China in One Village

After a decade away from her ancestral family village, during which she became a writer and literary scholar in Beijing, Liang Hong started visiting her rural hometown in landlocked Hebei province. What she found was an extended family torn apart by the seismic changes in Chinese society, and a village hollowed-out by emigration, neglect, and environmental despoliation. Combining family memoir, literary observation, and social commentary, Liang’s by turns moving and shocking account became a bestselling book in China and brought her fame.Across China, many saw in Liang’s remarkable and vivid interviews with family members and childhood acquaintances a mirror of their own families, and her observations about the way the greatest rural-to-urban migration of modern times has twisted the country resonated deeply. China in One Village tells the story of contemporary China through one clear-eyed observer, one family, and one village.

“"In an essayistic voice of great grace, we are shown a most shocking and distressing Chinese reality. Amid the cruelty of a collapsing rural village, we feel the encroachment of the city, and of desire. This is an uncommonly beautiful work of field research; reportage of a different order; a theoretical window that provides penetrating insight into the country. Here one may lay a finger on the heart of China, on the heart of literature." --Yan Lianke, author of Three Brothers "Liang Hong is an author with 'wide-open senses.' She captures detail the way a musician might know an instrument's timbre from the briefest snatch of music. As she enters into daily life, she is able to capture the slightest details, to isolate and record them." --Jia Zhangke, director of Ash Is Purest White " China in One Village is a post-socialist version of The Return of the Native . It chronicles the changes and continuities, and hopes and despairs, of rural Chinese society as it weathers the challenges of the market economy, a disenfranchised social structure, and monolithic politics. Liang Hong has provided a compelling portrait of grassroots China today: its sadness, its resilience, its haunting memories, and its contested prospects." --David Der-Wei Wang, author of Why Fiction Matters in Contemporary China”

An engaging read, with lively first-person narratives . it is in these stories that the universality of people's hopes, fears and frustrations really shines through. New Internationalist
A lucid, accessible account of rural Chinese life, its stories worth far more than the statistics usually invoked in accounts of the pro­found change that has swept China. -- Jonathan Chatwin South China Morning Post
A true literary sensation ... [Liang] pulls no punches. -- Ian Johnson New York Times
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
Overburdened grandparents, children who don't see their parents, workers straining to make a living in unwelcoming cities: Liang Hong's book, "China in One Village" (tr. Emily Goedde), gives a platform for these voices from the countryside. -- Mike Cormack SupChina
The immediacy of China in One Village brings to life how China is changing in a way that more academic works cannot do. rs21
Fair-minded and sanguine ... one of the clearest narrative accounts of China's countryside available in English. -- Amy Hawkins Times Literary Supplement

Liang Hong is a Professor of Chinese literature at Renmin University in Beijing. She is the author of numerous books including Leaving Liang Village and a a collection of short stories and a novel.

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