A Record of Returning Home

Name: A Record of Returning Home
ISBN: 9787559845221

江子Guangxi Normal University Press · ChinaMar 2022

4.0

Word count: 148K words
Chapters: 19
ISBN: 9787559845221

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Summary

The author Jiang Zi was born west of the Gan River and has previously published a rural-themed monograph, The Fields Are Overgrown with Weeds, which drew considerable attention; this book, Notes on Returning Home, is its sequel.

Notes on Returning Home takes the history and present reality of the region west of the Gan River in Jishui as its subject, conducting comprehensive fieldwork on farmers moving to cities, the survival of tradition, foreign lands and hometowns, departure and return, and the responsibilities and fate of new rural notables, in order to present a holographic picture of the history and reality of a classic rural locality and to leave a testimony to rural China today.

China is now in a period of great change unprecedented in three thousand years, and the transformation of the countryside is its hallmark. Jiangxi is the most representative province of agricultural civilization; by writing about the continuities and changes of Jiangxi's countryside at this new historical juncture, one can decode contemporary China.

Editor's review

Jiang Zi's Hui Xiang Ji is a quiet yet powerful work of nonfiction. It records not only the changes in a village by the Gan River but also the spiritual pulse of Chinese rural society beneath the great wheel of the times. From the perspective of a wanderer returning home, the author uses a calm and restrained brush to dissect the rural fabric one layer at a time—clan, livelihood, ethics, seasonal phenology—presenting a hometown both familiar and strange. As a representative writer of the post-1970 generation, Jiang Zi's writing combines a journalist's acuity with an essayist's deep feeling. His rural narrative does not indulge in pastoral nostalgia but confronts the pains and resilience of transformation. The value of this book lies not only in its significance as a sociological sample but also in the emotional path it offers for understanding contemporary China—the individual fates swept along by urbanization, the rural ethics struggling between disappearance and rebirth, all gain concrete expression between the lines. Reading Hui Xiang Ji is like listening to a polyphonic rural symphony, with sighs, clamor, and a faint yet persistent hope.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Researchers and observers interested in the changes and transformation of Chinese rural society
Readers who love nonfiction and seek textual depth and documentary beauty
Urban migrants caught in urbanization who hold complex feelings toward their hometowns
Urban readers who wish to understand the reality of contemporary rural China beyond stereotypes

Not a good fit for

Readers seeking light entertainment or strongly plotted fiction
Readers completely unfamiliar with rural issues and without basic interest in them

Reading tips

It is recommended to read this book alongside nonfiction rural works such as China in Liangzhuang and Out of Liangzhuang to build a more three-dimensional picture
While reading, pay attention to the trajectories of specific figures (such as craftsmen, village officials, and migrant workers), for they are footnotes to the era
You may combine it with the "Phenology Notes" section at the end of the book to appreciate how the author links the emotional memory of the land through writing about natural seasons

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
这人间如此让人悲欣交集（自序）
第一辑出走
练武记
行医记
购房记
怀罪的人
不系之舟
临渊记
第二辑返回
磨盘洲
杨家岭的树
回乡记
建房记
第三辑他乡
高考记
三叔家的狗
指上的航行
明月此时（代后记）

FAQ

Is this book a novel or a work of documentary writing?

Hui Xiang Ji is a work of literary nonfiction. Based on long-term observation and visits to a village in the Gan River basin of Jiangxi Province, his hometown, the author Jiang Zi writes literary documentary prose grounded in real people and events.

What are the distinguishing features of this book compared with similar rural-themed works?

The book's distinguishing feature is its combination of local embeddedness and literariness. As a son of the soil, the author's observation combines the delicacy of an internal perspective with the scrutiny of an external one. In language, it goes beyond a mere survey report and possesses a strong essayistic beauty and speculative quality, offering deep distillation of rural ethics and seasonal human relations.

Is this book suitable as an introductory reader for understanding contemporary rural China?

It is an excellent in-depth reader but not a panoramic introductory guide. It focuses more on using the slice of one specific village to present the spiritual threads and glimmers of human nature amid social transformation. Readers who already have some background knowledge or are willing to think deeply will gain more from it.

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About the author

江子 Author

Jiang Zi is an author in the Chinese book database about whom limited public information is available. Three works can currently be confirmed: The Blue-and-White Empire, A Record of Returning Home, and Going to Nyingchi to See Peach Blossoms. Judging by the common categories, the writing falls into cultural writing and prose miscellany; thematically it includes writing on the history and craft culture carried by blue-and-white porcelain, as well as prose centered on returning home and travel impressions. Overall, Jiang Zi's writing tends to take concrete objects and local experience as entry points, moving between everyday observation and cultural narrative in a plain style attentive to detail, often using objects, hometown, and travel as threads to present personal feeling and cultural reflection. Because public information is limited, details such as birth and death years, nationality, education, and creative experience cannot be confirmed; the present introduction can only sketch the thematic orientation and writing style on the basis of the works recorded in the database.