The Artisans, Shen Fuyu
The Artisans, Shen Fuyu
List: $24.99 | Sale: $17.50
Club: $12.49

The Artisans
A Vanishing Chinese Village

Author: Shen Fuyu, Jeremy Tiang

Narrator: P.J. Ochlan

Unabridged: 10 hr 42 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 11/08/2022


Synopsis

Born in Shen Village in Southeast China, Shen Fuyu grew up in a family of farmers. Years later, Shen, now a writer, returned to his hometown to capture the village's rich history in the face of industrialization.

Through his own childhood memories and those of his ancestors, Shen resurrects the working life of Shen Village through interlinked stories of fifteen artisans as their lives intersect over the course of a century. While Shen's view of his hometown and his heritage is tinged with nostalgia, he does not romanticize it. Nor does he sugarcoat the backbreaking difficulty of life in rural China, but he still captures its small satisfactions and joys of loving one's work with a great deal of care.

In a work that swings from poignancy to comedy, Shen evokes the spirits of these workers—a bamboo-weaver and his beloved bull, a carpenter's magical saw, the deserter who became the village lantern-maker and a rebellious woman who beats up her own kidnapper.

A reflection on the vicissitudes of small-town life during the epic shift from agricultural to industrial civilization, The Artisans vividly details the hardships, friendships, and communal mythmaking of a disappearing community.

About Shen Fuyu

Shen Fuyu was born in Jiangsu, China in 1970. At the age of eighteen, he left home and drifted around the country, taking up a variety of jobs-porter, clerk, and schoolteacher-and began his writing career. He graduated from the Department of Chinese Language and Literature of Nanjing University in 1996, and has been working as a journalist for twenty years. Having published more than a dozen books, Shen is a full-time writer now and lives in Paris.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Elena

Shen Fuyu was born in a small (Shen) village in Southeast China. Years later, now a writer, he returns to his hometown and witnesses the village's transformation in the face of industrialization. In his hometown, Fuyu felt at ease the most and the villagers felt like "one big family", which they didn......more

Goodreads review by Ed

Took me a while. A beautiful book in cover and content. Love the concept of creating a book around a little village and its craftsmen. The unsung heroes and suffering. To them.......more

Goodreads review by Ken

I found this book quite captivating. Author Shen Fuyu provides us glimpses of what it might have been like to live in his ancestral village, starting nearly 100 years ago, to the present. Through this lens, we learn actual stories about the various artisans which helped keep the village surviving am......more

Goodreads review by Sevelyn

I enjoyed his writing style. Fascinating that he recalls so much. I thought this yet another book, though, that was ruined by its title. it’s really more a straight memoir of his home town. Some stories are more compelling than others; one expects that. But you have to dig a bit to ferret out the as......more