Book Description
What survives of history when the grand narratives fade? Only what people carry.
A painting fractured by war, restored in secret. A feudal fan that sealed a doomed love. A hospital ward where strangers learn to laugh through recovery. And a teenage ringleader’s death—a memory that refuses to heal.
Tales from China move between dynastic legend and a modern city, between the brutal reckonings during the political storm and the quiet grace of late companionship. Sixteen stories. No single history. Only private lives are caught in larger currents. An emperor’s favourite discovers that power masks a void. A young woman navigates ambition against gendered fate. An old man finds unexpected renewal in a modest act of connection.
These are not moral fables—not quite. They are interior collisions: desire against duty, memory against oblivion, and the self against the state.
Narrated for readers outside China, this debut collection resists exoticism and simplification. History here is not a fixed record but a residue—carried in objects, rumours, and the people who survive them.
Meaning, finally, is not found in grand narratives. Only in modest acts of staying human.
A haunting, wise, and quietly unforgettable debut. These stories will linger long after you close the book.
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