Open-Air Cinema

Love, Life and Literature in the People’s Republic

Memoirs & micro-essays from the master of implication among China's top writers. It is composed of sanwen, a traditional free prose form. Ranging from boisterous urban sketches to quiet musings on humanity's strange & secret compulsions, Su Tong pulls back the curtain in a detached style, unafraid to throw the reader an occasional knowing wink.

By turns flexible and delicate, taciturn and effusive, this collection of memoirs and micro-essays project in filmic clarity the cool head, dry wit and social conscience that have made Su Tong the ‘master of implication’ among China’s leading writers. Ranging from street-level portraits of a boisterous and rapidly changing nation to quiet musings on humanity’s strange and secret compulsions, Su Tong offers a glimpse behind the curtain into the workings of a keen mind that helped shape the literary and popular culture of modern China.