Outside Stone City

"Beyond Stone City" is a novel written by Zhang Henshui that depicts the practice of intellectuals going to the countryside. The story takes place in a big city on the banks of the Yangtze River during the Republic of China. The protagonist Jin Danran is a young civil servant who is deeply bored and depressed by the life of a city civil servant. He is tired of the flattery of the officialdom, the cramped life and the spiritual emptiness. After facing the crisis of being laid off, he was influenced by his neighbor Zhao Xiangnong and farmer Tian Xingzhi's pastoral ideal of "self-sufficiency through farming" and decided to move with his mother, wife Hua Suying and their young son to the countryside outside the city. The novel vividly and meticulously describes what Jin Danran and his family saw and felt when they first arrived in the countryside: the fresh air, picturesque scenery, simple neighbors, and self-sufficient farm life all brought them great spiritual comfort and ideal vision. Jin Danran is full of ambition and is determined to use the agricultural and forestry knowledge learned in middle school to open up a farm and realize the pastoral dream of "having no official position and being light-hearted", and in this way, he can educate future generations and stay away from the impetuousness of the city. However, ideal and reality soon collided violently. Lack of material, huge differences in living habits, inherent poverty and problems in rural society, as well as family members' difficulty in adapting to rural life and their growing sense of loneliness, all constantly impacted Jin Danran's determination. The novel profoundly shows the various difficulties encountered by intellectuals' romantic ideal of transforming rural areas in practical practice. It delicately depicts the protagonist's spiritual struggle and wavering between urban and rural dual cultures, and reveals the gap between ideals and reality.