A Record of Leaving the Village
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Summary
Editor's review
The reading value of this book lies first in its solid "local" writing. The author's depictions of farming seasons, food and daily life, and dialect and folk sayings in the Guanzhong countryside are meticulous, offering readers a highly textured gazetteer of northern rural life. Second, it transcends simple nostalgia and homesickness to touch on deeper questions: as traditional clan structures gradually disintegrate in the process of modernization, and as generation after generation bears the mission of "leaving the village," where will individual identity, emotional bonds, and spiritual homeland belong? The accounts of the fates of Father, Mother, Sixth Grandfather, and others are both elegies of individual lives and microcosms of the entire agrarian civilization's transformation.
As an editor, I believe the book's distinctiveness lies in its narrative stance—it neither romanticizes nor miserabilizes the countryside, but with the patience and honesty of anthropological fieldwork records ways of life and structures of feeling that are disappearing. This recording is itself a cultural effort to resist forgetting. For contemporary readers, reading this book is both a tracing of "where we come from" and a meditation on "where we are going." The writing is plain yet tense; the emotion is restrained yet turbulent beneath the surface, requiring the reader's quiet attention.
Who it's for
A good fit for
- Readers interested in rural social change and folk culture in northern China
- Readers of non-fiction who value historical texture and humanistic depth in texts
- People caught up in urbanization who reflect on and feel uncertain about hometown, family, and identity
- Literary creators or researchers who wish to learn how to transform personal memory into public narrative
Not a good fit for
- Fiction readers seeking strong plot and fast-paced storytelling
- Readers completely unfamiliar with rural themes and without basic interest in them
Reading tips
- Reading in chapter order is recommended to better feel the temporal thread and emotional accumulation
- While reading, consider the macro background of China's social transformation in recent decades and reflect on the fates of micro-level individuals
- Pay attention to descriptions of specific objects and practices (such as farm tools, food, and rituals); they are keys to understanding the cultural code
About the publisher
Founded in December 1984 and based in Taiyuan, Shanxi Province, Beiyue Literature & Art Publishing House specializes in literary and artistic books. It publishes Chinese and foreign literary classics, works of literary theory and criticism, children's literature, and outstanding classical literary works, and it runs the large literary journal Masterpieces Appreciation. Judging from the seventy titles in the database, its publishing focuses on foreign literature, essays and miscellaneous writings, social novels, and folk literature. Representative books include Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure in a translation by Liu Rongyue, along with essay and fiction titles such as The City's Warmth on Your Face, If You Are Sunshine, Brightness Comes Naturally, Flower Ashes, and The Last Photo Album. Authors represented include Wang Shujun, Zhang Xinrui, Zhang Dongjiao, Zhang Liepeng, Zhijian, and Ruofei. As public information is limited, its full series system and publishing characteristics remain to be further documented.
Contents
- 版权信息
- 序 日暮乡关何处是
- 地理上的故乡
- 一
- 二
- 三
- 四
- 五
- 六
- 七
- 八
- 九
- 十
- 十一
- 十二
- 十三
- 十四
- 十五
- 十六
- 一个村庄的疼痛
- 病是一种钻心的痛
- 上门女婿的“乡村爱情”
- 难以抹去的痛楚
- 年轻男女的“急速”爱情
- 那个畸形的计划生育时代
- 自杀是不是一种解脱
- 守护乡村学校的孤寡老人
- 踩在城市的门槛上
- 城中村的凉皮黑作坊
- 渴望温暖和婚姻忠诚的女人
- 其实我的家在西安城
- 父母离乡记
- 一
- 二
- 三
- 四
- 五
- 六
- 七
- 八
- 九
- 十
- 无法安放的村庄
- 石匠
- 秀秀
- 乡土里的矮墙
- 赶了一个集
- 庄稼是村庄最好的事物
- 喊一声大地 我热泪盈眶
- 那些有名字的土地
- 最后的一只狗
- 曾经的麦客
- 后记 故乡沉沦
FAQ
Is this book a novel or documentary literature?
How does Chu Cunzhuang Ji differ from works like Liang Hong's China in Liangzhuang?
Will the book's strong regional character make it hard to understand?
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About the author
Shi Pengzhao is an author whose publicly available information is limited. His writing focuses chiefly on essays and miscellaneous works and on documentary literature, with some involvement in social fiction. He has published four works, including Letters Between Friends: Correspondence of Ding Cong, Xiao Qian, Mao Dun and Others with Huang Wu; The Glory of Literature: Correspondence Between Chen Zhongshi, Jia Pingwa, Zou Zhian and Li He; The Great Nation and the Small Village; and Notes on Leaving the Village. In terms of subject matter, he on the one hand traces the exchange of letters among modern literary figures, using original correspondence to present friendships within literary circles and the atmosphere of the times; on the other hand he grounds his work in rural society, attending to the situation of villages amid historical change and to the fate of ordinary people. His writing tends toward a plain, restrained documentary style, often drawing on historical sources and personal observation to link individual memory with broader social processes, thus forming a fairly clear direction between the essay and documentary writing and giving several of his works documentary value and real-world concern.
