Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read.

Start by marking “A Dictionary of Maqiao” as Want to Read:

Other editions

Enlarge cover

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Open Preview

A Dictionary of Maqiao

Han Shaogong,

Julia Lovell (Translation)

3.95 · Rating details · 302 ratings · 37 reviews

From the daring imagination of one of China’s greatest living novelists comes a work of startling power and originality–the story of a young man “displaced” to a small village in rural China during the 1960s. Told in the format of a dictionary, with a series of vignettes disguised as entries, A Dictionary of Maqiao is a novel of bold invention–and a fascinating, comic, dee ...more

Get A Copy

Paperback, 416 pages

Published September 27th 2005 by Dial Press Trade Paperback (first published 1996)

More Details... Edit Details

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Reader Q&A

To ask other readers questions about A Dictionary of Maqiao, please sign up.

Be the first to ask a question about A Dictionary of Maqiao

Lists with This Book

The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz by Russell Hoban

The Man Who Collected Machen and Other Weird Tales by Mark Samuels

REALLY Seriously Underrated Books (100 to 500 Ratings)

1,378 books — 323 voters

Books Set in SOUTH CHINA

77 books — 22 voters

More lists with this book...

Community Reviews

Showing 1-30

Average rating 3.95 ·

Rating details

· 302 ratings · 37 reviews

More filters

Sort order

Start your review of A Dictionary of Maqiao

Feb 27, 2017 Andrew added it

Shelves: chinese-fiction

Where to even start with this? Who knew books like this even existed? First, how many Chinese novels have you read (and I ain't talking about those overseas-Chinese novels about how they can't truly connect with their grandparents) for starters... despite the fact that nearly 20 percent of humanity identifies as Chinese in some meaningful way. Now, let's look at how fucking insane the structure of this book is, a dizzying collage of stories all of which are this sort of folk sociolinguistics of ...more

flag 9 likes · Like · see review

Apr 24, 2013 Bjorn rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: china

Having a sense of humour doesn't mean being able to tell jokes. Humour is the ability to play with the expected. Which is never more apparent than when authority tries to tell people what to think.

In 1970, the young intellectual student Han Shaogong was sent to the tiny village of Maqiao, where not much has changed since the emperor's days. But this was the cultural revolution and everything was to be made new: city-dwelling weaklings would become good workers, and in the process help turn the f Having a sense of humour doesn't mean being able to tell jokes. Humour is the ability to play with the expected. Which is never more apparent than when authority tries to tell people what to think.

In 1970, the young intellectual student Han Shaogong was sent to the tiny village of Maqiao, where not much has changed since the emperor's days. But this was the cultural revolution and everything was to be made new: city-dwelling weaklings would become good workers, and in the process help turn the farmers into good socialists. So when he's not working the fields or the mountains, Han gets to teach the farmers to recite Mao quotes in proper, modern Chinese. But of course, to do that he first needs to understand their dialect, which isn't easy - you'd think the whole village was speaking backwards! "Awake" means "stupid", "expensive" means "young", "respect" means "punish", "hick" means "city boy", "democracy" means "chaos"... woops, sorry, some of those are modern Chinese. But anyway.

25 years later Han has grown to an accomplished novelist and puts together this fiction about life in Maqiao (any similarity between that name and Macondo is surely a coincidence) before, during and after his visit, in a form he's borrowed from Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being: A dictionary of the Maqiao dialect, where every chapter heading is a different word he needs to explain, at once making up a part of the ongoing story and an explanation for why that particular word has that particular meaning in this particular place. And of course, he doesn't present it all in alphabetical order like a proper dictionary; alphabets - especially the Chinese one, where words can be spelled several different ways, each of which gives them a different meaning - are arbitrary, after all. So instead he arranges them in a different order, to tell a very entertaining story of the people who make up the village, full of serious gallows humour and with an amazing cast of characters - none of which seem to fit neatly into the categories his standardised Maoist vocabulary tells him they belong to. And 25 years later, as a Chinese intellectual with his head full of Western books, he can't help but draw parallels between his outsider status then, and the different but similar one he faces today.

