From one of world literature's most courageous voices, a novel about the human cost of China's one-child policy Far away from the Chinese economic miracle, from the bright lights of Beijing and Shanghai, is a vast rural hinterland, where life goes on much as it has for generations, with one extraordinary difference: "normal" parents are permitted by the state to have only a single child. Writte…
In 1983, at the age of thirty, Jian wanted to rebel and escape the confines of Beijing. This account of his three year journey to find himself provides an insight into the contradictions that make up modern China.