Beijing Sprawl by Xu Zechen, a rising voice in Chinese fiction
Translated by Jeremy Tang and Eric Abrahamsen

Beijing Sprawl is a wonderfully engaging set of linked stories of young village men trying their luck in the endless back streets of Beijing’s urban expanse. They spend nights posting advertisements for a business that creates fake IDs and counterfeit documents. During the day, they hangout on the roof of their apartment building playing cards, drinking beer and dreaming of their futures while digging into neighborhood problems. The comfort of friendship holds them together. As reviewer May-lee Chai has said, the book is at turns “laugh-out-loud funny and utterly heartbreaking.”  Xu Zechen has been named one of the “Future 20” best Chinese writers under forty-one, giving voice to China’s younger generations.