"Return to the River Hulan" March in the Small Town

Author: Xiao Hong
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-09-01
Features: The fame of the talented female writer Xiao Hong has been steadily increasing in recent years, one reason being the aesthetic beauty of her writing, and the other being her pitiable and beloved life story. At the age of 30, Xiao Hong passed away alone in Hong Kong, leaving behind a final message: "Half a life spent enduring scorn and indifference, to die first, I am unwilling, I am unwilling," and "To leave behind the other half of Dream of the Red Chamber for others to read." This book allows you to experience the incomparably poignant and lyrical beauty of Xiao Hong's writing, which touches the soul. Xiao Hong's works intentionally blur the boundaries between prose and fiction, with the retreat of ideas bringing about a full restoration of literary intuition. The repetitive sentences are filled with poetry and a sense of retrospect. This book selects works that fully express Xiao Hong's sensibilities and thoughts, including The Story of Hulan River, Hands, On the Ox Cart, March in the Small Town, and Reminiscences of Mr. Lu Xun.
Excerpt from The Story of Hulan River: When the severe wintered the earth, the earth was full of cracks. From south to north, from east to west, some cracks were several feet long, some a hundred feet long, and there were even several hundred feet long. They had no direction, and at any time, as long as the severe winter arrived, the earth would crack open. The extreme cold froze the earth. The elderly, upon entering the house, would sweep the ice drips from their beards with a broom, saying, "It's so cold today! The ground has cracked." The coachman, with three stars in the sky, whipped his horse for sixty or seventy miles around with a big whip. As soon as dawn broke, he entered the carriage inn and said in a single sentence to the innkeeper, "What a fierce day! Sharp as a knife." After entering the inn, he took off his dogskin hat, smoked a bag of cigarettes, and then reached out for a warm bun. His hand, exposed on his back, was covered in countless cracks. The human hand had been frozen and cracked...