Spring Silkworms and Other Stories

Dun, Mao

Cheng Tsui Co.

Mao Dun's most popular stories are collected here, in a new bilingual edition. Spring Silkworms tells the heartbreaking story of peasant's struggles to bring their silkworm cocoons to market. The Shop of the Lin Family (the basis for a classic film)tells of a small business during the Japanese invasion, and the troubles that befall one family.

The Shop of the Lin Family Spring Silkworms (English and Chinese Edition)

Literature & Fiction

History & Criticism

Foreign Languages Press

Mao Dun's Waverings provides a riveting account of a fateful turning point in the history of the Chinese revolution. Set in a county town in the interior of China in 1927, the year the Communists were crushed in the coastal cities and shifted their mobilizing efforts toward the rural hinterland, the novel captures the pervasive sense of uncertainty and anxiety which accompanied that momentous transformation. Mao Zedong's famous Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan, published the same year, celebrated the poor peasants for their revolutionary commitment and chastised the middle peasants for 'wavering' (dongyao) in the heat of battle. As Mao Dun's gripping tale makes clear, however, middle peasants were not the only people shaken by the Red Terror that seized the Chinese countryside. The appalling violence of the day generated widespread apprehension and desperation on the part of rural society. Beautifully translated by David Hull, this original 1928 version of Mao Dun's novel opens a revealing window onto the complex drama of social revolution. A radical sympathizer himself, Mao Dun nevertheless writes with extraordinary insight and empathy about the human anguish that revolutionary struggle entailed for so many of his fellow countrymen. This book belongs on the reading list of anyone seeking to understand the Chinese revolution at one of its most critical junctures. -Elizabeth J. Perry Harvard University

Waverings

Research Centre for Translation, Chinese University of Hong Kong

Mao Dun originally published the short stories, "The Shop of the Lin Family" and "Spring Silkworms," in 1932. The first, which Zhu Ziqing considers Mao Dun's finest work, tells the story of a shop that sells foreign goods in a small town in China. The second is about a silk weaver, Old Tong Bao, who takes very good care of his silkworms, until the Japanese invasion of Shanghai in 1932 destroys his livelihood. The stories are available here for the first time in traditional Chinese characters.

The Shop of the Lin Family & Spring Silkworms (Bilingual Series in Modern Chinese Literature)

The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press

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