Through the ensemble stories of twenty "friends" from different professions and social classes, this novel portrays the modernization of northwest China from the 1980s to 2025: from the collective euphoria of reform and opening up to the disillusionment of the economic bubble, from the lingering warmth of idealism to an age of spiritual voicelessness.
Their lives seem separate, but together they form a vast social web:
Everyone is "alive," yet no one knows what being alive means.
Protagonist: Gu Xingzhi
- Male, born in 1968, professor of sociology. His research focuses on "modernity and human alienation."
- He is writing a book titled Living: Twenty Ways Chinese People Survive.
- These twenty people are friends he met at different points in his life, or people he interviewed.
- But as his research deepens, he discovers that he is not an "observer," but part of their shared story.
