The Orient

The Orient is a monumental novel by Wei Wei. First published by People's Literature Publishing House in September 1978, it won the inaugural Mao Dun Literature Prize in 1982 and was selected in 2019 for the "70 Novels in 70 Years of New China" collection. The author conducted on-the-ground interviews on the Korean battlefield in 1950 and made repeated extended stays in rural central Hebei; the accumulation and writing spanned more than twenty years before the work was complete. The novel takes the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea as its main subject and adopts a structure that advances two storylines simultaneously. One line follows the front: centered on Guo Xiang, a company commander in the People's Volunteers, it shows him returning early to his unit after learning of the Incheon landing during a home visit, entering Korea with his troops, and living through the Kusong blocking action, the First and Second Campaigns, and the battle of Heiyun Ridge. It traces his emotional and moral entanglements with the medic Yang Xue and the battalion commander Lu Xirong, and the growth of a group of soldiers including regimental commander Deng Jun and the mischievous Wang Dafa. The other line follows the rear, in Fenghuangbao village on the central Hebei plain, depicting class divisions in the countryside after land reform, the villagers' hesitations, and the trial establishment of agricultural cooperatives. Front and rear echo each other, combining a war and the social transformation of a newborn nation into a single complete panorama. The book has a large cast and a steady hand; Ding Ling called it "an epic novel." Readers encounter both the ferocity of battle and the spiritual character of the Volunteers, and the concrete details of rural China at a turning point in history.