This book is a collection of 10 short stories written by Yiyun Li, who came to US at 1996 first as a graduate student studying immunology, but ends up as a novelist, writing in a language she hadn't made up any story before 1998. She has won a series of prestigious awards; among them is the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, which declares its supermacy in a larger anount of money than all the others (50 thousand pounds).

    In an interview with a Chinese magazine, Li said all she wants from her novels is to move people and to touch their hearts. If that's the case, she certainly did a good job. All the 10 stories in this collection are, by any measure, sad and tear-making ones. Li puts her sensitivity and dearest feelings on people in her stories. I especially like "Death is not a bad joke if told the right way". In this one, "I", as a little girl, sees with her own eyes everyday lives of a bunch of ordinary people living in the same quadrangle. The time is set at the days right after the culture revolution, when people are deprived of everything, when young men wander all day around the city without anything to do except teasing young girls and picking up fights to each other. The wind blows all day, in two summers "I" stays at the place. The life unfolds before this little girl, while nothing actually happens it seems that everything changes during this period. Characters jump out from the book under Li's concise and beautiful discriptions, vividly. You can see deeply how sad they are, with your heart broken, slowly. Like the movie "The Blue Kite", bad days become ten times worse when you see it from a kid's eye, because then you would put those tragic time directly and totally upon these innocent children, breaking the most tender and delicate, a child's heart. There're other good ones in this book, like "Persimmons". This one has a somewhat interesting if not unique structure, the story is told in an afternoon chatting of some village farmers, little by little. A sad story, of course, this is a ruthless one as well. A farmer kills seventeen persons because of the unfair treatment upon his only boy, who is drowned by a drunken judge of the county. What a world.

    In the interview, Li also said she wouldn't translate her book into Chinese in order to publish it in China. The reason was that there were already enough good Chinese novels. This, of course, is not true. Having said all those good things about this book, some of the stories really make me feel uncomfortable. The one named "Immorality" is the worst, a disgusting story. It begins with a short introduction of this small town which provides eunuchs (man with his penis cut, or "cleaned") for the old dynasty; they are called Great Papas in the town. It then jumps to some fifty years ago from now, when the country was led by the "dictator", as is called in the story. There's this young man who looks exactly like the "dictator" and finally becomes the impersonator of the dictator after he dies. The idea is to ridicule the dictator and the bad things he does, this I understand. But the author goes too far. There's this one scene that the young man, who looks exactly like the dictator, masturbates himself using the combination of a porn book and the memoir of the private doctor of the dictator. After this he directly goes to find a prostitute only to be caught fully naked. At the end of this story, the young man, still a virgin, cleans himself at his mother's tomb, becomes another legendary Great Papa of this small town. 

    Indeed, most of the stories have bad things, or sick elements of China, either old or modern. Except from this dictator one, one can easily find these keywords in the book: gay, HIV, divorce, death,  police, etc. There's even one story about a "stone woman" (one without the vagina). How on earth can this book be published in China, without modifying anything? Just be honest of it. 

    The stories are written surely aimed at western readers. Honestly, I would have enjoyed this book more if I were an American. But as a Chinese, there're certain things I don't like. If there's someone to blame, it is not the author. To the very end, story is made for the need of the readers. Nevertheless, this is still a very good book. Story is just story, never take it too seriously. China won't be changed by a single story published abroad or by any movie shown in foreign countries.