A RiverA River.docVIP

A Rivers Gifts Sheng Keyi was born in Hunan Province, moved to Shenzhen in 1994 and now lives in Beijing. She started her literary career in 2002. In her novel “The Northern Girls,” she writes about women, like herself, who left small villages for large cities after sweeping economic reforms in the late 1970s. Her other works include “Death Fugue” and “House on Fire,” as well as a novella and short story collections. When I was younger I was ashamed to admit I came from a remote village, yet I lacked the courage to claim I was from a city, so I usually said simply that I came from an outlying township. Now I must tell the truth, that I was born in an isolated village. Let me start from the banks of a humble river where my life began and which is the true source of my writing. My fellow villagers live and while away their time in a monotonous environment completely cut off from the outside world. I know their lives only too well. If I had not harbored a distant dream from a very young age I would have shared their fate. In the northeastern part of Hunan Province in an area called Yiyang a river passes a place that is not found on maps and is only known to the people who live there. This humble river passes through the ancient township of Lanxi, so, like the haphazard naming of village children, the river is called the Lanxi River. All my memories of a joyful childhood and the pains of growing up are intertwined with the river. She keeps all of my secrets. To this day I have never seen such a beautiful river as the Lanxi River, with its sweet translucent waters, verdant embankments and weeping willows gently sweeping the water’s surface. In the 1970s, skiffs with white sails still languidly glided by while barefooted boat trackers trudged along the sandy verges. Poverty and poetic beauty are inseparable twins — whenever this image resurfaces in my conscience, more often it is the sorrow of life that comes to my mind. The Cultural Revolution, the “smashing of th