Shen Congwen (1902?-1988) was one of modern China's great writers and one of the finest Chinese prose stylists of all time. Literary critics and historians have pointed to his power as a stylist and his ability to create characters with rich and realistic souls. Readers credit him with having described beautiful and fulfilling styles of life, even in materially primitive surroundings, that conjure up the "health and dignity" prized by the Crescent Moon writers. He wrote many works exposing the abuses of the military in the countryside, and the vanity of the urban bourgeoisie. Most of the short stories in this collection, typeset in bilingual format, reveal the plight and the strength of the common people, the rural folks of his native region whom he knew from his daily life.
