DESCRIPTION
What is a story other than a chat – a small conversation as the name Schiaoschuo suggests? So, reader, lend an ear to this babble when you have nothing better to do. This tale is neither an apology for contemporary life in China nor an exposé of it, as so many of the recent ‘Dark Curtain’ novels are. It is neither a glorification of our old ways of life nor a defense of our new ones. It is merely a narrative of the way men and women of our day grow up and learn to live together, love and hate, fight and forgive, suffer and rejoice; how certain habits of life and ways of thinking have developed, and how they all – beyond that – adapt to the circumstances of this earthly life in which men strive and struggle, but the gods rule. L.Y.