Peach Blossoms in Full Bloom

Author: Wang Anyi
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-02-01
Features: Interestingly, each chapter of the novel is titled with a line of ancient poetry describing flowers, such as "A Branch of Pear Blossoms Drizzled with Spring Rain," "Freshly Shelled Pearl Cardamom," "Thousand and Ten Thousand Blossoms Weighing the Branches Low," and so on, showing great ingenuity. Wang Anyi said that she carefully flipped through books to find these lines. If you read the original poems one by one, you will find that they align with the development of the novel's plot. In terms of writing style, Wang Anyi continued the approach of her previous long novel Fuping. The realistic style of Taizhiyao Yao is nearly meticulous and, beneath which the city of Shanghai, especially its petty bourgeois world, is no longer just the background of the story but becomes a living, breathing entity. This book is the latest long novel by the renowned writer Wang Anyi. The novel tells the life journey of a woman named Yu Xiaochiu in the bustling streets of Shanghai. This Shanghai woman could have lived a simple yet fulfilling, troublesome yet lively life under the rooftops of Shanghai, like Wenwen and Meitou. However, she turns out to be an exception. Her mother was an actress in the comedy opera, who had some fame in her youth but ultimately ended up as a bit player in her old age. Her father was imprisoned a year and a half before her birth for corruption and messing around with women. Having suffered social and romantic failures, her mother only showed her coldness and faint resentment, while her siblings despised and hated her because of her background. Her classmates and neighbors also looked at her with disdain. Her past became the topic of endless rumors and gossip in the streets. Her youthful beauty, in the eyes of the people of Shanghai, was unjustly seen as a symbol of unsettling restlessness. Yet, it is this exceptional girl from the Shanghai lane who unexpectedly walks a difficult yet pure path in life, facing the twists and turns of life and the unpredictable fate with a fiery and vigorous vitality, stubbornly "blooming brilliantly."