The seed keeper’s village is slated for submergence, part of the new dam project.

(from Tin House, vol. 7, number 4)

Teacher Ke shakes his cane at passersby; his coat is a rag, his house a shed. He has lived through two wars and a cultural purge and the Winter of Eating Weeds. Even to the oldest villagers Teacher Ke is old: no family, no teeth. He reads three laguages; he has been in the gorges, they say, longer than the rocks.

Awesome. The prose is elegant and visual, the storytelling natural and careful. Damn.