Pathlight: New Chinese Writing

For China, "more, better, bigger, faster" has been the only doctrine of development for the last thirty-five years. Resources disappear and outward identities - countrysides, communities, relationships - are forcibly repackaged in modern materials in the interest of progress. Then, one high-speed train knocks another off the track, and the government rescue teams bury the evidence.

What does a national love for speed do to the people who make the nation? Do people live better in concrete boxes than they did in wooden ones? Trains, cars, and apartments now haunt the Chinese imagination. Wang Anyi and Sheng Tie present us with life on the rails: one dream and one nightmare. Lu Nei's Shuangfeng is forever running after something that's out of his grasp; Ren Xiaowen's mermaid is fleeing for her life. A Yi's Zhou Lingtong starts out on the lam but comes full circle, while Li Hao's narrator seems to be fully at rest.

Pathlight is an English-language literary magazine produced by Paper Republic and People's Literature Magazine (《人民文学》杂志社). Pathlight aims to introduce the best new writing and poetry from China, with occasional detours.