This story collection is set in an imaginary world where animals and people live in the same society. It's like those cartoons we watched as kids: you could see the characters as people with animal traits, or as shy people going about their lives and work in animal masks.
The main setting is the fictional city of Qingting, a second-tier provincial capital undergoing rapid development, still some distance from becoming a true first-tier city.
Qingting turns with the Earth's rotation and revolution every day, so the characters rarely cross paths, though it does happen now and then. The protagonists of these stories can sometimes be imagined as people walking upside down through a foreign land, their heads touching the ground. They speak language as fluid as water, deal playing cards with pinpoint accuracy, and recite their multiplication tables by heart.
The stories don't form a system, nor do they have any deliberately designed structure. They're more like half-remembered ghost stories told around a drinking table. The plot rolls along like a spinning coin, going wherever it goes, and stopping when it stops. "If you fall down somewhere, just lie down there." They seem to have their center of gravity everywhere. You could say they're just something to listen to.
Purple Sun
The Passionate Years with My Brothers
Northeast China in Turmoil: Black Blood Floods the Songhua River