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Review | Vignettes from a side of China we don’t often see in Chinese-Canadian author’s short story collection Taobao
- The China of shiny Shanghai towers is nowhere to be seen in Taobao, Dan K. Woo’s sharply observed short story collection
- He delves into life in China’s small towns and the pull of cities on its rural youth, and shows a particular sympathy for his female characters’ plight
Reading Time:3 minutes
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Taobao: Stories by Dan K. Woo, pub. Buckrider Books
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The e-commerce colossus of its title may link the short stories of Dan K. Woo’s Taobao, but only in the sense that it hangs around in the background of these 12 China-set vignettes like the smell of stale tobacco in their often seedy settings.
The common themes are, in fact, loneliness, quiet desperation, resignation in the face of unpromising circumstances, social awkwardness and incomprehension. The stories often go nowhere, like the lives of their characters.
Boy meets girl. Things go wrong.
This is not the China of shiny Shanghai towers but of stagnant water and sour skies, of underground warrens home to migrant workers and of windblown plastic rubbish caught on fencing.
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But if Woo isn’t trying to charm, he doesn’t try to shock, either. His sharply observed scenes are presented in spare and undemonstrative prose, and modern China is caught without judgment, as if seen with the detachment of a camera phone.
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