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    Happy Dreams
    Happy Dreams
    Happy Dreams
    Audiobook16 hours

    Happy Dreams

    Written by Jia Pingwa

    Narrated by Robert Wu

    3/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    From one of China's foremost authors, Jia Pingwa's Happy Dreams is a powerful depiction of life in industrializing contemporary China, in all its humor and pathos, as seen through the eyes of Happy Liu, a charming and clever rural laborer who leaves his home for the gritty, harsh streets of Xi'an in search of better life.

    After a disastrous end to a relationship, Hawa "Happy" Liu embarks on a quest to find the recipient of his donated kidney and a life that lives up to his self-given moniker. Traveling from his rural home in Freshwind to the city of Xi'an, Happy brings only an eternally positive attitude, his devoted best friend Wufu, and a pair of high-heeled women's shoes he hopes to fill with the love of his life.

    In Xi'an, Happy and Wufu find jobs as trash pickers sorting through the city's filth, but Happy refuses to be deterred by inauspicious beginnings. In his eyes, dusty birds become phoenixes, the streets become rivers, and life is what you make of it. When he meets the beautiful Yichun, he imagines she is the one to fill the shoes and his Cinderella-esque dream. But when the harsh city conditions and the crush of societal inequalities take the life of his friend and shake Happy to his soul, he'll need more than just his unrelenting optimism to hold on to the belief that something better is possible.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    TranslatorNicky Harman
    Release dateJun 5, 2018
    ISBN9781978616585
    Happy Dreams
    Author

    Jia Pingwa

    Jia Pingwa is the author of the novels The Shaanxi Opera, winner of the Mao Dun Literature Prize, Happy Dreams, Turbulence, Ruined City, White Nights, The Earthen Gate, The Lantern Bearer, The Mountain Whisperer, and Broken Wings. He is also the author of several short fiction and essay collections. Born in Dihua Village, Danfeng County, Shaanxi Province, Jia graduated from Xi’an’s Northwest University in 1975. He is a member of the China Writers Association Presidium, deputy chair of the Writers Association Shaanxi branch, and chair of Xi’an Federation of Literary and Art Circles.

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    Reviews for Happy Dreams

    3/5

    14 ratings3 reviews

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    • 3/5
      The story of Hawa "Happy" Liu who along with his friend, Wufu, travel to the city to be trash pickers. It really is a very mundane story of 2 men sorting through a city's trash. The words are short and clipped (maybe due to translation) and full of scatology. There just wasn't much good to say about this book. It could have been the topic as Happy and Wufu's life was depressing and as hard as they worked there was nothing they could do to better it. The entire last chapter of the book was the author describing where he got the ideas for much of his book and on whom the characters were based. From this last chapter I inferred that this story is supposed to tell of the plight of the country residents during China's industrialization. Besides being too long, I really can't say I learned anything from the book or that it entertained me---so I would not recommend it. 494 pages
    • 3/5
      The story of Hawa "Happy" Liu who along with his friend, Wufu, travel to the city to be trash pickers. It really is a very mundane story of 2 men sorting through a city's trash. The words are short and clipped (maybe due to translation) and full of scatology. There just wasn't much good to say about this book. It could have been the topic as Happy and Wufu's life was depressing and as hard as they worked there was nothing they could do to better it. The entire last chapter of the book was the author describing where he got the ideas for much of his book and on whom the characters were based. From this last chapter I inferred that this story is supposed to tell of the plight of the country residents during China's industrialization. Besides being too long, I really can't say I learned anything from the book or that it entertained me---so I would not recommend it. 494 pages
    • 3/5
      Maybe even 3.5* -- I was in a reading slump while I was reading this and I think that affected my rating somewhat. This book reminded me somewhat of the American classic "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair which I recently reread. Both books tell the reader about life in a city as recently arrived laborers, the struggle to make ends meet & the ways in which these lowest workers are taken advantage of. Generally I like this sort of 'social commentary' type of fiction, even when it is gritty, so I would be willing to try rereading this at some point.