The people of Yanjin know to always have a few jokes on hand.
For three thousand years, they have been terrorised by Hua Erniang, a forsaken spirit that rules over their dreams. Failing to amuse this supernatural guest means not waking up at all, crushed by her jilted heart which has calcified into a mountain.
Growing up inside a town adapting to socialist ideals, Mingliang’s life is beset with hardship and adversity that leaves his family in tatters. Seeking fortune elsewhere, he heads west across China's vast central plain, encountering nothing but restless souls mortgaged to debts from former lives, each unwilling to move on for their own reasons.
No matter how many times you try to start afresh, you can only run so far from a broken home. Some wounds take more than a lifetime to heal, but in the meantime, a few wisecracks tucked into the back pocket won’t hurt.
Liu Zhenyun is an author of novels and short stories, winning many awards including the prestigious Mao Dun Literature Prize. His works have been translated into 23 languages, and in 2018, he was honoured with France’s Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters for his contributions to world literature. A number of his novels have been adapted into films, for which Liu himself wrote the screenplays.
Howard Goldblatt is the translator of more than fifty works in Chinese, including the novels of Nobel laureate Mo Yan, for which he received a Guggenheim Fellowship. A former academic, his translations have won two Man Asia Literary Prizes. He has received two grants from the National Endowment of the Arts.
Sylvia Li-chun Lin is an award-winning translator and writer. She has translated short stories and novels from Taiwan, Hong Kong and China. A former professor at the University of Notre Dame, she is the recipient of a translation grant from the National Endowment of the Arts.