In 1986 I visited an "artists' colony" in Virginia, USA; that is, a center for artistic creation. The word "colony" kept making me uncomfortable. Only later did I realize that many Westerners in countries that used to have a large number of colonies don't associate the word with murder, fires, rape, plunder, opium smuggling and other things that the people in former colonies think about when they hear it. [To them] the colony is an outpost for the noble, a field camp for heroes.

...says the man who was sent to the countryside to teach them how to think in a new age. All words, all concepts, mean different things depending on by whom, when, where and how they're spoken. What starts in a small village in inner China becomes a cross-section of the world where battles are increasingly fought with words and ideologies rather than brute force - defeating someone is one thing, changing their minds is another, even Mao knew that. And as burlesque, angry, sentimental or hilarious the stories of the hicks... sorry, that word doesn't work here... in Maqiao get, the subtext of how we control and are controlled by language runs through everything in a way that's both very similar to and completely different from what a writer like Herta Müller does. Orwell was wrong; Big Brother's doublethink will always, through usage, be knowingly or accidentally subverted into triplethink.

A Dictionary of Maqiao, as a deconstruction of the idea of ideological revolution (whether Maoist or capitalist) imposed from outside, knows better than to offer simple problems or solutions. Instead Han creates a very entertaining chronicle where both the characters and the underlying themes float like a river of rice gruel, blood, sweat and shit, always leaving new layers of sediment and breaking through every attempt to dam it, yet always clear enough to see the bottom and calm enough to reflect the person reading it. ...more

flag 8 likes · Like · see review

Jul 27, 2019 Jim Elkins added it

Shelves: chinese

Traditional storytelling overwhelming experimental fiction

"A Dictionary of Maqiao" is a 1996 Chinese novel about a fictional village in the south of China. It takes the form of a dictionary, which is an unusual gambit for a novel. A principal precedent is Milorad Pavić's "Dictionary of the Khazars" (1984). (See the note at the end of this review.) Are there others? There are shorter pieces by Borges, Perec, and Lem, but I am not aware of other book-length dictionaries that ask to be read as nove ...more

flag 4 likes · Like · see review

Feb 21, 2014 ☕Laura rated it really liked it

Shelves: world-view, historical-fiction, owned-books

This was such a unique book; part novel, part short story collection, part memoir, part treatise on language and culture. The author was one of the "Educated Youth" relocated to the countryside, specifically the village of Maqiao, in the 1950's as part of Mao's Cultural Revolution. The author presents his somewhat fictionalized experiences in Maqiao as vignettes, each revolving around a particular word, name, or phrase from the Maqiao dialect. Through these we are introduced to a cast of eccentr ...more

flag 4 likes · Like · see review

Aug 01, 2015 John Armstrong rated it it was amazing

Shelves: chinese-modern

Han Shaogong’s A Dictionary of Maqiao, originally published in Chinese in 1996 and translated into English by Julia Lovell in 2006, is not only the best novel I’ve read in the last few years but also an absolute miracle of translation. The translator had great admiration for the book and approached the author for permission to translate it into English. She relates his response as, “I am very happy that you wish to translate the book, but I’m afraid it will be terribly difficult.”

She was not s Han Shaogong’s A Dictionary of Maqiao, originally published in Chinese in 1996 and translated into English by Julia Lovell in 2006, is not only the best novel I’ve read in the last few years but also an absolute miracle of translation. The translator had great admiration for the book and approached the author for permission to translate it into English. She relates his response as, “I am very happy that you wish to translate the book, but I’m afraid it will be terribly difficult.”

She was not sure exactly why he thought it would be “terribly difficult”, but an obvious reason is that it is a book about language, and not simply language but non-standard-language. Specifically it’s about the language of Maqiao, a village in northern Hunan, that differs from standard Chinese (Putonghua, Mandarin) not only in vocabulary and pronunciation but also in worldview.

The book takes the form of a journal written by an “educated youth” sent to the country to work with peasants in the latter part of the Cultural Revolution (something that Han experienced directly), but it’s organized into a dictionary of dialect words used in the area he moved to, that is, Maqiao. The author explains the origin of the words as best he can and gives examples of situations where they are actually used, which are effectively vignettes of Maqiao life. But he doesn’t stop there. Rather he goes on to use the words he’s introduced in accounts of other words – that is, in other vignettes – similarly to the way a language textbook will introduce some new vocabulary items in some chapter and then use them periodically in later chapters.

