The Broken Marriage

老兵Jun 2025

2.8

Word count: 163K words
Chapters: 68

Summary

This collection includes six novellas: Yi Bing Yi Bing, Marital Breakdown, Calamity, The UN Official Who Came Out of the Countryside, Brothers, Oh Brothers, and The Late Marriage Quota.

Editor's review

This is a collection of six novellas with a wide range of subject matter, from the historical retrospect of Yi Bing Yi Bing to the examination of marriage and family relationships in Marital Breakdown and The Late Marriage Quota, and to narratives of personal striving and changing times such as The UN Official Who Came Out of the Countryside. Overall, it shows the author's dual attention to real life and historical memory. The novella length is moderate, allowing each story to develop its characters' fates relatively fully, and readers can feel the shifts in subject and mood across the different pieces. For readers who like to gain a complete narrative experience within a short length, this book offers a rich selection; the six stories are independent, making it suitable for reading in fragments of time. It should be noted that due to limited information, readers will need to judge the specific plot development and language style for themselves, but in terms of the selection of pieces, it is better suited to readers who prefer realistic subjects and care about marriage, family, and the fates of rural characters.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers who enjoy novellas and hope to read several independent stories at once
Adult readers concerned with marriage and family relationships and realistic fiction
Readers interested in narratives about rural characters' fates and changing times
People accustomed to reading fiction in installments during commutes or other fragments of time

Not a good fit for

Readers who prefer long continuous narratives and want to follow a single main storyline to the end
Those who only like light, sweet romance or fantasy and have little interest in realistic style
Younger readers with little reading experience of marriage and family issues

Reading tips

You may read in the order of the table of contents or start with the title that interests you most; there is no need to finish it all at once.
Pause briefly after each piece to sort out the character relationships and core conflicts before moving to the next.
For pieces on marriage and family, take notes based on your own observations, recording details that move you.
If time is limited, read one or two pieces at a time to avoid confusing the character threads across stories.

版权信息
义兵义兵
一
二
三
四
五
六
七
八
九
十
十一
尾声
婚变
一
二
三
四
五
六
七
八
九
劫难
（一）
（二）
（三）
（四）
（五）
（六）
（七）
（八）
（九）
尾声
从乡村走出去的联合国官员
引子
一
二
三
四
五
六
七
八
兄弟呀兄弟
一
二
三
四
五
六
七
八
九
十
迟到的婚姻指标
一
二
三
四
五
六
七
八
九
十
十一

FAQ

Is this a novel or a short-story collection?

It is a collection of novellas, including six works: Yi Bing Yi Bing, Marital Breakdown, Calamity, The UN Official Who Came Out of the Countryside, Brothers, Oh Brothers, and The Late Marriage Quota. Each story is relatively independent, not a full-length novel driven by a single main storyline.

Are the six stories connected, and do they need to be read in order?

Judging from the table of contents, the titles and subjects of each piece differ, and they are independent novellas that generally do not need to be read in strict order. Readers can follow the table of contents or start with a title that interests them, without affecting their understanding of any individual piece.

Is it suitable as a book for a reading group?

It is fairly suitable. The novella length makes it convenient to finish one piece within one or two meetings, and subjects such as marriage, family, and rural characters readily lend themselves to discussion. It is suggested that the group focus on one piece per session and discuss the characters' choices and real-life situations, avoiding spreading the conversation too thin by covering all six at once.

Comments

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About the author

老兵 Author

Lao Bing is an author about whom limited public information is currently available; his nationality, dates of birth and death, real name, and educational background are not clearly recorded. The library holds three of his works: The Lotus Seat, Pig Bajie Battles Sun Wukong, and Marital Breakdown. These span quite different subjects, falling into the categories of otherworldly continent fiction and social fiction. Judging from the existing titles, Lao Bing is at ease both with narratives touched by myth and fantasy and with realistic social themes such as marriage and family, suggesting broad interests in writing. Because verifiable author information and commentary are extremely scarce, his full body of work, writing style, and literary influence cannot yet be fully assessed; for now his thematic orientation can only be sketched preliminarily from the works in the library, and further details await additional materials.