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Father’s Back and Other Essays

Zhu Ziqing

Father’s Back and Other Essays

Paper book: €11.99

Digital: €1.99

Original publication
1928
Monolingual
22 October 2026
Pages
39
Difficulty
Medium
Genres
Poetic, Biography and Autobiography
Moods
Be moved to tears, Savour the writing, Understand myself
Translated from
Chinese

Book summary

This little collection brings together Zhu Ziqing's most famous prose pieces. In “The Sight of Father's Back”, a clumsy father crosses the tracks at a station to buy oranges for his son. Elsewhere, the author walks at night around a lotus pond under the moon, or glides in a boat along the Qinhuai River in Nanjing.

Studied in every school in China, these texts have made this father seen from behind one of the most moving memories in Chinese literature.

Short, tender and very musical, they can be read one by one, at your own pace, in the language you are learning.

The plot

父親送兒子上火車。一位青年回北京讀書。父親把他送到南京附近的浦口車站,上車前,又想去對面月臺給他買橘子。他走得慢,身子有些胖,得爬下鐵道,再從另一邊爬上去。

The world of the book

1920年代的中國。火車連接著南京和北京,可浩瀚的長江上還沒有橋:要去北方,得先坐船。文學也在變:作家們撇開文人的舊文言,用說話的方式寫作。中國的學生至今仍在學校裡讀這些樸素的文章。

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