Originally published in 1934, "Border Town" tells the story of Cuicui, a young country girl who is coming of age during a time of national turmoil. The granddaughter of a poor ferryman, Cuicui grows up in Chadong, a small town in China's exotic southwestern frontier, where she is sheltered from the warlord fighting that was prevalent in China in the 1920s. Like any teenager, Cuicui dreams of romance and finding true love. She's caught up in the spell of the local custom of nighttime serenades, but she is also haunted by her grandfather's aging and imminent death. Both Cuicui and her grandfather know that she must find a husband who will take care of her once her grandfather is gone. Cuicui is pursued by two brothers - strong and brusque Tianbao, whose name means 'Heaven-protected', and his younger brother Nuosong ('Sent by the Nuo Gods') who is known for the fineness of his face and voice. Not wholly bound by the dictates of arranged marriage, Cuicui is prepared to make her choice based on love, but she is confounded by fate and her grandfather, who wishes for her to mature on her own.
Border Town: A Novel
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About the Author
Author Bio: Shen Congwen (1902-1988) is one of the most influential writers in China's modern history. His novel BORDER TOWN was banned under Mao's regime, only to become an inspiration to a new generation of Chinese writers in the late-twentieth century. Translator Bio: A native of Champaign, Illinois, Jeffrey C. Kinkley graduated from the University of Chicago and has a Ph.D. in History and East Asian Languages from Harvard. He is the author of the literary biography The Odyssey of Shen Congwen (Stanford, 1987) and has translated numerous works of fiction, including stories by Shen Congwen in Imperfect Paradise (Hawaii, 1995).
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4.5 out of 5 stars
4 reviews
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Superb! Shen Congwen is the Chinese Equivalent to Faulkner
7 Sep 2009
By Tax Accountant
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback
Congwen is one of China's literary giants. When I say "giants," I mean it. Congwen is often dubbed the "greatest lyric novelist" of modern China.
This new translation by Jeffrey C. Kinkley is a masterpiece. This book was originally written in the time before the Communists took over China. Congwen suffered a breakdown during the communist revolution and never published another work of fiction. This story is a glimpse into the beauty of a countryside so rich in history. The storytelling is wonderful.
This is a coming of age story set in rural China. The main character is a young girl named Cuicui. It's hard to discuss the plot (which includes a tragic turn for a family member-- I don't even want to say which one) without giving away much of the story. I hate "spoiler reviews". I don't want to make it impossible to enjoy the book, so I'll just say that this is a classic of fine Chinese literature.
That really should be enough. Don't miss this modern translation.
Recommended, without any reservations.
This new translation by Jeffrey C. Kinkley is a masterpiece. This book was originally written in the time before the Communists took over China. Congwen suffered a breakdown during the communist revolution and never published another work of fiction. This story is a glimpse into the beauty of a countryside so rich in history. The storytelling is wonderful.
This is a coming of age story set in rural China. The main character is a young girl named Cuicui. It's hard to discuss the plot (which includes a tragic turn for a family member-- I don't even want to say which one) without giving away much of the story. I hate "spoiler reviews". I don't want to make it impossible to enjoy the book, so I'll just say that this is a classic of fine Chinese literature.
That really should be enough. Don't miss this modern translation.
Recommended, without any reservations.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A beautiful, perfect novel
24 Sep 2010
By Larry Feign
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
This lush, bittersweet short novel centers around the lives of a ferryman and his orphaned granddaughter Cuicui living by a river bank outside a remote town on the Szechuan-Hunan provincial border (hence the title). The novel takes place at the time it was written, after the fall of the dynasty but before the chaos of the Japanese invasion and World War 2, when ancient traditions and morality were still intact, especially in distant outposts such as the town of Chadong.
Cuicui, aged 13 to 15 through the course of the story, dreams of romance while dreading the negative consequence of marriage: leaving her beloved, aging grandfather. Meanwhile she is courted by two brothers from the nearby town, one through a match-maker, the other by means of the Szechuanese tradition of love song serenades. In her innocence, Cuicui both deliberately and unintentionally ignores the brothers' advances.
The author depicts a beautiful and idyllic landscape as an almost cinematic backdrop for the reserved, taciturn relations between his characters. He employs short bursts of emotional dialogue, then pulls away to focus on the minutiae of rural life--the steel striker used to light a pipe, the feel of silk crepe turban cloth, jars of tung oil and bamboo tubes filled with wine--in the way that a bashful girl turns her head aside out of modesty.
