Flying Dreams is a full-length novel about the history of rural southern Sichuan and migrant workers striving to realize their dreams.
Decades ago, in the area around Phoenix Mountain in the Fenghuang Brigade of Hemi Commune, on the southern edge of Naxi County, Luzhou, Sichuan Province, there was a famous place called Qianqiu Hollow. Dozens of families lived there, and the Xie Weilin family was one of the most representative.
The novel features around a hundred characters, more than twenty of them particularly distinctive, each vividly brought to life.
It is worth noting that the novel also offers an objective account of family planning at the time. The family-planning teams had to tear down houses, lead away pigs, carry off grain, transport coffins, catch chickens and slaughter ducks to prepare meals, enforcing policies of "setting up camp, pricing whatever they found, and punishing entire families for one person's actions."
The novel weaves in folk tales and legends, making it feel closer to rural life and the realities faced by farmers. Examples include the cruel and savage Bear Granny, the childbirth ghost wearing a green hat and red clothes and shoes, and riddles. These details are wonderfully apt and vividly rendered.
This novel and its characters are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental. Do not imitate.
