The Peking University Pig Farmer Returns to 1986

1986 marked a watershed in modern Chinese literature. Scar literature had been developing for a decade, and it was also the inaugural year of avant-garde literature. Jia Pingwa’s Impetuosity, Lu Yao’s Ordinary World, and Mo Yan’s Red Sorghum were all completed or published that year. That year, Huaxing Pharmaceutical began full-scale production, Shenyang Explosion-Proof Equipment Factory went bankrupt, and reforms of state-owned enterprises got underway. It was a golden age of clashing ideas and culture, as well as a passionate era of commercial upheaval. Lu Yongxin, a Peking University student who raised pigs, returned to 1986. At first, all he wanted was to earn a little money from writing to support himself. But decades later, he had not only made the Forbes rich list again, but also become a literary giant. [Slice of life, period piece, business, rewriting the classics]