Chen packs concentrated bursts of emotion into scenes throughout the novel, telling a heart-grabbing story of life by the river. It's a gorgeous book, considered a masterpiece of modern Chinese writing, for which the author was to have been awarded the 1988 Nobel Prize for Literature had he not died just before the official announcement.
The translation is beautifully written. Strongly recommended.
Cuicui, aged 13 to 15 through the course of the story, dreams of romance while dreading the negative consequence of marriage: leaving her beloved, aging grandfather. Meanwhile she is courted by two brothers from the nearby town, one through a match-maker, the other by means of the Szechuanese tradition of love song serenades. In her innocence, Cuicui both deliberately and unintentionally ignores the brothers' advances.
The author depicts a beautiful and idyllic landscape as an almost cinematic backdrop for the reserved, taciturn relations between his characters. He employs short bursts of emotional dialogue, then pulls away to focus on the minutiae of rural life--the steel striker used to light a pipe, the feel of silk crepe turban cloth, jars of tung oil and bamboo tubes filled with wine--in the way that a bashful girl turns her head aside out of modesty.
Chen packs concentrated bursts of emotion into scenes throughout the novel, telling a heart-grabbing story of life by the river. It's a gorgeous book, considered a masterpiece of modern Chinese writing, for which the author was to have been awarded the 1988 Nobel Prize for Literature had he not died just before the official announcement.
The translation is beautifully written. Strongly recommended.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Bordering on Great
6 Sep 2012
By chairy
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback
Perhaps the third most important modern Chinese writer (after Eileen Chang and Lu Xun), Shen Congwen depicts in Border Town an idyllic, if not idealistic, vision of rural Chinese life just after the dawn of the last century. With an impassive poise and a delicate touch, Shen gives us a sketch that, instead of focusing on the headlines of the day to compose a realistic picture of the times, gazes into the details of a ferrier's family's lives as filtered through something of a love triangle where headlines are almost absorbed completely into people's everyday reality without a trace, shedding a vast and poignant light on the lives it illustrates.
My criticism is Shen sometimes seems to feel a little too 'sympathetic' toward his characters and their way of life (matched perhaps only by his repugnance of the Communists' exploitation thereof) that Border Town borders on utopia, turning more into nostalgic parable than doing the reality of these people full justice. I feel at times a small, moralizing, apophatically polemic voice through the text's background pulls the author down from arriving at a true, elevated and wide vantage. I didn't like the implicit allusion to the fall of Eden either, or the 'plot' of the love triangle, which feels forced.
The publishers' book descriptions are banal as usual, and the unfortunate blab on the cover placing Shen Congwen and Pearl S Buck in the same sentence (like comparing Henry Miller to EL James) tries to make a dumb and racist appeal to Westerners longing for the exotic that safely conforms to their stereotype of China the Beautiful (perpetuated not only by Westerners but also by Chinese themselves trying to pander to those audiences). However, despite these flaws, I recommend Border Town as essential for anyone interested in modern Chinese writing. I would recommend more heartily Shen Congwen's autobiography for those who read Chinese.
My criticism is Shen sometimes seems to feel a little too 'sympathetic' toward his characters and their way of life (matched perhaps only by his repugnance of the Communists' exploitation thereof) that Border Town borders on utopia, turning more into nostalgic parable than doing the reality of these people full justice. I feel at times a small, moralizing, apophatically polemic voice through the text's background pulls the author down from arriving at a true, elevated and wide vantage. I didn't like the implicit allusion to the fall of Eden either, or the 'plot' of the love triangle, which feels forced.
The publishers' book descriptions are banal as usual, and the unfortunate blab on the cover placing Shen Congwen and Pearl S Buck in the same sentence (like comparing Henry Miller to EL James) tries to make a dumb and racist appeal to Westerners longing for the exotic that safely conforms to their stereotype of China the Beautiful (perpetuated not only by Westerners but also by Chinese themselves trying to pander to those audiences). However, despite these flaws, I recommend Border Town as essential for anyone interested in modern Chinese writing. I would recommend more heartily Shen Congwen's autobiography for those who read Chinese.
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