At a suburban Chicago library, readers of Xuemo consider the difficult business of accepting change.

Dr. Zhou, whose background is in science and engineering, had come to the Hinsdale Public Library for something his professional training did not supply. “I especially need the nourishment that culture and literature provide,” he said. Around him was a gathering of Chinese American professionals and other readers from the Chicago area, brought together by a book about a philosopher whose concerns had outlasted a considerable number of professions.

The book was Laozi Through Poetry, in which the Chinese writer Xuemo approaches the Tao Te Ching through poetry and literary reflection. On October 25, it provided the occasion for two hours of conversation about change, acceptance, and the possibility of living with a little less resistance to life.

The setting was a library with more than a century of history. The event, hosted by Katie Ren, was the fifth session of Xuemo International Reading Month, held in conjunction with the Chicago chapter of the Global Reading Club Alliance. Its subject was ancient Chinese wisdom; its preoccupations were recognizably contemporary. How does one find stillness in a life crowded with information? What can be relinquished? How much of the struggle is necessary?

One proposition ran through the discussion: change is the one constant in life. It is an easy observation to agree with and a harder one to arrange a life around. The readers considered what acceptance might look like in practice, from adapting to circumstances to giving up some of the mental arguments that circumstances provoke. The distance between understanding an idea and living by it gave them plenty to discuss.

For Ida Liu, a representative of Ruxue International Media, acceptance began with other people. “Laozi Through Poetry helped me understand the meaning of acceptance,” she said. “When we truly embrace others, we begin to move beyond the limits of the self and live with greater compassion.” The test of the classics, in her account, lay in their application to ordinary life.

Ren, who had participated in all five sessions, spoke in more personal terms. “Reading Xuemo’s books has been deeply healing for me,” she said. “Through these five gatherings, I’ve felt changes in both my mind and body. I’ve grown, and I now approach life with greater openness and peace.”

A first-time participant, Ms. Lin, described a smaller, more fleeting encounter. She had opened the book at random. “For a brief moment, I felt a deep sense of stillness,” she said. “It was as though I could glimpse the world beyond the words.”

There were also the pleasures of an afternoon spent among familiar faces. Anna Li, the founder of the Asian American Education and Culture Center and a longtime philanthropist, noted that the event had reunited friends who had not seen one another for some time. “On this beautiful, sunny autumn afternoon, sharing books and ideas brought us peace of mind and made the weekend especially meaningful,” she said.

Li’s organization had joined Hinsdale Multicultural Arts & Education, founded by Dr. Zhou, and Ruxue International Media in organizing the gathering, with support from eCentury Corporation. Together, they had made room for something modest and increasingly difficult to schedule: unhurried attention to a book, and to one another.

Tea and conversation gave the afternoon its familiar social shape. The book supplied questions that would remain after the gathering ended. Change might be inevitable, but for two hours in Hinsdale, readers had paused to consider how they might meet it.

“Here, try this.” Aku offered them dried meat, Black Lamb’s favorite. He bit off a piece, his cheek muscles dancing as he chewed. Mengzi wasn’t used to dried meat, so Aku made a bowl of fried flour for him.

“How’s your father? It’s been hard on him, struggling all these years to bring you all up. You were just a boy when I went to your house that year.” Aku gestured. “You were this big and your mouth was always black with ashes. Your mother said you’d stolen flour to make fried dough.”

Mengzi laughed. He’d been constantly hungry as a boy and often stole flour to make dough to fry over a wheat-stalk fire. His mother would beat him when she noticed his mouth blackened with ashes. He remembered the year Aku came to Shawan with his wife and son and spent a few days at his house. Aku’s skinny wife was cross-eyed. His son’s big head, supported by a thin neck, was like a brass bell; he bawled every time Mengzi touched him, and Aku’s wife glared at him with her crossed eyes. Both the woman and the baby were a pile of bones now, and Mengzi wished he’d been nicer to them; if only he’d known they would die so soon. No one can escape their fate, so it’s best for everyone to get along, since you can never see each other again, even if you want to, once you’re reduced to bones.

Black Lamb chomped on the dried meat as if fighting a mortal enemy, under the tender gaze of Aku, who was so attentive he forgot to pour more milk tea for Mengzi.

“Lhamo will be overjoyed when she knows you’re here,” Aku said. “She wanted to go to Shawan with Meng Baye when he was here, but then the white deer died, and she nearly cried her eyes out.”

“Did you catch anyone in the ambush?” Mengzi asked him.

“Not a one. I’ve said the Old Man in heaven doesn’t care. He won’t give us a drop of rain when we need it, but sends water crashing down on us when we don’t. The damned rain just about turned the policemen into mud monkeys. They spent three days lying in muddy water. I heard they were all hooked up with IV drips when they went back.”

“Did the poachers come?” Mengzi asked.

“No, not even a shadow. Have some more tea. Want butter in it?”

“No, milk tea is fine with me. I was born to be poor and butter doesn’t suit me.”

Black Lamb rubbed his hands and waved off the meat offered by Aku. “That’s all for me. I’m like a little demon, not good enough for a sumptuous sacrificial offering. You need strong teeth for this, but no matter how strong they are, a couple of pieces are all I can handle. The park is offering a cash reward for a musk deer. Meng Baye borrowed a camel from Red Face, but the poachers took it from him, so he needs to find a way to pay him back.”

