In the short twenty years since Yu Hua, a fifty-three-year-old former dentist, has been writing, China has undergone change enough for many lifetimes. His country’s transformations and what they leave in their wake have become the central theme of Yu’s writing.Many readers consider him China’s greatest living author. They have loved him since he published his early novel To
My first encounter with Liu Zhenyun was in 2003. At the time, cell phones had just become available in China and they were complicating people’s relationships. I witnessed a couple break up because of the secrets stored on a phone. I watched people getting more and more adept at lying to the person on the other end of the line, saying they were too busy to talk.