Celadon

Name: Celadon
ISBN: 9787540455651

浮石Hunan Literature and Art Publishing House · ChinaJun 2022

3.6

Word count: 331K words
Chapters: 30
ISBN: 9787540455651

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Summary

Zhang Zhongping is chairman and general manager of 3D Auction Company. His daily work is essentially "three-fold accompaniment"—eating, drinking, and entertaining officials from the court, then winning them over.

Step one: invest in personal relationships; step two: prove to the other party that he can get things done; step three: prove to the "bribe-taker" that it is "absolutely safe." This has become his near-infallible formula for getting rich.

He moves between the court and the state-owned assets administration, playing a subtle game with those in power and thriving amid intricate official-business relationships. Yet relationships give rise to things and relationships also undo them, and a big deal that was almost within his grasp finally runs into serious trouble...

Editor's review

With the auction industry as its entry point, *Celadon* renders the unspoken operating logic between officials and businessmen in minute detail. Zhang Zhongping is not propped up by a stereotyped good-versus-evil framework; his shrewdness, maneuvering, and gambler's optimism all play out in concrete social exchanges and interest transactions, giving the reading an almost documentary sense of pressure. The novel's strength lies in its dissection of "relationship science": emotional investment, proof of competence, and assurance of safety—three progressive steps that form a self-consistent survival technique—and the narrative lets this logic collapse precisely when it is smoothest, revealing the force of its irony. As a work focused on the boundary between business and power, it suits segmented reading during commutes or before bed: the plot moves briskly, dialogue is dense, and the tension of character maneuvering sustains attention. Readers need not treat it as a guide to officialdom; it works better as a mirror, showing how people persuade themselves within networks of interest and how they are undone by their own calculations. The descriptions of auction workflows and court enforcement carry an industry texture that gives the story solid grounding.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers of fiction interested in business warfare and official-business relations
Those who want to observe the workings of a relationship-based society through literature
Readers who enjoy strong plots, abundant dialogue, and tight pacing
People in sales, auction, or intermediary industries who want to reflect on workplace life through fiction

Not a good fit for

Readers who prefer slow-paced pure literary narrative and do not require high plot density
Those hoping for a positive workplace guide or success-study methods
Readers sensitive to depictions of the gray zone between officials and businessmen and unwilling to engage with such material

Reading tips

Read through following Zhang Zhongping's line of action; do not rush to judge the character, and revisit his choices after finishing.
Pay attention to the dialogue in dinner and negotiation scenes; real interest demands often hide inside polite talk.
When a key deal runs into trouble, pause and map out the relationships among the parties; this helps in understanding the subsequent chain reactions.
After finishing, consider writing a short review recording your judgment on the tension between "relationships" and "rules."

About the publisher

Hunan Literature and Art Publishing House China · Founded in 1985

Hunan Literature and Art Publishing House is a publisher known for its literary titles, with a catalogue spanning foreign literature, world classics, classical Chinese literature, essays and miscellaneous writings, and mystery and detective fiction. Judging from the more than 1,100 books in the database, the press publishes foreign classics such as Crime and Punishment, Snow Country, The Complete Sherlock Holmes and Letter from an Unknown Woman, as well as Chinese classical and modern literary works including Lu Xun's Wandering and A Madman's Diary and Wu Jingzi's The Scholars. In terms of translators and authors, translations by Cao Guowei and Tan Jinghua appear in its foreign literature titles, and the authors involved include Dostoevsky, Kawabata Yasunari, Conan Doyle and Zweig. Its publishing character lies in introducing Chinese and foreign literary classics side by side, balancing popular and serious works and attending to both readability and literary value. Public information is limited; the above is a brief overview based solely on the books in the database.

版权信息
第一章
第二章
第三章
第四章
第五章
第六章
第七章
第八章
第九章
第十章
第十一章
第十二章
第十三章
第十四章
第十五章
第十六章
第十七章
第十八章
第十九章
第二十章
第二十一章
第二十二章
第二十三章
第二十四章
第二十五章
第二十六章
第二十七章
第二十八章
《青瓷》越历史越有价（代后记）——浮石

FAQ

Is this book nonfiction or a novel?

*Celadon* is a novel; its characters and plot serve the narrative. Although it is set against the auction industry and official-business dealings and carries an industry texture, it should not be read as real cases or an operational guide. Readers are better off treating it as literature.

Can I understand it without any background in the auction industry?

Yes. The novel's explanation of auction procedures serves the plot and sets no professional threshold; the core conflict centers on character relationships and interest maneuvering. Even without familiarity with industry jargon, following Zhang Zhongping's line of action makes it easy to enter the story.

Could the values in the book be misleading?

The work presents a survival logic of the gray zone, and the narrative itself carries irony and a cautionary edge rather than advocating such practices. Maintaining a critical distance and treating it as a mirror for observing a relationship-based society is more appropriate than copying the strategies in the book.

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About the author

浮石 Author

Fu Shi: publicly available information is limited, so this sketch can only be drawn from the six works published under this name. Fu Shi writes mainly social fiction, with forays into essays and miscellaneous prose as well as war and military themes. Representative works include Qing Ci (Celadon), New Celadon (2 volumes), Hong Xiu (Red Sleeves), Zao Xiang (Soap Fragrance, 2 volumes), Fu Shi (Floating World), and Chinese-Style Relationships. Judging from the titles and categories, Fu Shi tends to begin with everyday human feelings and social appearances, weaving business rivalry, interpersonal maneuvering, and ordinary urban life together. The style is realistic, with attention to character relationships and plot development, and carries a strong sense of social observation. Though the number of works is not large, they span long-form narrative and prose essays, showing a fairly broad range of material. Since details of the author's life and background are not found in public sources, no speculation is offered here; readers wishing to understand Fu Shi's writing may begin with the works themselves and sense the sustained attention to social reality and human nature.