Writer delves into home truths

In 2017, she published her second book Yanzi Zuihou Feiqule Nali (literally, "where have all the swallows flown"). This was about the stories of the five daughters in a poor rural family.

In a plain and reserved voice, Shen Shuzhi recounts the emotional bonds of the sisters and their own lives, faithfully representing the subtleties of daily existence. With heart-wrenching or heartwarming stories, she records the growing-up process of a generation, faithfully mirroring the changing life in the countryside and representing the refreshing feeling a generation of rural residents had when they left for cities to work or study and also the inevitable pains.

In 2019, the third essay collection by Shen Shuzhi was published, titled Ba Pu Ge (literally, "song of pulling cattails"), still about her hometown in South Anhui — the games played in the countryside in her childhood, the flowers and plants in the rural area, snacks and dishes in the south, a youth's secrets and the "current" life in the countryside and the city. Written between 2013 and 2018, when China was experiencing fast urbanization, the book records the life in the countryside from the past to the present, building a spiritual native land for generations of readers.

All the three books rank high on most popular literary or folk-custom book lists in their publishing years on Douban.

The latest book Take Me Home includes similar subjects in the previous three, but the last essay, spanning 30,000 words, titled Xiangxia De Chenhun (literally, "the dawn and dusk of the countryside"), focused on something different. It's not only about the mellow and tender childhood memories, the harsh part of which have been filtered by time, but also the darker, painful and obscure aspects of the present life in the countryside that she understands deeper through the eyes of a mature writer and an adult woman.

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