The Artisans A Vanishing Chinese Village The Legacy Of The Ancestors Of Shen Village Shen Fuyu by Shen Fuyu, Jeremy Tiang (translation) 9781662600753, 1662600755 instant download after payment.

Born in Shen Village in Southeast China, Shen Fuyu grew up in a family of farmers. Years later, Shen, now a writer, returned to his hometown to capture the village's rich history in the face of industrialization.

Through his own childhood memories & those of his ancestors, Shen resurrects the working life of Shen Village through interlinked stories of fifteen artisans as their lives intersect over the course of a century. While Shen's view of his hometown & his heritage is tinged with nostalgia, he does not romanticize it. Nor does he sugarcoat the backbreaking difficulty of life in rural China, but he still captures its small satisfactions & joys of loving one's work with a great deal of care.

In an acerbic, earthy & unsparing style that swings from poignancy to comedy, sometimes within a single paragraph, Shen evokes the spirits of these workers--a bamboo-weaver & his beloved bull, a carpenter's magical saw, the deserter who became the village lantern-maker & a rebellious woman who beats up her own kidnapper.

A reflection on the vicissitudes of small-town life during the epic shift from agricultural to industrial civilization, The Artisans vividly details the hardships, friendships & communal mythmaking of a disappearing community.

Shen Fuyu was born in Jiangsu, China in 1970. At the age of 18, he left home & drifted around the country, taking up a variety of jobs--porter, clerk, & schoolteacher--and began his writing career. He graduated from the Department of Chinese Language & Literature of Nanjing University in 1996, & has been working as a journalist for 20 years. Having published more than a dozen books, Shen is a full-time writer now & lives in Paris.