Pingjiang is a cursed city.
Forty years ago, it was a coal town. Twenty years ago it was a debt city. Ten years ago, it called itself the "City of Numbers." Now, it is in ruins.
The curse of Pingjiang is not that the coal mining is finished, nor that the debt is repaid. The curse of Pingjiang is: every leader wants to leave his name in Pingjiang, so each one carves a knife on the city. Over the past forty years, there have been many secretaries. Pingjiang is not dead, but he is not alive either.
This story is not about a corrupt official, nor is it about an honest official. This story tells the story of the city over forty years. In the story, there is a progression of four faces of a city - from "Coal City" to "Debt City" to "Digital City" and finally to "Sinking City". In the story, there is a resettlement house built on the goaf. It took forty-one years from planning to completion to cracks, dilapidation and demolition.
In the 1980s, the first generation of builders discovered coal here. In the 1990s, a second generation of speculators discovered money here. In the 2000s, the third generation of traders discovered "patterns" here. In the 2010s, the fourth generation of dreamers discovered a lot of chicken feathers here. The fate of four generations is like the goaf at the foot of this city - you think there is solid land under your feet, but in fact every inch underneath is empty.
Then they started blaming each other. But no one admits that he was once the one wielding the knife.
The protagonist of this book is a city and the people it crushed.
Reader comments
This is a solid work that makes people reluctant to fast forward one page. A resettlement house built on the goaf connects the rise and fall of Pingjiang from a "coal city" to a "sinking city" in the past 40 years. There is no absolute protagonist, only a group of figures that have been crushed by the times: the old director who signed a false report on the mine disaster, the female model worker who was bought out of her service, the developer who wrote "structural safety" on the cracked building... The fate of the four generations is like the slowly sinking land under their feet, with every inch of collapse silent and fatal. This is a coal mine version of "Alive", which reveals the hidden pain of individuals obscured by grand narratives in the transformation of resource-based cities. Five-star recommendation.
After reading "The Past in Pingjiang", you will find that "Pingjiang" is by no means a fiction. It is the literary epitome of Fuxin, Hegang, Tongchuan, Gejiu, and those resource-exhausted cities across the country. When Cheng Fengnian signed a fake report on "workers' illegal operations", many mine accident investigation reports were lightly flipped over in reality; when Tang Guilan's underground service was not recognized, many old miners who had bought out their service were silent clutching their yellowed pay slips; when He Jiaming marked "Second to be determined", the slogans on the walls of many shantytowns faded from "keys delivered at the end of the year" to white paper. The dilapidated house in the book that was built on the goaf and had "Structural Safety" written on it is not a fictional fantasy. It is a quality problem of resettlement housing that has been exposed many times in reality. Forty years and three generations, from "digging coal for the country" to "being forgotten by the times", the author uses the cracks in a building to illuminate the structural pain of the entire era. This book is not a novel, but a local chronicle, an epitaph, and a heavy memorandum left to those who come after us. Five-star recommendation, to all those who live seriously in the subsidence area.
This is a solid work that makes people reluctant to fast forward one page. A resettlement house built on the goaf connects the rise and fall of Pingjiang from a "coal city" to a "sinking city" in the past 40 years. There is no absolute protagonist, only a group of figures that have been crushed by the times: the old director who signed a false report on the mine disaster, the female model worker who was bought out of her service, the developer who wrote "structural safety" on the cracked building... The fate of the four generations is like the slowly sinking land under their feet, with every inch of collapse silent and fatal. This is a coal mine version of "Alive", which reveals the hidden pain of individuals obscured by grand narratives in the transformation of resource-based cities. Five-star recommendation. After reading "The Past in Pingjiang", you will find that "Pingjiang" is by no means a fiction. It is the literary epitome of Fuxin, Hegang, Tongchuan, Gejiu, and those resource-exhausted cities across the country. When Cheng Fengnian signed a fake report on "workers' illegal operations", many mine accident investigation reports were lightly flipped over in reality; when Tang Guilan's underground service was not recognized, many old miners who had bought out their service were silent clutching their yellowed pay slips; when He Jiaming marked "Second to be determined", the slogans on the walls of many shantytowns faded from "keys delivered at the end of the year" to white paper. The dilapidated house in the book that was built on the goaf and had "Structural Safety" written on it is not a fictional fantasy. It is a quality problem of resettlement housing that has been exposed many times in reality. Forty years and three generations, from "digging coal for the country" to "being forgotten by the times", the author uses the cracks in a building to illuminate the structural pain of the entire era. This book is not a novel, but a local chronicle, an epitaph, and a heavy memorandum left to those who come after us. Five-star recommendation, to all those who live seriously in the subsidence area.