Destruction

胡也频Jun 2025

3.8

Word count: 19K words
Chapters: 9

Summary

《毁灭》is a realist short story. It tells the tragedy of a poor carpenter's family. On a rainy autumn night, the carpenter returns home late after collecting his wages and finds his wife struggling alone in childbirth. Desperately poor and unable to raise the child, they abandon the infant once again. The collection also includes "Father," "The Drunkard," and "The Little One." "The Drunkard" depicts an uncle's drunken loss of composure. "The Little One" depicts a herding girl who depends on her mother. All four are character sketches, each focusing on an individual. They use one point to reflect the whole, telling of life's hardships.

Editor's review

Hu Yepin's short stories are known for their cold, sharp strokes that capture the hardship and struggle of lower-class lives; the four pieces in this collection each have a different focus yet echo one another. "Destruction" takes a carpenter's return home on a rainy night as its entry point, writing with restraint and weight the painful choice of a poor family unable to raise a newborn, gripping the reader's heart; "Father," "The Drunkard," and "The Little One" continue the method of using one point to reflect the whole from the angles of parent-child relationship, drunken loss of composure, and a herding child depending on her mother, placing individual fate within concrete life circumstances. The work does not lay out suffering but lets characters speak for themselves through details—the cold of the rainy autumn night, the anxiety of returning late after collecting wages, the helplessness of abandoning the infant—all land in concrete reality. It suits careful reading in quiet hours; the pieces are short, so you can read one at a time and leave space for reflection. Readers who enjoy the realist tradition in modern literature and care about the living conditions of ordinary people can read in it the author's sympathy for his characters' circumstances and his understated critique.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Literary readers who prefer modern realist short stories and care about the fate of lower-class characters
Chinese department students and researchers who want to understand the contours of Hu Yepin's short-story writing
Those who need short, sharp texts as discussion material in teaching or reading groups
Everyday readers accustomed to reading one complete story in fragmented time

Not a good fit for

Casual readers expecting dramatic plots and clear endings
Readers who feel emotional pressure from heavy subjects such as poverty and abandonment

Reading tips

Read "Destruction" first, then the other three, to appreciate how the same method unfolds across different characters
Pause briefly after each piece to recall the specific circumstances and choices of the characters
Note scene details such as the rainy night, the drinking table, and the pasture; they carry the narrative's weight
Read alongside realist short stories of the same period to observe similarities and differences in the technique of character sketches

版权信息
毁灭
父亲
酒癫
小人儿
一
二
三
四

FAQ

Is this book suitable for reading in one sitting?

The book is a short-story collection with pieces of modest length, so it can be read in one sitting; but it is better to pause briefly between pieces to give heavy emotions room to digest and to appreciate the differences among the character sketches.

Can I understand it without having read other works by Hu Yepin?

Yes. All four pieces are independent character sketches that do not depend on prior background; you can go straight into the stories, and reading other works by the author afterward will feel even smoother.

Is the tone of the stories in the book very oppressive?

The overall tone leans heavy, mostly writing of life's hardships and characters' predicaments, but the style is restrained and does not deliberately dramatize; as you read, you can focus on the characters' concrete actions and relationships amid hardship.

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About the author

胡也频 Author

Hu Yepin is one of the representative writers in the history of modern Chinese literature, whose creative work spans fiction, drama, and other genres. The collection here includes twenty-one of his works, among them comprehensive anthologies such as The Collected Works of Hu Yepin and Selected Short Stories of Hu Yepin, revolutionary literary classics such as Light Before Us and Destruction, as well as dramatic works including The Madman and The Capitalist, and a selection of women's fiction. As public information is limited, details of his life are difficult to set out in full; yet from the surviving works it is clear that his writing focuses largely on social reality and revolutionary themes, with a distinctive style that combines literary quality with a strong sense of the times, giving him a certain influence within the traditions of revolutionary and left-wing literature.