongside one another.

  In his afterword, Jia notes that he wanted to write the novel in order to record the motivations among the rural poor for moving to China’s numerous noisy metropolises. Their journeys, stories of self-sacrifice, and seemingly inexhaustible reserves of endurance fill its pages, and Jia reminds us to pause and take notice:

  They’re as essential to our lives as breathing, and we don’t forget to breathe, do we? I’m constantly telling people we ought to be more grateful, yet what usually moves us are heroic acts of altruism and self-sacrifice. How have we managed to completely forget about the sun in the sky and clean water in the earth?

  In the destructive wake of the razing of entire Beijing migrant worker neighborhoods, these are necessary questions to remember and to ask, and Jia’s novel suggests that inventive and irreverent fiction can and often does have an important role to play in this process. As Happy reassures himself at one point, “Didn’t lotus flowers grow from mud?”

  Brian Haman is the Book Review Editor of The Shanghai Literary Review. A former Fulbright Scholar, he holds a PhD and an MA from the University of Warwick in the UK and splits his time between China and Europe.

• Washington Independent Review of Books
  http://www.washingtonindependentreviewofbooks.com/index.php/bookreview/happy-dreams-a-novel
  Word count: 961

  Happy Dreams: A Novel
  By Jia Pingwa; translated by Nicky Harman AmazonCrossing 492 pp.
  Reviewed by Clifford Garstang
  October 22, 2017
  A naive idealist hopes to make it in big-city China.

  Hawa Liu is a struggling peasant in rural China, where marriageable women are scarce. When a matchmaker tells Liu he needs money to find a wife, he sells blood. When he’s told he needs a house, he sells a kidney.
  In the end, though, he is unable to find the right woman and, like so many of his disaffected countrymen, Liu migrates to the big city to find work and some glimmer of hope. Arriving in Xi’an, he is so full of optimism that he decides he will henceforth be known as Happy Liu.
  Happy Dreams, a novel by Jia Pingwa and translated from Chinese by Nicky Harman, is Happy Liu’s story. It is also the story of modern China, where the flow of labor from rural to urban areas has continued unabated for decades and is arguably the largest such migration in history.
  Despite Liu’s aspirations, life for the migrant laborer is extraordinarily hard. He is exploited by employers and treated harshly by law enforcement. Living hand to mouth in unsanitary and unsafe housing, he works long, back-breaking hours and still barely scrapes by. But what choice does he have? In the novel, as in contemporary China, there are few options.
  Life in the city is very different from that of Liu’s home village of Freshwind, where everyone knows each other:
  “When you saw the hen with the tufted crest, you knew who it belonged to. And looking at the sow, her tail stuck out because she was about to crap, you knew where her house was too. And that old man carrying a grandchild on his shoulders, you knew perfectly well whether the grandchild was his daughter’s or his son’s…”
  In Xi’an, it’s easy to get turned around in an unfamiliar neighborhood, and the crowds are a sea of unrecognizable and unreliable faces: “Our feelings toward each other bound us together in Freshwind, but only law or money bought trust in Xi’an,” Liu reflects.
  We first encounter Liu as he’s being arrested by a Xi’an policeman for attempting to enter the train station with a corpse. As it turns out, the dead man is Wufu, Liu’s friend and sidekick from his home village, with whom he’d come to Xi’an to find work. Having promised his friend to take him home if he should die, Liu is only trying to do the right thing.
  In flashbacks, the novel then recounts the adventures of the friends: how they came to the city, found jobs as trash-pickers and homes in neighboring hovels, and struggled together to feed themselves, as well as how Wufu died.
  Both Liu and Wufu are charmers. Wufu is a crude simpleton, dependent on his younger, smarter friend for guidance as they navigate the city’s many obstacles for migrants. He has a wife and three sons back home and saves most of the pittance he makes to supplement what his family can earn from their meager plot of land in Freshwind.
  Liu, though wiser and more educated than his friend, is just as naïve. He is too trusting of nearly everyone as he attempts to become a “Xi’an man.” He believes that this is his destiny; that through hard work and careful planning, he will rise up and become a respected businessman like the well-dressed men he sees on the streets of Xi’an.
  Liu has other dreams, as well: He hopes to find a wife. He even believes he has found his match in Yichun, another migrant who, it turns out, has her own struggles in the big city. When he hears her hard-luck story, Liu is eager to use his savings to bail her out. What are his dreams good for if he can’t help the woman he loves? He also hopes to find the recipient of his transplanted kidney, with whom he feels a spiritual kinship. He knows nothing about the man but is sure he will recognize him when they eventually meet.
  The Chinese version of the novel is simply entitled Happy. The English title, though, suits the novel well. Liu’s dreams, while happy, may be somewhat unrealistic. Is the author making a prediction about China’s future? Could it be that the rapid economic development that has left so many behind is doomed to create a permanently disaffected class? If Liu fails in his dream of becoming a Xi’an man, is there any hope for the rest of China’s migrants?
  The China depicted in Happy Dreams is not one that will be familiar to Western tourists who are typically shielded from the country’s underside. Xi’an is known for its terracotta warriors, after all, not for the small army of men and women who scavenge trash from every corner of the city. Those with more than a superficial knowledge of the country, however, will recognize the novel’s brutal honesty.
  Clifford Garstang is author of the novel in stories, What the Zhang Boys Know, winner of the Library of Virginia Literary Award for Fiction, and a story collection, In an Uncharted Country. He is also the editor of Everywhere Stories: Short Fiction from a Small Planet, Volumes I and II, anthologies of stories set around the world. In his former capacity as senior counsel for East Asia at the World Bank, he was responsible for numerous poverty alleviation projects in China.

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