I think this book is incredible. Here's a summary of it from Goodreads:
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Gripping and compassionate, Land of Big Numbers depicts the diverse and legion Chinese people, their history, their government, and how all of that has tumbled—messily, violently, but still beautifully—into the present.
Cutting between clear-eyed realism and tongue-in-cheek magical realism, Chen’s stories coalesce into a portrait of a people striving for openings where mobility is limited. Twins take radically different paths: one becomes a professional gamer, the other a political activist. A woman moves to the city to work at a government call center and is followed by her violent ex-boyfriend. A man is swept into the high-risk, high-reward temptations of China’s volatile stock exchange. And a group of people sit, trapped for no reason, on a subway platform for months, waiting for official permission to leave.
With acute social insight, Te-Ping Chen layers years of experience reporting on the ground in China with incantatory prose in this taut, surprising debut, proving herself both a remarkable cultural critic and an astonishingly accomplished new literary voice.
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I loved the short stories and loved being able to explore various people's accounts and lives through them. I feel like I got a better understanding of life in China and some of its culture. I really enjoyed being able to learn more about this huge country and its people. I think we have so many similarities with them, and it's so important to learn about China as its so important to be aware of every country and its own unique history and culture. I thought the writing was fantastic and I enjoyed every minute reading this book.
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Gripping and compassionate, Land of Big Numbers depicts the diverse and legion Chinese people, their history, their government, and how all of that has tumbled—messily, violently, but still beautifully—into the present.
Cutting between clear-eyed realism and tongue-in-cheek magical realism, Chen’s stories coalesce into a portrait of a people striving for openings where mobility is limited. Twins take radically different paths: one becomes a professional gamer, the other a political activist. A woman moves to the city to work at a government call center and is followed by her violent ex-boyfriend. A man is swept into the high-risk, high-reward temptations of China’s volatile stock exchange. And a group of people sit, trapped for no reason, on a subway platform for months, waiting for official permission to leave.
With acute social insight, Te-Ping Chen layers years of experience reporting on the ground in China with incantatory prose in this taut, surprising debut, proving herself both a remarkable cultural critic and an astonishingly accomplished new literary voice.
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I loved the short stories and loved being able to explore various people's accounts and lives through them. I feel like I got a better understanding of life in China and some of its culture. I really enjoyed being able to learn more about this huge country and its people. I think we have so many similarities with them, and it's so important to learn about China as its so important to be aware of every country and its own unique history and culture. I thought the writing was fantastic and I enjoyed every minute reading this book.