This new volume of eight short stories, with parallel translations, offers students at all levels the opportunity to enjoy a wide range of contemporary literature from the world's most spoken language, without having to constantly to refer back to a dictionary.

The stories--many of which appear here in English for the first time--are by well-known writers as well as emerging voices. From a story by Li Rui about the honest simplicity of a Shanxi farmer to one by Ma Yuan exposing the seamy underside of contemporary urban society, they are infused with both rural dialect and urban slang and feature a wide range of styles and points of view.

Complete with notes, the stories make excellent reading in either language.