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Biographical note
Zhang Wei is a contemporary writer and vice chairman of the China Writers Association. He has authored twenty-one novels, and as of 2014, forty-eight volumes of his collected works have been published. He has won many national literary prizes, including the Mao Dun Literature Award, and his writing has been translated into dozens of languages, including English, Japanese, French, and German. Haiwang Yuan is Professor Emeritus at Western Kentucky University in the US, and Guest Professor of English at Nankai University, China. He is a writer, translator and translation consultant. He has authored and co-authored many books, including Tibetan Folktales, Tales from the Other Peoples of China, The Magic Lotus Lantern, Other Tales from the Han Chinese and This is China: The First 5,000 Years. Among two dozen of his translations are Songs from the Forest, There is a Fish in the Desert, Open-Air Cinema and Illustrated Stories of Chinese Characters for Children. He has consulted on the translation of two Sinoist Books titles.Since ancient times, Jiwo village and its forests have been a sanctuary. Man, beast and those somewhere in between live in harmony, all part of a timeless chorus, until one day a discordant note strikes with the emergence of the tyrant Tang Laotuo and his son Tang Tong, stripping the land bare to feed their expanding industrial empire.
Among the natives in the spreading dusty haze is the beautiful hedgehog spirit Mei Di, and her headstrong husband Liao Mai. Their home is a rural utopia threatened by the foul noise and smoke belching from the Tang’s factories.
As the bulldozers rumble ever closer, the change not only strains the lovers’ relationship but also puts Jiwo’s age-old balance in jeopardy. A reckoning will surely come one day, and as silence falls, will anyone still remember the old songs?
Ancient Jiwo sits in harmony with nature. Many of its people are part-animal. The tyrant Tang Laotuo and his son Tang Tong shatter its peace by plundering the forest. Meanwhile Mei Di - a hedgehog-woman, and Liao Mai - an idealist- fall in love, but their plans are imperilled by a jealous Tang Tong and his expanding industrial empire.