1934Border Town
Shen Congwen
Shen Congwen's lyrical pastoral is set in the little ferry town of Chadong, on a river in the far west of Hunan near the borders of Sichuan and Guizhou, where the orphan girl Cuicui lives with her grandfather, the old ferryman, and comes shyly of age between two brothers who both love her. The real West Hunan landscape is the whole book: the rope ferry over the green stream, the white pagoda above it, the little riverside town and its dragon-boat festival, and the encircling hills.
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