You might imagine that the author is simply peppering the speech of his characters with dialog words to add “local color”, but this is not the case. The journalist/narrator uses the words himself, sparingly but pointedly, as if it is only by using Maqiao words that he can properly describe what he sees and feels in Maqiao. And the words aren’t just any words, dialect or not, they’re words that one way or add to or go beyond normal language, like “streetsickness” which refers to the visceral disorientation that country people feel when they visit large cities or “scattered” which means dead but not necessarily totally gone.

Dictionary of Maqiao is definitely about language, but it’s also about culture and human nature. It reminded me, apart from its special interest on language, of another one of my favorite books, Yang Kwi-ja’s A Distant and Beautiful Place (original title The People of Wonmi-dong). Both share episodic structure, focus on a single place remote from the outside world but impacted by it, distinctive characters who are observed over time, and finally, a warm appreciation of ordinary people, complete with their faults and foibles. But where Yang’s books stays anchored in the world it describes, Han’s rises above its world and explores, modestly but incisively, deep philosophical questions as to the nature of language, culture and the human condition. I give Dictionary of Maqiao two sets of five stars, one going to the author for a great book and the other to the translator for a great translation.
...more

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Oct 01, 2017 Jason Pym rated it really liked it

Shelves: china

This book is an involving, vivid, occasionally funny portrait of a rural village told in the form of a dictionary. Each entry has the definition of a word from the local Maqiao dialect, and with it a new chapter of the story is told.

Aside from an entertaining story, the book is two things; an example of how Chinese village life is timeless no matter what political maelstrom is raging outside, and secondly a lamentation for the rich, earthy local languages lost to the bland functionalism of stan ...more

flag Like · see review

Aug 18, 2010 Rowland Pasaribu rated it really liked it

During the Cultural Revolution, Han Shaogong was one of seven Educated Youth sent to the hamlet of Maqiao in northern Hunan, which consisted of "forty-odd households, about ten head of cattle, and pigs, dogs, chickens, and ducks, with two long, narrow paddy fields hugging its perimeters". His observations of people and customs and language during the six years he spent there form the basis for his novel A Dictionary of Maqiao.

This takes the ostensible form of a dictionary or encyclopedia, with o During the Cultural Revolution, Han Shaogong was one of seven Educated Youth sent to the hamlet of Maqiao in northern Hunan, which consisted of "forty-odd households, about ten head of cattle, and pigs, dogs, chickens, and ducks, with two long, narrow paddy fields hugging its perimeters". His observations of people and customs and language during the six years he spent there form the basis for his novel A Dictionary of Maqiao.

This takes the ostensible form of a dictionary or encyclopedia, with over a hundred "entries" named after Maqiao terms or idioms; the prologue claims these were originally in alphabetical order, but in fact they follow each other in a logical sequence and are much closer to short stories than reference material.

The vignettes and stories in A Dictionary of Maqiao jump around chronologically: most are set during the narrator's time in Maqiao, but there are also episodes from a return visit many years later and from meetings with Maqiao residents elsewhere, as well as the explorations of earlier history. The narratorial perspective also changes: there are pieces in the third person, but in others the narrator intrudes, through first-person presence or commentary, and in some he plays a central role.

Despite its pointillist rendering and lack of a central plot, The Dictionary of Maqiao is an effective novel. It is centred by the community of Maqiao, following key individuals within it, the relationships between them, and the working out of their stories, over a span of decades. Twenty or more figures feature prominently: Party Branch secretary Benyi; his wife Tiexiang, daughter of beggar king "Nine Pockets"; the stonemason Zhihuang and his ox "Three-Hairs"; landlord's son and "traitor to the Chinese" Yanzao, and his "poison woman" grandmother and younger brother Yanwu; the ascetic dropout "Daoist Immortals"; and many more.

Shaogong devotes several entries to Maqiao's place in the historical record, going back into deep history and myth. More recent times are remembered by the villagers — the warlord period, the bandit leader Ma Wenjie, and the events in 1948 when the communists took control — but these are subject to different and changing interpretations. A Dictionary of Maqiao doesn't focus on politics, however. The effects of the Cultural Revolution and the sending of urban elites into the countryside are depicted rather than described, and comments on bureaucracy, Western stereotypes of Chinese politics, and so forth are mostly incidental.

