Search results for ""author jia pingwa""

Morning brings new and old faces to Hai Ruo’s teashop. The premium leaves she sells to Xijing’s high society keep the doors open, however it’s her Sisterhood – a dozen glamorous confidants who visit daily to share tales of love, loss and professional success – that really keeps the shop running.From a returning Russian expat to a hotpot tycoon, they epitomise the new possibilities of this ancient metropolis. The group's rise in business and society is sometimes helped by Yi Guang, a noted writer with his own artistic demons. But with every deal struck and official bribed, a debt accumulates, jeopardising a hard-won but brittle autonomy.The gates of Hai’s establishment help keep the choking smog of the city at bay, and inside she provides a sanctuary for the friends to express their true selves. If only the tea leaves held all the answers. Instead, it’s up to the sisters to discover how far their bonds will really hold.

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The Sisterhood meets every morning in Hai Ruo's teashop to discuss life, love, careers and everything that gets in the way of happiness. Hai Ruo strives to keep the sisterhood together and seeks spiritual intervention to provide answers, but the cracks grow wider as pressure closes in.

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In a cave high in the ageless mountains of China’s desolate interior, an ancient funeral singer awaits the end. From his deathbed he gives voice to the generations of villagers to whom he devoted his life’s work, and four all-too-human souls whose struggles defined an era.A soldier, a peasant, a revolutionary and a politician. When revolt and reform take hold of the wartorn plains, all play their debased roles in the mythic cycle of avarice, vengeance and suffering.As his four tragedies interweave, the cracked lips of the dying sage conjure a stark vision: a retelling of the forging of the People’s Republic – from turbulent birth to absurd reversal – whispered from its uncharted margins.

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In a cave high in the ageless mountains of China's desolate interior, an ancient funeral singer awaits the end. From his deathbed he gives voice to the generations of villagers to whom he devoted his life's work, and four all-too-human souls whose struggles defined an era. A soldier, a peasant, a revolutionary and a politician. When revolt and reform take hold of the wartorn plains, all play their debased roles in the mythic cycle of avarice, vengeance and suffering. As his four tragedies interweave, the cracked lips of the dying sage conjure a stark vision: a retelling of the forging of the People's Republic from turbulent birth to absurd reversal whispered from its uncharted margins.

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Despite her humble rural beginnings, Butterfly regards herself as a sophisticated young woman. So, when offered a lucrative job in the city, she jumps at the chance.But instead of being given work, she is trafficked and sold to Bright Black, a desperate man from a poor mountain village.Trapped in Bright’s cave home with her new “husband”, she plans her escape… not so easily done in this isolated and remote village where she is watched day and night.Will her tenacity and free spirit survive, or will she be broken?

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From one of China's foremost authors, Jia Pingwa's Happy Dreams is a powerful depiction of life in industrializing contemporary China, in all its humor and pathos, as seen through the eyes of Happy Liu, a charming and clever rural laborer who leaves his home for the gritty, harsh streets of Xi'an in search of better life. After a disastrous end to a relationship, Hawa "Happy" Liu embarks on a quest to find the recipient of his donated kidney and a life that lives up to his self-given moniker. Traveling from his rural home in Freshwind to the city of Xi'an, Happy brings only an eternally positive attitude, his devoted best friend Wufu, and a pair of high-heeled women's shoes he hopes to fill with the love of his life. In Xi'an, Happy and Wufu find jobs as trash pickers sorting through the city's filth, but Happy refuses to be deterred by inauspicious beginnings. In his eyes, dusty birds become phoenixes, the streets become rivers, and life is what you make of it. When he meets the beautiful Yichun, he imagines she is the one to fill the shoes and his Cinderella-esque dream. But when the harsh city conditions and the crush of societal inequalities take the life of his friend and shake Happy to his soul, he'll need more than just his unrelenting optimism to hold on to the belief that something better is possible.

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Winner of the Mao Dun Literature Prize. From one of China’s most celebrated authors comes a masterful novel about modernity and tradition, love and obsession, and economic change and quixotic dreams—all set against the backdrop of a rapidly urbanizing China. In post–Cultural Revolution China, in the fading village of Freshwind, the fates of two households are shifting. The Bais, once the most powerful family in the region, have fallen from status. Their beautiful daughter, Snow Bai, an embodiment of tradition, pursues a career in a vanishing art form. The Xias, enthusiastic members of the Party, are on the rise. Their favorite son, Wind Xia, is a citified politician whose marriage to Snow Bai could unite the two families. But in a village casting about for a new road to prosperity, fortunes can change. Watching it all unfold is a local outcast named Spark. The inveterate busybody is given to strange visions and flights of fancy, and is motivated by the only constant in Freshwind: his mad love for Snow Bai. Expansive, funny, monumental, and deeply poignant, Jia Pingwa’s The Shaanxi Opera is a keenly observant portrait of China in an era of globalization, societal upheaval, and the growing influence of popular culture.

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