Salt Town

🏆Shenzhen Reading Month "Top Ten Books of the Year"
🏆 Harvest Literature Ranking Non-fiction TOP
🏆Blade Book Award "Book of the Year"
🏆Spring Breeze Reading List "Spring Breeze Women's Award"
Editor's Choice★ "Their destinies reveal a China you don't understand."
This is the first masterpiece to deeply explore the lives, emotions, and fates of rural Chinese women. Highly recommended by Luo Xin, Liang Hong, Li Haipeng, Xu Zhiyuan, and Yi Xianfeng!
"The richness it contains will make Yanzhen leave a place in the history of literature and culture." - Yi Xianfeng ★ Well-known media person Yi Xiaohe conducted an immersive investigation for a year, interviewed nearly 100 local residents, and used the stories of 12 women struggling to survive in class, urban and rural areas, and prejudice to unfold a real grassroots China around us that you have never known.
Yanzhen, a small border town in China's Rust Belt, is one of over 40,000 Chinese towns undergoing the painful transition from traditional to modern. Using it as a model, we can glimpse the broader face of China.
★They who are not seen and heard are the epitome of every small town woman and every one of us who has not left the world.
The young girl born in the 2000s who dropped out of school early and is making a big splash in a small town, the strong woman who is financially independent but afraid of divorce, the matchmaker who faces the threat of domestic violence but chooses to remarry, the ninety-year-old woman who has been married four times and now runs a cat shop... We speak the same language, are influenced by the same history, and to some extent, they are us.
Their stories are not footnotes to history; they are history itself.
◎ Content Introduction This is a book that will shock readers at every moment.
In the ancient salt-producing town of southern Sichuan, women lead seemingly tranquil yet thrilling lives. There's the youngest girl, born in the 2000s, who dropped out of school early but is now a powerful figure in her small town; a financially independent woman terrified of divorce; a matchmaker who, facing domestic violence, chooses to remarry; and a ninety-year-old woman, married four times and now running a cat shop. These women, in the 21st century, continue to repeat the ancient cycle of life, struggling to survive between marriage and poverty.
China has over 40,000 towns, but only one Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen. Yi Xiaohe returned to her hometown, choosing a perfectly ordinary town. Here, she selected 12 perfectly ordinary women, exploring their understandings of country, society, family, and marriage, following them through the turmoil of life. She wondered what kind of lives these unknown women in this forgotten town would lead in the age of transition between old and new.
Through a year-long field study, Yi Xiaohe documented the unseen and unheard lives of these people. In this small town, frozen in time like salt, we will witness a different urban and rural China.
Recommended by celebrities: This is a book about angry women, embracing the same principles John Steinbeck did in the 1930s: reaching the depths of life's suffering, embracing immense compassion, love, and anger at injustice and inequality. Through these women's stories, Yi Xiaohe teaches us that lamenting "fate" is superficial; the focus of women's anger is clear.
Whether it is the exploration of national character or the awareness of gender consciousness, Yi Xiaohe seems to have inherited the tradition of the Republic of China. This book reminds me of Xiao Hong's "The Story of Hulan River", and it shocked me in the same way. The richness it contains will make "Salt Town" leave a place in the meaning of literature and cultural history.
"Salt Town," by renowned media personality and writer Yi Xianfeng, reminiscent of the best female writers, is a story of women navigating difficult situations for extended periods, richly textured and unhurried. It is also a genuine piece of journalism that awakens our memories of the word "serious," offering a grounded testimony to the systemic plight of women. Its content and quality make us realize not only how sympathetic women are, but also how respectable they are.
— Renowned media personality Li Haipeng: The lives of twelve women illuminate the back streets of a small town, creating an ode to life that defies fate. Even if Sima Qian were resurrected, he wouldn't necessarily do better than Yi Xiaohe.
Peking University History Professor Luo Xinyi Xiaohe's "Salt Town" reads vividly, realistically, and richly textured. Each person in the town carries their own unique life and destiny, emerging from this unpretentious town. They not only reveal their individual flesh and blood, but also merge into the abyss of the spirit of the times. In this sense, the town, every artifact, and every individual within it possesses a deeply moving sense of presence and history. Everyone has a "Salt Town" in their memory.
—Liang Hong, the writer: "Thanks to Xiao He's keen insight and deep affection, these stories, which were always submerged and ignored, have finally come to our attention. The tragic and happy fate of this ancient town has deeply moved me."
Xu Zhiyuan, founder of One Way Space and author, read "Salt Town" and felt the sharp pain of salt seeping into wounds. Though it's about women, it captures the bleak lives of the lower classes. Structural dilemmas loom large: the root causes of poverty, illness, violence, cowardice, helplessness, apathy, and numbness. It's truly commendable for a media personality with such compassion to pay such close attention to the lives of ordinary people at the bottom.
——Guo Yuhua, Professor of Sociology at Tsinghua University

2023-02-01

新星出版社

New Classic Amber, New Classic Culture

384

9787513351201