The Guest in the Wilderness

A survival epic that belongs to ordinary Chinese people. From rural China to the modern rapids, three generations of the Hou family are carried forward by the torrent of history. The ancestors took root in the land, and their ethics, admonitions, and "family scandal" formed the initial background and shackles of the family. Our parents struggled in the transition, inherited the burden, and ignited the desire to change their destiny. As a person born in the 1980s, "I" wandered at the juncture between memory and reality, and finally decided to use pen as a bridge to trace the origin of it all. Every figure in the book is real and tangible. This is not a distant legend, but a reflection of our fathers' generation and even our own life trajectory. It is about inheritance and betrayal, persistence and escape, memory and forgetting. As a record-keeper, I have no intention of arbitrating the past. This work is only intended to leave a faithful record of a blood story and a survival epic written by hundreds of millions of Chinese people. When you open this book, you will see not only the joys and sorrows of a family, but also the heavy ruts and endless vitality of an entire era that have passed through ordinary people.