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In a temple to the Five Spirits, gods of fleshly desire, a young man who hopes to become a novice tells his story to an old monk, a former Nationalist army officer who once boasted of his many women before turning to religion. Two half-real, half-dreamed narratives run side by side and feed into each other. In his village, during the rural reforms of the 1990s, the headman Lao Lan grows rich and powerful in the new economy, selling meat pumped full of water and preying on the village women, while the narrator's father, Luo Tong, cannot stomach the new times and his mother, Yang Yuzhen, wants only a quiet life. Amid feasts of every kind of meat, greed collides with morality, money with faith and the village with the city.

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About the book

Form

Novel

Set in

China, 1990s

First published

2003 by Chunfeng Literature and Art Publishing House

Author's age

48 when first published

ISBN

9780857420763 (Seagull Books, United Kingdom)

9780857422217 (Seagull Books, United Kingdom)