Sociolinguistics provides the strongest recurrent theme. Shaogong explores the way language, and in particular lexical choice, marks social status, moulds the way people think, and reflects the forms of social control. (He never succumbs, however, to the lure of a naive linguistic determinism.) And he highlights the ways in which Maqiao dialect diverges from standard Mandarin — a translator's note mentions that five entries were omitted because they were dependent on untranslatable puns. A Dictionary of Maqiao is not an ethnography, with stories that have been selected and quite likely exaggerated for effect. But it is a powerful demonstration of just how different a remote rural village can be — or, for the Western audience of this translation, of the diversity of China.

A Dictionary of Maqiao is skillfully arranged to provide motive force, with far more momentum than a collection of short stories. And despite the sometimes dark subject material, its overall tone is light, with some detachment provided by the framing. The result is a gripping read.
...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Mar 22, 2010 Frank Kasell rated it really liked it

Shelves: chinese, asian

An interesting book, this. When I discovered it, the immediate comparison that came to mind was with the Dictionary of the Khazars by Milorad Pavić. Ultimately, though, outside of the main structural conceit (eschewing a conventional linear plot in favor of short, interconnecting "dictionary" entries), the connections are limited. In Han's fictionalized dictionary (it's unclear to me where the line is between the fiction and the reality, to be honest...not that I think it's important to know) of An interesting book, this. When I discovered it, the immediate comparison that came to mind was with the Dictionary of the Khazars by Milorad Pavić. Ultimately, though, outside of the main structural conceit (eschewing a conventional linear plot in favor of short, interconnecting "dictionary" entries), the connections are limited. In Han's fictionalized dictionary (it's unclear to me where the line is between the fiction and the reality, to be honest...not that I think it's important to know) of the Maqiao dialect (one of hundreds of dialects in China, many of which are incomprensible to one another), he cheerfully employs vignettes, anecdotes, personal musings, and essays to describe both a particular moment in Chinese history (30 years is basically a moment in a culture with a 5000 year history) and the nature of language. Unlike Pavić's book, the dictionary structure is just a framework. It would behoove a reader to read this straight through as if it were a linear novel, as later entries rely on the reader having read the earlier ones (as opposed to the Pavić book, which actively encourages the reader to flip through and read at random).

As historical fiction, the book does a fine job of sweeping the reader headlong into a tiny farming village in China. The small details about the culture and the landscape, along with the political climate at the time, allow readers to peek through a porthole into what is likely an unfamiliar setting. The (mostly) well outlined (and deeply Chinese) characters add a lot of heart to the narrative.

Equally important, though, are Han's musings on the nature of language. He spends a lot of time reflecting on the way language is a tool for power (for example, certain villagers have "speech rights" that automatically grant their words more importance than others'), but that power is limited. Those in control can't really control language, particularly when you include time as a factor. The moment words become static in people's minds, the moment they try to pin them down in time, is the moment that they lose their power. In the end, they are just words--you can't assume that the signifier is the signified. You can't turn words into sacred, untouchable relics or they die.

Beyond these thoughts on language and power, Han takes some time to explore the close connections between apparent opposites. As he demonstrates, opposite ideas often share more connections that one suspects at first glance (see, for example, his entries on "awakened" and "dream woman").

Overall, an interesting book. I suspect it was even better in Chinese (and presumably in the cultural context of China), but Julia Lovell does a terrific job of translating what the author himself considered to be nearly untranslatable. I certainly recommend it for people interested in language or in China (or, as in my case, in both). ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Apr 07, 2014 Wendy G rated it really liked it

This is one of the many books I chose based on the title; I was not disapponted. "A Dictionary of Maqiao" is a novel about a fictional village in rural China and the ways in which the people used language to resist, transgress, and mock the current political climate. The backdrop is the Down to the Countryside Movement, which was a component of the Cultural Revolution in China. Young, urban, college-educated people were sent en masse to rural villages to learn the real and valuable work of the p ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Apr 12, 2017 Leonie rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: male-protagonists, male-author

It was very beautifully written and the story got richer and better the more I read. It has deepened my understanding of chinese society and even though the stories are fictional I think they can represent lives that have and are lived. Having that said, the plot didn't really pull me in and even though it was beautiful I felt my mind wander after reading for a while so it took long to finish. ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Jan 10, 2018 Kitty rated it really liked it

What an intriguing and unusual book! I recommend this to anyone interested in language and/or Chinese history.

