Wild Grass

In Wild Grass, Pulitzer Prize—winning journalist Ian Johnson tells the stories of three ordinary Chinese citizens moved to extraordinary acts of courage: a peasant legal clerk who filed a class-action suit on behalf of overtaxed farmers, a young architect who defended the rights of dispossessed homeowners, and a bereaved woman who tried to find out why her elderly mother had been beaten to death in police custody. Representing the first cracks in the otherwise seamless façade of Communist Party control, these small acts of resistance demonstrate the unconquerable power of the human conscience and prophesy an increasingly open political future for China.

A brilliant new translation of the short improvisational fiction and memoirs of Lu Xun, the father of modern Chinese literature. This captivating translation assembles two volumes by Lu Xun, the founder of modern Chinese literature and one of East Asia’s most important thinkers at the turn of the twentieth century. Wild Grass and Morning Blossoms Gathered at Dusk represent a pinnacle of achievement alongside Lu Xun’s famed short stories. In Wild Grass, a collection of twenty-three experimental pieces, surreal scenes come alive through haunting language and vivid imagery. These are landscapes populated by ghosts, talking animals, and sentient plants, where a protagonist might come face-to-face with their own corpse. By depicting the common struggle of real and imagined creatures to survive in an inhospitable world, Lu Xun asks the deceptively simple question, “What does it mean to be human?” Alongside Wild Grass is Morning Blossoms Gathered at Dusk, a memoir in eight essays capturing the literary master’s formative years and featuring a motley cast of dislocated characters—children, servants, outcasts, the dead and the dying. Giving voice to vulnerable subjects and depicting their hopes and despair as they negotiate an unforgiving existence, Morning Blossoms affirms the value of all beings and elucidates a central predicament of the human condition: feeling without a home in the world. Beautifully translated and introduced by Eileen J. Cheng, these lyrical texts blur the line between autobiography and literary fiction. Together the two collections provide a new window into Lu Xun’s mind and his quest to find beauty and meaning in a cruel and unjust world.

Life Between the Wild Grass explores thirty of the most memorable experiences from the lives of the author and those around her through the looking glass of retrospection. The stories are narrated without any judgement. The characters are not perfect, but they are relatable. They live real lives with real emotions and real problems. Every story will remind you of someone you have known, and at times, you might feel that you are the protagonist. The stories are all about you and me.

As war overtakes the frontier, Emma’s family farmstead is attacked by Dakota-Sioux warriors; on that same prairie, Oenikika desperately tries to hold on to her calling as a healer and follow the orders of her father, Chief Little Crow. When the war is over and revenge-fueled war trials begin, each young woman is faced with an impossible choice. In a swiftly changing world, both Emma and Oenikika must look deep within and fight for the truth of their convictions—even as horror and injustice unfolds all around them. Inspired by the true story of the thirty-eight Dakota-Sioux men hanged in Minnesota in 1862—the largest mass execution in US history—Dovetails in Tall Grass is a powerful tale of two young women connected by the fate of one man.

This book summarizes the latest research on sheepgrass, both in China and around the globe, as well as fundamental information on the topic. Sheepgrass (Leymus chinensis (Trin.) Tzvel) is a key species in the eastern part of the Eurasian steppe and widely distributed in northern China. It is highly adaptable and holds considerable value in terms of animal husbandry and ecology / the environment. Over the past thirty years, Chinese scientists have collected and evaluated a wealth of wild sheepgrass germplasm data, and extensive basic research has been conducted on the plant’s sexual reproduction, yield, quality, and resistance. In addition, methods for utilizing new varieties in different regions have been developed. This book describes the distribution and origin, breeding, cultivation, and sexual reproduction of sheepgrass. It also discusses recent advances concerning its nutrient and water absorption and applications, grazing resistance mechanism, and gene resources mining.