Zhu Wen, "I Love Dollars"

Father comes to town which means they should track down the other son and/or get dad laid.

(from I Love Dollars and Other Stories of China)

Okay. It took me days, maybe a week, to finish this one. Not only because 40 pages is a lot, but because the whirlwind pace, the strangeness of the characters' actions and motivations — it was all too much. This isn't the China you see on TV — the unbreathable over-industrialization, the oppressive government — Wen paints a seedy, drunken, charming, hooker-filled place of rampant capitalism. More like consumerism. I thought I was going to end up writing that I hated this story, that it was all just too much, trying to hard. But no. I dug it. It was a chore to get through, but only for reasons I won't stand by. These characters are so unique, so fucked in the head, you kinda gotta love em.