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Nov 12, 2019 Keenan rated it really liked it

Anyone with a scientific bent will appreciate a well designed or clever experiment, a methodology that gets to the roots of something new and groundbreaking. For this reason I have a great admiration for A Dictionary of Maqiao, a work of Chinese experimental fiction, that is exactly the sort of shrewd exploration of society that yields piercing insight into something we all take for granted: language.

First, our framework is Chinese, the world's longest continually used language, with the additio Anyone with a scientific bent will appreciate a well designed or clever experiment, a methodology that gets to the roots of something new and groundbreaking. For this reason I have a great admiration for A Dictionary of Maqiao, a work of Chinese experimental fiction, that is exactly the sort of shrewd exploration of society that yields piercing insight into something we all take for granted: language.

First, our framework is Chinese, the world's longest continually used language, with the additional twist that in the (fictional) town of Maqiao, a dialect of Mandarin heavy in local slang is used, giving a lot of flexibility to the author, and he cleverly organizes his dictionary in a way that outlines the spatial and temporal evolution of this ancient tongue.

The time period is the Cultural Revolution, which the author Han Shaogong lived through as an intellectual exiled to the rural areas, and is exemplary for how language can be detached from its roots and twisted around for sinister if well meaning purposes. Doublethink, propaganda, censorship, indoctrination, and public denunciations are among the ways that language is exploited to control the people, "controlling the narrative" so to speak.

By choosing the setting to be a small village in the Chinese countryside, teeming with local traditions and folklore, superstitions and curses, we have the perspective of the people who the revolution was supposed to help the most and for whom the abstract language of propaganda and societal reform becomes something farcical, revolutionary vocabulary in the hands of peasants who understand the world through ghosts and legends and have a dialect which reflects that.

The book itself is an exploration of all the themes listed above, structured as a dictionary where each word or slang term helps us understand the deep interplay between society and language, how we only understand things when we have words to describe them, how the identity of a town or village is intertwined with the vocabulary it develops, and so on. The dictionary itself is in an order that relies on previous entries to understand, with the book itself becoming, in Joycian fashion, an exercise in the dialect itself.

Ultimately, this book is best appreciated by those with some understanding of Chinese modern history and culture, but the lessons it provides are universal and precious and well worth a read. ...more

flag Like · see review

May 31, 2017 Richard Thompson rated it really liked it

Shelves: chinese-literature

I have read and enjoyed several traditional Chinese novels -- The Water Margin, The Scholars and The Dream of the Red Chamber, all of which are written in episodic fashion -- loosely connected stories with some commonality of plot, character and theme, but without a coherent story arc in the sense that is typical of Western novels. A Dictionary of Maqiao uses the form of a dictionary as a way to organize a novel with a traditional Chinese structure around very modern themes of language, culture ...more

flag Like · see review

Feb 11, 2017 Amy rated it liked it

"Is history nothing but a war of words?"
"All language is just language, and nothing else; no more than a few symbols describing facts, just as a clock is no more than a symbol describing time."

The narrator's personal dictionary to a village called Maqiao reads like fables in each dictionary entry. Han Shaogong uses the slipperiness of language and dialect to both attempt to pin down truth and to suggest that reality is perhaps forever out of that sort of definition—good or evil, right or wrong, ...more

flag Like · see review

Dec 30, 2020 Amari rated it really liked it

Unquestionably original, crafted with care, and imparting deep couleur locale. I had a bit of difficulty connecting to any of the characters as they were referred to somewhat sporadically, though it can't be said that they lack depth. This difficulty probably reflects my individualistic cultural origins, which would account for my expectation that characters will be developed in a linear way and will represent the primary means of communicating the author's intentions. One is, rather, left here ...more

flag Like · see review

Oct 31, 2018 Sherry Fyman rated it really liked it · review of another edition

This is as close as I could come to sitting down with someone displaced during the Cultural Revolution and finding out what daily life was like to be dropped hundreds of miles away from everything you know into a culture that is foreign in every way. We don't learn much about the narrator but learn tons about life in a rural community culturally cut off from the rest of the country and world. Life here is truly nasty, brutish and short. Outsiders are viewed with mistrust. Women are written out o ...more

flag Like · see review

Jan 12, 2017 William rated it really liked it

Unique postmodern structure plays out with linguistic insight and hilarious storytelling, -the story of a Chinese village is told through dictionary entries of their unique vernacular.

