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China in One Village
China in One Village: The Story of One Town and the Changing World | Liang Hong
1 post | 1 read
A global future in the history of a single village After a decade away from her ancestral family village, during which she became a writer and literary scholar in Beijing, Liang Hong started visiting her rural hometown in landlocked Henan Province. What she found was an extended family riven by the seismic changes in Chinese society and a village turned inside out by emigration, neglect, and environmental despoliation. Combining family memoir, literary observation, and social commentary, Liang's by turns lyrically poetic and movingly raw investigation into the fate of her village became a bestselling book in China and brought her fame. For many months, Liang walked the roads and fields of her village, recording the stories of her relatives--especially her irascible, unforgettable father--and talking to everyone from high government officials to the lowest of village outcasts. Across China, many saw in Liang's riveting interviews with family members and childhood acquaintances a mirror of their own lives, and her observations about the way the greatest rural-to-urban migration of modern times has twisted the country resonated deeply. China in One Village tells the story of contemporary China through one clear-eyed, literary observer, one family, and one village.
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Overall an interesting book, but my lack of cultural context and the extremely loose narrative style of the interviews made it a bit difficult for me to follow at certain points. Before this book I had read a little about the hukou system and Chinese migrant workers, but never really about the villages they leave behind and the people who stay. Maybe I‘ll check out the companion book, Leaving Liang Village.