Coming from the South City -- The Biography of Lin Haiyin

Author: Xia Zuli
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-01-01
Features: Beijing was where Lin Haiyin grew up in her childhood, spent her youthful years, got married and had children, until she left nearly at the age of thirty. It was also the place where she carried a lifelong deep connection. And this book, From the South of the City—A Biography of Lin Haiyin, becomes the author's—the subject's daughter's—quest for self-discovery and roots. Beijing was where Lin Haiyin grew up in her childhood, spent her youthful years, got married and had children, until she left nearly at the age of thirty. It was also the place where she carried a lifelong deep connection. And this book, From the South of the City—A Biography of Lin Haiyin, becomes the author's—the subject's daughter's—quest for self-discovery and roots. The major feature of this biography is that it is narrated in two voices throughout. One is the perspective of a critic, using the scales of literature and history to discuss the subject's works, deeds, personality, and environment, citing other literary references in a well-structured manner. Interwoven in each chapter, however, is another voice: in the first-person plural perspective and with the daughter's emotions, speaking gently and intimately, portraying the mother Lin Haiyin—loving life, cherishing life, and bravely devoted—as vividly as possible through the smallest of actions, using the elegant Beijing dialect she learned from her mother.