Taipei People

Name: Taipei People
ISBN: 9787563397648

Pai Hsien-yungGuangxi Normal University Press · ChinaDec 2021

4.6

Word count: 138K words
Chapters: 21
ISBN: 9787563397648

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Summary

One of the Top 100 Chinese Novels of the 20th Century, Taipei People is a short-story collection of considerable complexity: fourteen first-rate stories that, read as a whole, greatly increase their effect. The canvas widens to show society's many faces, and recurring themes that echo and support one another deepen our understanding and reveal the author's view of life and the universe. Its characters span every level of Taipei urban society—from the upright old general Piao in 'The Dirge of Liang Fu' to the retired maidservant Shun-en in 'Rhapsody on Old Friends,' from Madame Tou of high society in 'Wandering in the Garden, Waking from a Dream' to the 'commander' of the low life in 'Love's Lone Flower'; intellectuals, shopkeepers, servants, soldiers, a famous socialite, a low-class dance hostess. Great, middling and small figures alike come from different provinces and cities of the mainland—Shanghai, Nanking, Szechwan, Hunan, Kweilin, Peiping—rich and poor, in all walks of life, yet each carries a heavy, unbreakable past, a memory bound more or less directly to the troubled era from the founding of the Republic of China to the fall of the mainland.

Editor's review

Taipei People is made up of fourteen short stories that echo one another, reading like a set of portraits in shifting light and shadow. Pai Hsien-yung's prose is unhurried and restrained, deft at using details such as dress, opera, food, and accent to convey what his characters leave unsaid; the narrative perspective shifts flexibly, moving between memory and the present, so that the reader feels both the lingering warmth of former days and the chill of fate's unpredictability. Its value lies not in startling plot but in its compassion for human feeling: generals, professors, businessmen, dance hostesses, servants—all are rendered vividly and movingly. It suits slow reading in quiet, unhurried stretches, and also serves as a text for studying the modern Chinese short story, to be revisited for its structure, its use of silence, and its compassion.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers who enjoy modern Chinese short stories and value prose and structure
Those interested in themes of nostalgia and memory amid changing times
University students of Chinese literature and scholars of modern and contemporary literature
Readers who wish to experience human warmth and historical resonance through group portraits

Not a good fit for

Readers who prefer plot-driven, fast-paced genre fiction
Those hoping to learn the detailed causes and consequences of specific historical events through fiction
Readers impatient with narratives that rotate among many characters and scatter their threads
Readers expecting light, healing stories with clear resolutions

Reading tips

Read through once, then regroup the fourteen stories by character type or theme and read them in comparison.
Note details such as qipao, opera, food, and dialect, which often hint at a character's circumstances.
Pause after every two or three stories and note recurring images and narrative perspectives.
For course use, read alongside analysis of point of view, time, and silence in the short story.

About the publisher

Guangxi Normal University Press China · Founded in 1986

Guangxi Normal University Press is a publisher known for literature, foreign literature and history titles. Its 1,175 books in the database show a solid accumulation in classics and prose collections, including foreign literary works such as Les Fleurs du mal: Annotated Poems of Baudelaire, Snow Country, Dubliners and The Wild Palms, as well as modern prose compilations like The Complete Prose of Zhou Zuoren. History and philosophy also hold a notable share, with titles such as Running Dogs: Clerks and Runners in Qing County Yamen and The History and Thought of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom reflecting attention to Qing local administration and modern history. In art literature there is the 16-volume Ten Bamboo Studio Painting and Calligraphy Manual. Its author resources include foreign writers Charles Baudelaire and Yasunari Kawabata, translators and annotators Liu Nanqi and Zou Bo, and scholars such as Zhong Shuhe, Bradly W. Reed and You Chenjun. As public information is limited, this characterization is based only on the books in the database, which together present a profile balancing Chinese and foreign literary classics with academic works in the humanities and social sciences.

版权信息
牡丹因缘
永远的尹雪艳
一把青
岁除
金大班的最后一夜
那片血一般红的杜鹃花
思旧赋
梁父吟
孤恋花
花桥荣记
秋思
满天里亮晶晶的星星
游园惊梦
冬夜
国葬
附录
白先勇的小说世界
世纪性的文化乡愁
世界性的口语
翻译苦、翻译乐

FAQ

Is Taipei People a novel or a short-story collection?

It is a short-story collection made up of fourteen relatively independent yet mutually echoing stories. The characters and situations differ, but theme, imagery, and emotional tone reflect one another; read together, the overall portrait structure and the author's observation of human affairs become clearer.

Can I understand it without relevant historical background?

Yes. The work centers on characters' circumstances and emotions rather than on laying out historical events. Even readers unfamiliar with the specific background can feel the weight of displacement, loss, and memory through the details; some general knowledge of the era will deepen the understanding.

Is it meant to be read in one sitting?

Not necessarily. Fourteen stories is a substantial amount, and reading them back to back can blur characters and moods together. Reading in several sessions, two or three stories at a time, with a short pause to look back at the echoes between stories, actually brings out the structural care more clearly.

Why is it worth rereading?

Much of its meaning is hidden in details and silences. On a first reading one is often carried along by the story; on rereading one notices the arrangement of imagery, perspective, and pace. Read at different ages, one's sense of the characters' choices and fates also changes, so it is a book to keep at hand and return to over time.

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About the author

Pai Hsien-yung Author · Taiwan, China · 1937

Pai Hsien-yung was born in Guilin, Guangxi, in 1937. He is of Hui ethnicity and the son of the Kuomintang general Bai Chongxi. After graduating from the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature at National Taiwan University, he went to the United States and received an MFA in creative writing from the University of Iowa. He taught for many years at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and retired in 1994. His fiction and essays, notably Taipei People, Crystal Boys, and The Lost Youth, often draw on individual fates amid historical change and on the lives of marginalized groups. His style is delicate and restrained, combining a sense of era with human depth. Beyond fiction, he has long devoted himself to promoting and explaining Dream of the Red Chamber and to the young-lovers' edition of The Peony Pavilion. The collection includes thirteen of his works, spanning social fiction, literary appreciation, essays, and biography, showing a writing life that crosses fiction and commentary and remains concerned with cultural inheritance and human destiny.