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  • Published: 15 August 2016
  • ISBN: 9780143782872
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 149

The Kitchen

And Other Stories: China Library



Five stories from China’s foremost writers, including Jia Pingwa, Liu Zhenyun and Chi Zhijian, capture the domestic bonds and dramas of people living in modern China today, exploring the challenges and strange graces of life in this vast and complex land.

Chi-Tzu daydreams of home-cooked meals surrounded by family and more while diligently navigating Sun-Tze's bachelor kitchen; a young ex-soldier attempts to escape his prescribed rural life by sitting the national college entrance exam; Qin Shan and his wife grapple with illness, love and loss amidst their precious potato plants; two estranged sisters reflect on memories of a long-lost bond; Liben and Shunshun’s fortunes ebb and flow on the shores of Backflow River, where everyone crosses to make it big somewhere else.

Five stories from China’s foremost writers, including Jia Pingwa, Liu Zhenyun and Chi Zhijian, capture the domestic bonds and dramas of people living in modern China today, exploring the challenges and strange graces of life in this vast and complex land.

  • Published: 15 August 2016
  • ISBN: 9780143782872
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 149

About the authors

Chi Zijian

Chi Zijian was born in Mohe in 1964. She started writing while at school and had her first story published in Northern Literature magazine when she was at college. She is the only writer to have won the Lu Xun Literary Award three times. The Last Quarter of the Moon also won the Mao Dun Literary Award.

Her work has been translated into many languages.