Land of Big Numbers

by Te-Ping Chen | Literature & Fiction |
ISBN: 0358331544 Global Overview for this book
Registered by veleta of Willesden, Greater London United Kingdom on 9/5/2020
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1 journaler for this copy...
Journal Entry 1 by veleta from Willesden, Greater London United Kingdom on Saturday, September 5, 2020
Non-loanable book.

China is the most populated country in the world, and it has been so but a number of years. So the title is just absolutely fitting.

Obviously, the author focuses in specific stories from a small group of characters in these ten stories. I have to say in advance that I usually like short stories, and collections books with a concept or a link between these short stories, (be it topic, genre, character, plots, atmosphere...) do appeal to me. It is a mixture of plausible every day stories which suddenly have a turn to the weird and melodramatic.

I read at another webpage that the author is a journalist who lives in the USA, and I could feel it so. Her outlook is modern and very urban. I specially liked this aspect in the story about people trapped in an underground station. I linked it to Latin American magical realism. The story of La Autopista del Sur by Julio Cortázar is the biggest reference. In the story of the Argentinian, it was a huge traffic jam which made realistic life stories unravel. I also linked it to Buñuel's movie El discreto encanto de la burgesía, one of my favourite movies every. On it, people cannot leave a house for some reason after a dinner feast.

All these references from the Spanish-speaking world show how I read these short stories. Chinese culture is something foreign to me, so I had to look for referents that spoke to me. After all, and that is my conclusion, people are people, and we all are the same, made of the same materials. Did I catch every cultural reference? Probably not, but I enjoyed the stories all the same. If the author says that events would happen like that, I have no reason to suspect her of lying.

My second favourite story is Lulu. I liked the big contrast between the escapism of a teenager who uses video gaming as a way out to the realism of the twin, who uses the same media to expose corruption in an ever-reaching Communist party who has become cruel, dictatorial, and surrealist, all at the same time. Different paths can be natural responses to the same events.

All in all, I would recommend it to anybody who wants to know about the modern experience of being Chinese, or for somebody who likes literary works in general. Each short story has been taken care of individually. All of them have been beautifully written, and several endings caught me by surprised, which I appreciated a lot.




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