Tuocheng

“Tuo City” is another name for Shantou. According to the Chaozhou Prefecture Gazetteer, Shantou lies beside the mouth of the Tuoji River. Surrounded by water on three sides, it forms a peninsula. It was once administered by the Tuopu Bureau and was also known for its abundance of tuo fish, so it came to be called “Tuo Island.” The city built on Tuo Island was therefore called “Tuo City.” What is a tuo? It is another name for a small shark, a kind of little freshwater fish. (There are other explanations, too.) This also fits the characters in the novel. Like tuo fish, they struggle to survive and prosper in the narrow freshwater channels of an inland bay. The surnames of the main characters come from a Chaoshan saying: “Chen, Lin, and Cai make up half the world.” The novel invents the story of five generations across the three families, Chen, Lin, and Cai. Through the fates of ordinary people, it reflects the history of a city, and a city’s history is itself a microcosm of the history of a nation, even of humanity. Tuo City is published in two volumes. The first covers the years from 1860 to the fall of Tuo City in 1939; the second continues through 2021, the 160th anniversary of Shantou’s opening as a treaty port and the 100th anniversary of the establishment of its municipal government.