By Xiaolu Guo
The most recent novel from Orange Prize finalist Xiaolu Guo is the enchantingly funny story of a tender chinese language woman's lifestyles as a movie additional in hyper-modern, tumultuous Beijing.Though twenty-one-year-old Fenfang Wang has traveled 1,800 miles to hunt her fortune in city Beijing, she is ill-prepared for what greets her: a Communist regime that has outworn its welcome, a urban in slap-dash improvement, and a sexist angle extra according to her peasant upbringing than the country's innovative capital. yet after studying the fever and tumult of the town, Fenfang eventually unearths her actual independence within the one position she by no means anticipated.
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Sample text
The river was the only thing that talked to me. My parents certainly didn't. Our house was a house of silence, just like the sweet potatoes quietly growing and dying under the black soil. Those vast, silent fields surrounded our village like a wall. They stretched across the hills and into the distance – sweet potatoes as far as the eye could see. Only the river made a noise, only the river was my friend – but, even then, I couldn't get close to it. I used to imagine the source of the river. Some faraway, hidden cave that was home to a beautiful fairy.
I handed over my 15-yuan registration fee. Without looking at me, he took a bunch of keys from his belt and, leaning forward, opened an old squeaky drawer. He found a big stamp, adjusted some numbers, and pressed it into a red ink pad. Then he raised his arm and slammed it down on my form. Extra No. 6787. So, I was the 6,787th person in Beijing wanting a job in the film and TV industry. Between me and a role stood 6,786 other people – young and beautiful, old and ugly. 5 billion people in China, 6,786 wasn't such a daunting number.
These old-time Beijing residents thought they were the 'Citizens of the Emperor'. They didn't seem so noble to me. I sat by the road on my suitcase. Two old men were squatting near me, drinking tea and playing chess. They looked as though they'd been there for hours, or weeks, or maybe even centuries. After a while I realised I felt really hungry. Not my usual kind of hunger, the low grumble that begins in my belly the moment I get up and doesn't stop, however much I eat. This was serious hunger – the kind when you've been on a train for three days without anything proper to eat.