How far is forever

Author: Fei Ning
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-12-01
Features: Ten years ago, I once did a for my collected works and had five volumes of 《Fei Ning Collection》 edited and published. Today, ten years later, as I am doing another for my works, it coincides with the plan of Renmin Literature Publishing House to edit and publish the "Series of Contemporary Chinese Writers." Thus, this series of nine works has come into being. Among them, there are three volumes of novels: 《Rose Gate》, 《City Without Rain》, and 《The Big Bathing Woman》； two volumes of middle-length stories, titled 《How Far Is Eternity》 and 《Cliff Over the Afternoon》； two volumes of short stories, titled 《Guests Are Coming》 and 《Chocolate Fingerprints》； and two volumes of essays, titled 《Walking Dreams》 and 《As Beautiful and Clear as Paper-Cuttings》。 Readers familiar with the author's works might notice that the novel 《City Without Rain》 was published in 1994, but when compiling the collection in 1996, the author excluded it from the collection. The reason was probably that it was not considered substantial enough at the time! Even because it was too popular, the author became uneasy and even doubted the artistic quality of this work. Ten years later, the author included it in this series of works because the author clearly realized that the writing of 《City Without Rain》 had trained the author's ability to structure a novel, and later works like 《The Big Bathing Woman》 and 《Bun Hua》 benefited from this structural training to some extent. When a writer does a for their works, they should not overlook the significance of such writing that connects and lays the groundwork.