Please Come Again

Name: Please Come Again
ISBN: 9787208198722

白嵩Shanghai People's Publishing House · ChinaFeb 2026

3.6

Word count: 152K words
Chapters: 18
ISBN: 9787208198722

Report an error Find this book

Summary

In 2021, my father and I, who had been away from our hometown for many years, returned one after the other in the depths of winter to Lingshan, in Anshan, Liaoning Province—the birthplace of New China's first high-horsepower crawler tractor and bulldozer. As Spring Festival approached, we cared for my 94-year-old grandfather while buying New Year goods, visiting graves and burning paper offerings, and calling on relatives and friends. My father and I had another plan as well: to buy my grandfather's old house and fulfill a wish left unfinished twenty years ago.

Over one reunion dinner after another, the life experiences and inner worlds of three generations, thirty years of change in the Hongqi Tractor Factory, Lingshan Railway Station, and the communities along the line, and episodes such as family disputes and the reform of state-owned enterprises all surfaced. When I began writing, my grandmother and grandfather were still chatting with me on the phone; I never imagined that by the time I finished the manuscript, both would have passed away...

Editor's review

Welcome Back is a work of nonfiction centered on family. The author, Bai Song, turns his lens on Lingshan, in Anshan, Liaoning—the birthplace of New China's first high-horsepower crawler tractor and bulldozer. The book records a winter in 2021, when the author and his father returned home one after the other to care for his 94-year-old grandfather, buy New Year goods, visit graves and burn paper offerings, and call on relatives and friends, while weaving in the twenty-year wish to buy his grandfather's old house. It interlaces the life experiences of three generations, thirty years of change in the Hongqi Tractor Factory, Lingshan Railway Station, and the communities along the line, and episodes such as family disputes and the reform of state-owned enterprises. Its value lies in using one family's history to reflect the transformations of an industrial city in Northeast China, with reunion dinners, the old house, and factory memories creating a dense texture of lived life. The prose is plain and restrained, with emotion held within everyday actions; it is suited to slow reading in quiet hours. The fact that the author's grandmother and grandfather had passed away by the time the manuscript was finished gives the book a dual sense of farewell and holding on; readers might attend to how the author handles the relationship between memory and regret.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers interested in the transformation of Northeast China's old industrial bases and urban memory
Readers who enjoy family history, nonfiction, and intergenerational narrative
Young people with hometown-return experiences who want to understand their parents' and grandparents' lives
Readers interested in state-owned enterprise reform and the experience of growing up in factory communities

Not a good fit for

Readers who prefer strong plots and fast-paced fiction
Academic researchers seeking a systematic account of Northeast industrial history
Readers with little patience for family minutiae and everyday detail

Reading tips

Read chronologically and notice how everyday actions around Spring Festival draw out family history.
When reading passages on the factory and railway station, consult maps or local materials for deeper context.
Mark the different perspectives of the three generations separately to appreciate the differences and continuities in their experiences.
After finishing, record similar memories of an old house or reunion dinner in your own family as comparative notes.

About the publisher

Shanghai People's Publishing House China · Founded in 1951

Shanghai People's Publishing House is a comprehensive publisher whose list focuses on academic monographs and general-interest titles in philosophy, social sciences, politics and law, economics and management, and history. Among its books are Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties History in the Chinese Dynastic History series; The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy in foreign literature; the Wenjing Classical Translation Illustrated Edition of The Complete Greek Tragedies of Euripides; and works of social theory such as Max Weber's Economy and Society and Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments. Its authors include Wang Zhongluo, J.R.R. Tolkien, Luo Niansheng, and Zhou Zuoren.

版权信息
前言
回家
父与子
候机楼
二大爷
烧纸钱
哥俩好
胡一饼
老房子
AA制
红拖厂
后老伴儿
年夜饭
灵山站
存款单
追悼会
后记

FAQ

Is this book fiction or nonfiction?

From the available material, the book recounts the author's and his father's real experiences returning home to care for his grandfather, buying New Year goods, visiting graves, and seeing relatives, interwoven with family history and changes in the factory area. It is nonfiction built around personal family history, not a novel.

Can readers without experience of Northeast China get into it?

Yes. The core of the book is three generations being together and saying goodbye; scenes such as the old house, reunion dinners, and grave visits are universal. The changes in the factory and railway station are local background, but the author presents them through family detail, so outside readers can enter through the characters' emotions.

What does the title "Welcome Back" suggest?

The material does not directly explain the title's meaning. Given the book's themes of returning home, caring for an elder, buying the old house, and the relatives' deaths by the time the manuscript was finished, readers can consider for themselves the possible senses of farewell, holding on, and reunion; the book does not state this explicitly.

What background knowledge is helpful for reading?

It helps to know a little about Lingshan and the Hongqi Tractor Factory as the birthplace of New China's first high-horsepower crawler tractor and bulldozer, and the general outline of state-owned enterprise reform. This background helps in understanding the connection between family disputes and changes in the factory area, but the family sections can be read without it.

Comments

Find this book

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

白嵩 Author

Bai Song is an author about whom limited public information is available. Two works by this author are currently known, falling respectively into the categories of popular science and miscellaneous prose. The representative work Minimum Theory: Classical Mechanics belongs to popular science and, judging from its title, appears to organize and explain the core content and fundamental concepts of classical mechanics for readers seeking to understand the basics of physics. Welcome Back, by contrast, is classified as miscellaneous prose and presents a literary side distinct from the author's science writing. These two works span the natural sciences and the humanistic essay, suggesting that the author's interests are not confined to a single field and that he or she can handle both rigorously disciplinary knowledge and prose expression. Because information such as dates of birth and death, nationality, and educational background is not clearly recorded, little can be said in detail about the author's personal history or creative development; only a preliminary account of the thematic range and writing orientation of the existing works is possible, pending further material.