The Restaurant
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Summary
"Is the Signal Good Where You Are?" The death of a friend brings several old friends together again. They salvage the faint signals the departed left behind in memory, reflect on their own lives, and ask themselves deep down: why did you, who seemed so unlikely to take your own life, choose to leave first by way of death?
"Migration" Xiao Lin, a Shanghai drifter, is a barista who strikes up a connection with a mysterious regular named Yu and gradually grows under her influence. Not long after, Yu dies suddenly. Years later, Xiao Lin thinks of Yu again on a journey. In the bewildering, dazzling light of the platform on the way home, he too experiences the impulse to seek death, just as Yu did—and in that instant Xiao Lin realizes that the boundary between life and death is in fact blurred, and anyone may step into that murky torrent.
"Why Don't We Crawl Forward" What makes lonely people fall in love? Chen Qiao once liked the playboy Lin Dong so much, yet when Lin Dong confessed his feelings after drinking, she turned him down. In a rain strikingly similar to one from years ago, she remembers that she understood Lin Dong—she understood his heart all too well: and that is precisely why their relationship could not last.
"Middle-Aged Angel" Zhou Yang, a Shanghai native, chooses in middle age to settle down and start a family in Qingdao, while his adolescent daughter insists on testing back into Shanghai for school. Her views, her classmates, her dealings with men—all make Zhou Yang feel that life has separated them, once so close. He struggles to catch up, trying to climb aboard this train that is pulling away.
Editor's review
Who it's for
A good fit for
- Readers who enjoy short stories and prefer restrained narration and slices of life
- Young readers at the tail end of youth, looking back and reflecting on their own choices
- Readers interested in city life, drifting in a foreign place, and intergenerational relationships
- Fragmented readers who want to finish one complete story on the commute or before bed
Not a good fit for
- Readers expecting happy endings or strong emotional comfort—the stories leave much unsaid and unresolved
- Readers who prefer long, continuous narratives and are unused to standalone stories
- Readers sensitive to themes of death and loneliness, for whom now is not the right time
Reading tips
- Read in the order of the pieces; after each one, close the book, wonder for a moment "what happens to this person later," then read the next.
- Pay attention to spatial details in the stories—platforms, rain, dinner tables; they are where the characters' emotions land.
- After "Is the Signal Good Where You Are?", wait a day before reading "Migration," and compare how the two pieces handle the dead.
- Keep a short notebook and jot down the line in each piece that made you pause; after finishing the book, look back at these lines.
About the publisher
Sichuan Literature and Art Publishing House is a professional literary and art publishing institution. It mainly publishes books on contemporary and modern literature, foreign literature, poetry and prose, music and art, and literary theory. Judging from the books in the database, the house places considerable emphasis on classic works and foreign literature. Representative titles include Lu Xun's Call to Arms and Dawn Blossoms Plucked at Dusk, Lao She's Camel Xiangzi, Xiao Hong's The Story of Hulan River, J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, William Shakespeare's Hamlet, and Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha. Its translator resources include Deng Jiawan, Shi Zhongge, Du Yunci, and Zhu Shenghao. Common categories include social fiction, classic works, foreign literature, world classics, literary appreciation, and classical poetry, reflecting a publishing profile that balances Chinese and foreign literary classics with literary appreciation.
Contents
- 版权信息
- 序／郑执
- 写在前面
- 你那里信号好吗
- 迁徙
- 不如我们匍匐前进
- 陈荞
- 林栋
- 老马
- 还是老马
- 陈荞
- 林栋
- 陈荞
- 中年天使
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 绿洲
- 像行星无法停留
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
FAQ
Are the six stories connected? Do I need to read them in order?
The book deals with death—is it very depressing to read?
Is this short story collection a good entry point for understanding urban youth writing?
Comments
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About the author
He Yiman is an author for whom limited public information is currently available in the Chinese book database. Only one work under her name has been catalogued so far: the social novel Guanzhi. Judging from the categories listed, her writing leans toward social fiction, set against the backdrop of everyday reality and concerned with the relationships between people and their surroundings, as well as among people themselves, giving her subject matter a texture close to daily life. Because public information is scarce, her nationality, dates of birth and death, educational background and writing career cannot be confirmed, and no English name has been recorded. As for Guanzhi, the title itself carries a strong flavor of ordinary urban life, readily evoking the human exchanges and struggles for livelihood found in places of food and drink, which echoes the work's placement in social fiction. Under present conditions, a full assessment of her writing as a whole is difficult; readers may take Guanzhi as an entry point for appreciating her narrative orientation and the angle from which she observes reality.
