Winter Swimming

Winter Swimming is the first short-story collection by the Shenyang writer Ban Yu and one of the works most often cited in discussions of the "Northeast Renaissance." It contains seven stories: "Panjin Leopard," "Deadly Chill," "Winter Swimming," "Road in the Air," "Trapezoid Sunset," "Workers' Village," and "Gun Grave." The stories take place mostly among railway tracks, factory buildings, bachelor dormitories, and snow-covered streets: printing-plant workers, crane operators, hapless gamblers, the unemployed, and young people waiting for work get by in Shenyang after the reform of state-owned enterprises. They speak little, and their movements carry a restraint polished into them by life—awkward, passive, yet still holding on to dignity; in the extreme cold of the north, they seem always to keep a bit of light and heat inside that refuses to go out. Ban Yu's language is clean and hard-edged, and often a layer of poetry surfaces between the lines of narration. He writes about the decline of an industrial city without turning it into an accusatory melodrama; he writes his characters' humor without making it cheap comedy. Dialect feel, period detail, and narrative omission interlock, so that these seven stories can be read both as concrete slices of life and as a memorandum of the old Northeast, of a lost generation. After publication the book received attention including the Short Story Award at the 19th Hundred Flowers Literature Awards, and many readers regard it as an entry point for understanding "Northeast writing."