Sky Walker

Name: Sky Walker
ISBN: 9787559838599

Liu XinglongGuangxi Normal University Press · ChinaOct 2021

4.3

Word count: 201K words
Chapters: 35
ISBN: 9787559838599

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Summary

Zhang Yingcai, a young man who failed the college entrance exam, comes to remote Jieling Primary School as a substitute teacher and is shocked by the harsh teaching conditions in the mountains. In a life of hardship, Zhang Yingcai feels the resilience, perseverance, seriousness, and sense of responsibility of rural community teachers, and also experiences the loss, pain, and sorrow fate deals them; what they face is not only the pressure of daily life but also the dignity of being rural community teachers. Even so, every morning the national flag above Jieling Primary School still rises slowly to the national anthem played on a flute…

Centered on the main thread of community teachers' "conversion to regular status," the story vividly portrays the lives and fates of community teachers at Jieling Primary School, represented by Principal Yu, Sun Sihai, and Deng Youmi, and reproduces with great authenticity the difficult situation of rural community teachers. The book carries on the author's consistent realist style, settling on one corner of Chinese society with delicate brushwork and plain language.

Editor's review

The Sky Runners is a representative work by Liu Xinglong, winner of the Mao Dun Literature Prize, and a sequel and elevation of his classic novel The Phoenix Qin. Rather than simply continuing the story of rural teachers, it portrays in deep, restrained prose the special group of Chinese rural community teachers against the grand backdrop of changing times. With his consistently solid realist craft, Liu Xinglong delicately depicts how a group of community teachers at Jieling Primary School, in extreme poverty and hardship, sustain the most fragile lifeline of rural education through near-tragic perseverance. The novel rises above the cliché of merely praising dedication, probing deeply into the complex tensions between system and individual, ideal and reality, perseverance and compromise. Characters such as Principal Yu, Sun Sihai, and Deng Youmi—their fates and choices—together weave a "folk epic" of Chinese rural education. Reading this book, one not only feels the warmth of humanity and moral force flowing through the text but also, through these "ascetics of the Chinese teaching world," glimpses a side of an era and a spiritual map that is fading away. Its literary value lies in how, through plain and precise narrative, it leaves a solid literary monument to a history on the verge of being forgotten.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers interested in contemporary Chinese realist literature, especially works about the lower classes and rural themes
Educators and those with respect and curiosity about the history of rural education
Deep readers who enjoy tasting the complexity of human nature and the changes of an era through the rise and fall of characters' fates
Readers of literary works seeking to go beyond story and provoke social and moral reflection

Not a good fit for

Readers seeking fast-paced, plot-heavy, entertainment-oriented reading
Readers who feel alienated by rural themes and a quieter, weightier narrative style

Reading tips

Read it together with Liu Xinglong's The Phoenix Qin to understand the characters and the era more fully
Pause from time to time while reading to feel the emotional tension and moral questioning beneath the author's plain narration
Pay attention to the descriptions of the natural environment, which often form a subtle intertext with the characters' moods and fates

About the publisher

Guangxi Normal University Press China · Founded in 1986

Guangxi Normal University Press is a publisher known for literature, foreign literature and history titles. Its 1,175 books in the database show a solid accumulation in classics and prose collections, including foreign literary works such as Les Fleurs du mal: Annotated Poems of Baudelaire, Snow Country, Dubliners and The Wild Palms, as well as modern prose compilations like The Complete Prose of Zhou Zuoren. History and philosophy also hold a notable share, with titles such as Running Dogs: Clerks and Runners in Qing County Yamen and The History and Thought of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom reflecting attention to Qing local administration and modern history. In art literature there is the 16-volume Ten Bamboo Studio Painting and Calligraphy Manual. Its author resources include foreign writers Charles Baudelaire and Yasunari Kawabata, translators and annotators Liu Nanqi and Zou Bo, and scholars such as Zhong Shuhe, Bradly W. Reed and You Chenjun. As public information is limited, this characterization is based only on the books in the database, which together present a profile balancing Chinese and foreign literary classics with academic works in the humanities and social sciences.

版权信息
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第二部
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第三部
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后记：生命之上，诗意漫天

FAQ

What is the relationship between The Sky Runners and The Phoenix Qin?

The Sky Runners is a sequel and deep expansion of The Phoenix Qin. The latter focuses mainly on the daily life of a mountain primary school, while The Sky Runners spans a longer time, has more dramatic turns in characters' fates, and places the personal struggles of community teachers in a broader context of social transformation, with a grander and weightier theme.

Is the book's tone very heavy?

The book does depict hardship and difficulty, and its tone is deep and solemn. But Liu Xinglong's writing is restrained and resilient; throughout the writing of suffering there always shines human dignity, a faint yet persistent light, and the warmth between colleagues—it does not merely pile on misery.

What can readers outside the education field gain from the book?

Quite a lot. The book's core value goes far beyond the subject of education. It is a profound record of the living conditions and spiritual world of a group of "small people" in a particular historical period, concerning perseverance, sacrifice, hope, and disillusionment; any reader concerned with human nature, social change, and moral dilemmas can find strong resonance and food for thought.

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About the author

Liu Xinglong Author · Chinese · 1956

Liu Xinglong, born in 1956 in Huangzhou, Hubei, with ancestral roots in Tuanfeng, is a contemporary Chinese realist writer. In his early years he worked as a water conservancy construction worker and a valve factory laborer, and in 1984 he published his first work, Black Butterfly, Black Butterfly... His writing is rooted in real life, often drawing on rural society and the lives of ordinary people, with plain yet warm prose. His representative works include Fengqin, The Skywalker, and Saint Heaven's Gate; The Skywalker won the 8th Mao Dun Literature Prize, and Carrying Tea to Beijing won the Lu Xun Literature Prize. The library holds 14 of his works, including The Skywalker, Selected Works of Liu Xinglong, Life Is Labor and Benevolence, Drunk in the Autumn Wind, If the Days Ahead Are Long, and Listening for Leaks, commonly categorized as social fiction and classic works. He has served as chairman of the Hubei Provincial Federation of Literary and Art Circles and has long focused on the fate and dignity of ordinary people.