The Sent-Down Girl

The Sent-Down Girl is a self-selected collection of novellas and short stories by Yan Geling, first published in the 1990s and reissued in 2014 by Tianjin People's Publishing House (Guomi Culture). It gathers seven works: "The Sent-Down Girl," "The Impersonator," "Judging Ugliness," "The Reversing River," "Death of a Second Lieutenant," "The Old Prisoner," and "A Faithful Dog Named Keren." Most are set against Chinese society before and after the Cultural Revolution. The title story, "The Sent-Down Girl," is one of Yan's best-known short works. Wenxiu, a sent-down girl from Chengdu, is assigned to a plateau army horse ranch, where she tends horses alongside an older Tibetan herder, Lao Jin, sharing a tent with him. Lao Jin digs her a pool and heats a patch of water for her "sky bath"; but when word arrives that sent-down youths may return to the city, Wenxiu—without connections or backing—can only trade her body for a permit to go back to Chengdu. After repeated disappointments, she asks Lao Jin to grant her a final release. In spare, minimal prose, the story sets a girl's purity against the world's filth, turning "water" and "bathing" into symbols that run through the whole piece. The other stories share similar themes but differ in method: "The Impersonator" shows how an actor elevated to a pedestal is swallowed by his role; "Judging Ugliness" uses a fine-arts academy's nude model to depict the dignity of an old man from the lower classes and the betrayal of family love; "The Reversing River" portrays a love that cannot bridge civilization and wilderness; "Death of a Second Lieutenant," "The Old Prisoner," and "A Faithful Dog Named Keren" present, respectively through the eyes of a soldier, a prisoner, and a dog, the fate of individuals crushed in an extraordinary era. The book is short, yet nearly every story carries a cold, clear-eyed compassion.