Granta 169 - Thomas Meaney

From Nobel Prize-winning writers to debut novelists,Britain''s most prestigious literary magazine brings you the best in newwriting, photography and art from around the world.No nation boasts more manufacturing capacity than thePeople''s Republic of China, yet few countries'' literary products are less knownin the English-speaking world. Witnesses to the country''s revolutionarymodernisation, China''s writers have experienced historical whiplashes andsprints forward on an extreme scale. The zhiqing – theeducated youth whom Mao ''sent down'' to the countryside and who experienced adecade of extreme austerity – are at a vast distance from the generations belowthem, who have lived through an epoch of self-assertion and creative dreaming.In China today, writers across generations look abroad, to new technologies, aswell as to rich veins in the Chinese literary past for new modes of expression.Granta''s special issue on the writing of contemporary Chinacollects the mainland''s most thrilling voices. Featuring memoir from Xiao Haion moving to Shenzhen at fifteen to work in its factories, reportage from HanZhang, who visits the working-class writers carving out a living in Picun, aswell as new fiction from Mo Yan, Yu Hua, Yan Lianke, Shuang Xuetao, ZhangYueran, Ban Yu, Wang Zhanhei, Zhou Jingzhi, and many more. Poetry by Huang Fan, Lan Lan, Hu Xudong andZheng Xiaoqiong. Photography by Feng Li, Haohui Liu, and Li Jie andZhang Jungang.