Pathlight, Summer 2013

Pathlight is a magazine of Chinese fiction and poetry in English translation.



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.