Sound Before It Rings

A bronze bell sinks into an old well. Its sound is "heard, yet not heard," and it hangs there for thirty years. Jiumo leaves Changsheng Valley, deep in the Daba Mountains, to study at a teachers' college, teach, and work in a pyramid scheme, before finally ending up in the city's glittering red-light district, "Phoenix Perches Here." He has seen Green-Faced Meizi, a case involving a headless corpse, Old She dying of an illness while dressed in mourning clothes, and Yaoji and Wang Ji turning their lives around overnight after the household responsibility system is introduced. He always carries a copy of the Tao Te Ching in his pocket, caught between "being born free" and "only fearing that I'll bring shame on my mother," as the two forces twist him into a braid.

"Two-Faced People" has never been about just one person. Zhang Shun and Old She: one holds to his principles, the other loses his conscience. Laifu and Bitter Melon: one is honest and guileless, the other quick-witted. Qiuhe and Yutong: one lives among the people, the other in the heavens. The jade-corn flower demon and the mournful cry of the black bird, the life and death of Xialiba, and the sweet potato vines that will lose everything but still bloom with passion. At 360,000 characters, with seven chapters and fifty-five sections, the story's bronze bell rings from the late Qing Dynasty to the night sky at the end of the century. This is not a novel about "who is right and who is wrong," but one about "loss": losing land, losing loved ones, losing innocence, and losing faith. It folds a century of rural China into a single Golden Ox Mountain and plants the philosophy of being "two-faced" in the heart of every ordinary person.