Documentary Literature
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Passersby Below Never See the Old Colors
Yunqi Academy · 2019
This is a very short autobiographical novel in essayistic style, plain in language and winning in its sincerity. The author sets down his experiences …
Things About Paternity Tests That Shatter Your Worldview
Tianya Literature · 2016
The author is a DNA paternity tester who followed his mother into the profession and has worked for over a decade. The book draws on real cases from h…
Remembering the South 47 Detention Center
Fanqie Novel
This is a largely documentary-style urban novel set in a detention center. Its appeal lies in the meticulous recreation of cell rules, jargon, and ens…
Rural Travels and Reminiscences
This book is a semi-autobiographical work of rural remembrance. The author begins with a small mountain hollow in the northwest of Zhoushan Island, re…
Selected Works of Liang Xiaosheng
21st Century Publishing House · 2007
This is a self-selected collection of Liang Xiaosheng's fiction, including excerpts from Snow City and representative novellas and short stories such …
The Geometry of Entrepreneurship
Qidian · 2022
This is a rare startup memoir that squarely confronts failure. The author candidly reviews his path from a rural teenager teaching himself to program …
My Smile
A first-person recollection of school and growing up more than forty years ago. The protagonist comes from a poor farming family; his parents had neit…
From Soldier to Senior Colonel
This book recounts in first person the life journey of a rural youth from Yucheng, Shandong. Rising from a poor farming family, he joins the army at s…
Nothing but Youth
Oriental Press · 2012
The protagonist Jia Xiaodao often skips class, fails courses, and dates around during college, putting his degree at risk. As classmates find jobs thr…
Sunshine Graveyard
Novel Reading Network
This is a documentary-style work about a terminal illness written with black humor. The author dissolves pain through self-mockery; the operating-room…
Operation Orion
China Society Press · 2005
This is a collection of novellas and short stories by Deng Youmei, including "Na Wu," "The Snuff Bottle," "Old Tales of a Narrow Lane," "The Women Sol…
Letters of Days Past
This book collects letters the author's mother wrote to her father when she was young; both correspondents were born in the 1940s. In 1963 they both e…
Iron-Willed Detective
This is a largely documentary collection of character reportage, suited to readers interested in real policing, criminal-investigation cases, and the …
White Paint
Yunqi Academy
This is an autobiographical work. The author describes himself as a person with Asperger's syndrome and recounts his upbringing in the first person. T…
Fragrant Fruit
This book is a collection of campus skits and local publicity pieces. Its appeal lies in its simple writing about Yellow River culture and portraits o…
Secrets of the Distance
Chuangshi Chinese Network · 2018
The novel is set against the backdrop of China's Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST, the "Eye of Heaven") project. It opens w…
My Company
Qidian · 2004
My Company is a collection of novellas by Shi Zhongshan, centered on the daily life of a radar company. It opens with soldier Wang Wang hospitalized f…
The Life of Wang Defa
Qidian · 2020
The story begins in a rural village in northwest China in the late 1970s. Wang Defa, the production team's accountant, is shrewd and pragmatic, yet he…
Making Peace with the Years at the End of Time
Through the eyes of seven-year-old Du Yongwang, the novel chronicles the fates of four generations in Xiaoxitan Village, Sanyiquan Township, Fengzhen,…
My 18 Years in the Motorcycle World
China Literature
In first person, the book recalls the author's workplace experiences from the late 1990s to the early 2000s. In 1999 the company went to Gaoyou, Jiang…