Ripples

Ripples is a collection of short stories and novellas by the post-90s writer Du Li, containing seven tales that interweave reality and dreams. Published in March 2025 by CITIC Press Group under the Dafang·Jingxiang imprint, the collection portrays people who seem ordinary yet wage a silent daily battle with fate: an ancient-architecture designer facing fertility anxiety, a domestic-abuse victim lost in a rift in time and space, a bereaved couple searching for their dead daughter in a mentally ill young woman, a Beijing-based female rapper caught in a storm of online harassment, and the people, birds, and beasts dwelling in the crevices of the city. The opening story, "Cuckoo Ripples," follows Hua Mo, who possesses the gift of dream-making; at night she enters another world and becomes entangled with her husband in a physicist's wife-murder case. "Samadhi Fire" rewrites the rebellious spirit of Journey to the West through Minnan-language hip-hop, while "A Small Child Punting a Little Boat" leads from a set of dominoes into the illusion of Tang poetry. Du Li blends science-fiction technique, rap culture, lively and offbeat Beijing dialect, and a birdwatcher's view of nature, engaging with issues such as animal protection, technology ethics, gender equality, and online harassment. The title "Ripples" comes from the waves a stone makes when dropped into a lake, implying the reverberations of small events spreading layer by layer through her characters' fates: dreams are no refuge, and after waking one must still grind through real life—yet those brief gaps for catching one's breath are precisely where people regain their courage.