Acknowledgments  vii

Introduction / Jing Wang  1

Remembering Mr. Wu You / Ge Fei, transl. by Howard Goldblatt  15

Green Yellow / Ge Fei, transl. by Eva Shan Chou  23

Whistling / Ge Fei, transl. by Victor H. Mair  43

The Noon of Howling Wind / Yu Hua, transl. by Denis C. Mair  69

1968 / Yu Hua, transl. by Andrew F. Jones  74

This Story Is For Willow / Yu Hua, transl. by Denis C. Mair  114

Flying Over Maple Village / Su Tong, transl. by Michael S. Duke  147

The Birth of the Water God / Su Tong, transl. by Beatrice Spade  160

The Brothers Shu / Su Tong, transl. by Howard Goldblatt  173

The Hut on the Mountain / Can Xue, transl. by Ronald R. Janssen and Jian Zhang  212

The Big Drugstore / Bei Cun, transl. by Caroline Mason  217

I Am a Young Drunkard / Sun Ganlu, transl. by Kristina M. Torgeson  235

More Ways Than One to Make a Kite / Ma Yuan, transl. by Zhu Hong  246

A Wandering Spirit / Ma Yuan, transl. by Caroline Mason  264

Acknowledgment of Copyrights  284

Contributors  286

Jing Wang

Gei Fei

Andrew F. Jones

Yu Hua

Su Ganlu

Su Tong

Can Xue

Bei Cun

Ma Yuan

“The book contains 14 expertly translated stories by seven contemporary Chinese writers. . . . In her eloquent, . . . stimulating, and thought-provoking . . . introductory essay Jing Wang provides the historical and ideological framework for interpreting the stories in terms of their ‘antihumanist’ stance. . . . [T]his is a most valuable and useful volume, to be recommended to anyone interested in Chinese literature and cultural critique. Used on its own or as a companion volume to Jing Wang’s recent, much acclaimed monograph High Culture Fever, it will make excellent course material for Chinese as well as comparative literature studies.”—The China Quarterly

“Filled with images, hallucinations, myths, mental puzzles, and the fantastic, the contemporary experimental fiction of the Chinese avant-garde represents a genre unlike any other. Jing Wang has collected fourteen examples of this new school of writing that gained prominence in the late 1980s. Contributors include Ge Fei, Yu Hua, Su Tong, Can Xue, Bei Cun, Sun Ganlu, and Ma Yuan. Enriched by the work of a dozen distinguished translators, the stories present an aesthetic experience that may have outraged many revolutionary-minded readers in China, but one that also serves as a dramatic manifesto of the making of a postrevolutionary literary sensibility obsessed with form and the pleasure of storytelling.”—Translation Review

“China’s Avant-Garde Fiction deals with the 1987 emergence of the Avant-Garde School of fiction writing. The short fiction pieces here pay tribute to mad homicidal instincts, irrational impulses, taboo thought and words, writing outside of a political context (or debunking the political status quo). . . . Jing Wang’s China’s Avant-Garde Fiction offers a variety of thought-provoking . . . writings by many of China’s best-known modernist writers.”—Pacific Reader

“The translations are of high quality. . . . This literature is an essential and startling moment in modern Chinese literary history, or indeed modern Chinese history; and this anthology would make an excellent textbook.”—Jingyuan Zhang, Journal of Asian and African Studies

“This well-translated anthology . . . should interest professors and graduate students of contemporary Chinese literature.”—Philip F. Williams, Choice

“The book contains 14 expertly translated stories by seven contemporary Chinese writers. . . . In her eloquent, . . . stimulating, and thought-provoking . . . introductory essay Jing Wang provides the historical and ideological framework for interpreting the stories in terms of their ‘antihumanist’ stance. . . . [T]his is a most valuable and useful volume, to be recommended to anyone interested in Chinese literature and cultural critique. Used on its own or as a companion volume to Jing Wang’s recent, much acclaimed monograph High Culture Fever, it will make excellent course material for Chinese as well as comparative literature studies.”—The China Quarterly

“Filled with images, hallucinations, myths, mental puzzles, and the fantastic, the contemporary experimental fiction of the Chinese avant-garde represents a genre unlike any other. Jing Wang has collected fourteen examples of this new school of writing that gained prominence in the late 1980s. Contributors include Ge Fei, Yu Hua, Su Tong, Can Xue, Bei Cun, Sun Ganlu, and Ma Yuan. Enriched by the work of a dozen distinguished translators, the stories present an aesthetic experience that may have outraged many revolutionary-minded readers in China, but one that also serves as a dramatic manifesto of the making of a postrevolutionary literary sensibility obsessed with form and the pleasure of storytelling.”—Translation Review

“China’s Avant-Garde Fiction deals with the 1987 emergence of the Avant-Garde School of fiction writing. The short fiction pieces here pay tribute to mad homicidal instincts, irrational impulses, taboo thought and words, writing outside of a political context (or debunking the political status quo). . . . Jing Wang’s China’s Avant-Garde Fiction offers a variety of thought-provoking . . . writings by many of China’s best-known modernist writers.”—Pacific Reader

“The translations are of high quality. . . . This literature is an essential and startling moment in modern Chinese literary history, or indeed modern Chinese history; and this anthology would make an excellent textbook.”—Jingyuan Zhang, Journal of Asian and African Studies

“This well-translated anthology . . . should interest professors and graduate students of contemporary Chinese literature.”—Philip F. Williams, Choice

“This collection is bound to create an impact on the direction of research in Chinese literary studies. And Jing’s perceptive discussion of this school’s artistic and historical relevances is likely to become standard reference for future explorations of recent literary developments in China.”—Sung-sheng Yvonne Chang, University of Texas at Austin

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