Granta 169 - Thomas Meaney

From Nobel Prize-winning writers to debut novelists, \nBritain's most prestigious literary magazine brings you the best in new \nwriting, photography and art from around the world. \n\n \n \n\n \n \n \n\n No nation boasts more manufacturing capacity than the \nPeople's Republic of China, yet few countries' literary products are less known \nin the English-speaking world. Witnesses to the country's revolutionary \nmodernisation, China's writers have experienced historical whiplashes and \nsprints forward on an extreme scale. The zhiqing - the \neducated youth whom Mao 'sent down' to the countryside and who experienced a \ndecade of extreme austerity - are at a vast distance from the generations below \nthem, who have lived through an epoch of self-assertion and creative dreaming. \nIn China today, writers across generations look abroad, to new technologies, as \nwell as to rich veins in the Chinese literary past for new modes of expression. \n \nGranta's special issue on the writing of contemporary China \ncollects the mainland's most thrilling voices. Featuring memoir from Xiao Hai \non moving to Shenzhen at fifteen to work in its factories, reportage from Han \nZhang, who visits the working-class writers carving out a living in Picun, as \nwell as new fiction from Mo Yan, Yu Hua, Yan Lianke, Shuang Xuetao, Zhang \nYueran, Ban Yu, Wang Zhanhei, Zhou Jingzhi, and many more. Poetry by Huang Fan, Lan Lan, Hu Xudong and \nZheng Xiaoqiong. Photography by Feng Li, Haohui Liu, and Li Jie and \nZhang Jungang.\n