flag Like · see review

Mar 03, 2020 Kate Beittenmiller rated it it was amazing

Excellent story, told in a unique way through "dictionary" vignettes. ...more

flag Like · see review

Mar 13, 2016 Richard Yu rated it it was amazing

(view spoiler) ...more

flag Like · see review

Jun 05, 2007 Sarah Fisher rated it really liked it

Recommends it for: language lovers

4 stars since it tended to be dry at times. It's written in dictionary style using language and its cultural peculiarities to also tell the story of a remote village in China, which speaks their own dialect. Very interesting how the language really becomes part of the people. You'll probably get more out of it if you already have some background in Chinese, or better yet, can read it in the original language. It'll make the book easier to understand at first. ...more

flag Like · see review

Aug 05, 2011 Shanti Hofshi rated it liked it

Interesting approach to telling a story - a series of word definitions that bring the characters and their relationships to life little by little. Also a fascinating insight into life under the Cultural Revolution in China. Would be nice to know whether all the tidbits of information can be taken at face value, though.

flag Like · see review

May 17, 2008 Kelly rated it it was ok

Shelves: fiction

There were pages of this that I liked, pages that explored how language is rooted in place. There were small stories within the larger novel that were fascinating. But on the whole, it felt like work to finish it, like an unfinished promise.

flag Like · see review

Feb 19, 2011 Valette Keller rated it did not like it

Shelves: didn-t-finish

So slow and boring. The few bits of story that happened in some of the definitions were kind of interesting, but the history of the people and the lands an the words was uninteresting and just couldn't finish. ...more

flag Like · see review

Aug 20, 2015 Joey Diamond rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fiction

There needs to be more fragment fiction. Such a good way to capture all the ins and outs of this small village and the weird experience of being an Educated Youth sent down to the country during the cultural revolution and the folk tales and the doublespeak and everything. Almost everything.

flag Like · see review

Dec 02, 2011 Nancy Lewis rated it really liked it

Shelves: china

A familiarity with China and Chinese culture helps when reading this book.

flag Like · see review

Sep 26, 2012 Natasha Telepneva rated it it was amazing

An incredible book, strongly recommend!

flag Like · see review

Jan 08, 2014 Theresa rated it it was ok

Read it, interesting enough, but just couldn't get into. ...more

flag Like · see review

Jan 24, 2015 Peter Milligan rated it it was amazing

Love the spirit of the book. Revolution!

flag Like · see review

Apr 07, 2015 Kristen Schrader (Wenke) added it

Shelves: historical-fiction, asia

Couldn't finish it. Just really really boring. And the format's a neat idea, but I needed more of a narrative to draw me in. ...more

flag Like · see review

Aug 18, 2017 Leslie added it

One of the best things I've read this year. ...more

flag Like · see review

« previous 1 2 next »

new topic
Discuss This Book

There are no discussion topics on this book yet. Be the first to start one »

Recommend It | Stats | Recent Status Updates

Readers also enjoyed

See similar books…

Genres

Cultural > China

60 users

Fiction

45 users

Historical > Historical Fiction

12 users

Literature

8 users

Literature > Asian Literature

8 users

Novels

7 users

Cultural > Asia

6 users

Asian Literature > Chinese Literature

6 users

Literature > 20th Century

5 users

Literary Fiction

2 users

See top shelves…

About Han Shaogong

Han Shaogong

6 followers

Han Shaogong (Traditional:韓少功; Simplified: 韩少功; Pinyin: Hán Shàogōng; born January 1, 1953) is a Chinese novelist and fictionist.

Han was born in Hunan, China. While relying on traditional Chinese culture, in particular Chinese mythology, folklore, Taoism and Buddhism as source of inspiration, he also borrows freely from Western literary techniques. As a teenager during the Cultural revolution he w ...more