“Sure, no problem,” Aku said. “That’s something I’m good at. I’ll go set a trap after we eat. Don’t worry. I’ve sent someone to bring Lhamo over. She’s always asking about you; my ears are callused just listening to her. It’s like the young man is a magic cure for a lovesick young woman.”

“Please don’t do that, Gandie.” Black Lamb frowned. “I’ve always treated her like a kid sister.”

“Kid sister is fine. How does the song go? ‘We’re brother and sister this year and will share a kang next year.’ That sounds good, doesn’t it?”

“It never crossed my mind,” the young herder said.

“What? Lhamo is pretty as a flower. You don’t think she’s a good match?”

“No, that’s not it. I’m still young.”

“What do you mean, young? Other men are already sleeping with their wives when they’re this big.”

“Do you know what Lhamo means?” Aku muttered as he started cooking. “It means fairy lady. Many men have their eyes on her but she, hei, she only wants a stump of noxious fleabane like you. Cows eat spinach and a dog shuns what the pigs love. I don’t like what you like and an old dog prefers watery shit. You pick through a pile of melons and only bitter ones will be left. If you lose Lhamo, you’ll end up with a turnip, something even a pig wouldn’t eat.”

Holding back laughter, Black Lamb and Mengzi exchanged looks, but Aku rambled on.

Lhamo arrived like a whirlwind. She smiled at Black Lamb, her face red, flames of fire dancing in her eyes. He blushed and looked down at the tip of his shoes.

From Desert Hunters by Xuemo. Translated by Howard Goldblatt and Sylvia Li-chun Lin. Chapter Thirteen, section 1.

Culture becomes visible in the way a person meets an ordinary day: how they respond to difficulty, carry a responsibility, or speak to someone who has disappointed them. At the eleventh World Literature Union Youth Forum, Lei Yiting approached this idea through fifteen years of her own experience.

The online forum took place at 8 p.m. Beijing time on October 10, 2026. Organized by the World Literature Union and the Xuemo Foundation, it explored the theme of living culture. Lei, identified in the official report as executive deputy director of the Guangzhou institute for Shangpa culture, offered a personal account of growth through cultural work.

She organized her reflections around three questions: what had first set her on this path, how culture had become part of her life, and what had enabled her to continue for fifteen years. This gave the discussion a different emphasis from a conventional academic presentation. Its starting point was a person trying to understand the changes in her own life.

Lei recalled feeling unsettled during her years of study. She had followed the expected educational route but still struggled to find a sense of direction. In her account, an unexpected encounter with Xuemo’s cultural talks helped her find a steadier footing. She did not describe beginning with an elaborate plan. The first motivation was the simple wish for inner calm and happiness.

Over time, she said, that wish led her into the work of sharing culture. Her development became bound up with the development of that work. She had watched it reach more people, while also discovering how much she herself still needed to learn. For Lei, the meaningful measure was whether she could recognize her own growth and continue moving toward the person she hoped to become.

Her account left room for difficulty. The fifteen years included moments of feeling wronged, uncertainty, and self-doubt. She located the work of change in those moments rather than in a life free of them. Responsibilities exposed habits and limitations that could remain invisible while reading or listening alone.

A task, in this view, becomes a place to discover what an idea actually asks of you. Encountering a problem reveals the distance between what you believe and what you are able to do. Facing it gives you something specific to work on. Lei described her growth as a succession of such encounters, where action made both weakness and progress visible.

She also emphasized the force of example. What had sustained her, she said, was seeing Xuemo try to embody the values he discussed. In the experiences she recounted, that meant visiting a person who had previously hurt him, responding to misunderstanding without becoming absorbed in hostility, and continuing the demanding work of cultural exchange at book fairs and universities.

These were Lei’s observations about the person she had worked alongside. Their importance within the forum was the relationship between a teaching and the conduct through which someone comes to trust it. Care for others and willingness to take responsibility acquired meaning through actions she could see.

Lei connected that example with her understanding of cultural transmission. She saw Xuemo’s international work as motivated by concern for people struggling to find inner steadiness and for forms of traditional wisdom at risk of losing continuity. In her telling, carrying culture forward meant making a path that other people could eventually follow.

She closed by returning to the scale of daily life. Before speaking or acting, she invited participants to consider whether the impulse came from love. The question condensed the evening’s larger theme into something a person could examine in the next conversation or responsibility. For Lei, this was where the inheritance of culture became a living practice.

Adapted from the Chinese report published by Xuemo Culture Network on October 12, 2026. This article looks back at the Youth Forum held on October 10, 2026. Read the original report.

Xuemo joined Hua Jing, an associate professor in the School of Foreign Languages at East China University of Science and Technology, to discuss English translations of the Dao De Jing alongside his multivolume commentary,《老子的心事》. The World Literature Union and the Xuemo Foundation organized the forum. Yanjin Chen, an editor of Xuemo’s work and the author of The Code of Xuemo, moderated.

The discussion moved through several of the classic’s recurring concepts, including the Dao, desire, non-action, and non-contention. Hua considered them as problems of translation: how does a word carry its associations into another language, and what changes when translators approach it from different cultural and intellectual positions?

Her presentation compared English treatments of the Dao across generations of translators. The variety mattered. A translation records decisions about meaning, tone, and the relationship between a text and its readers. Different translators can therefore produce distinct voices from the same brief Chinese work. Reading those differences makes interpretation visible rather than allowing a single English wording to appear inevitable.

Hua placed Xuemo’s commentary beside this work of translation. In her reading, it approaches the classic through the question of how its ideas might enter a person’s life. Passing words from one language into another and understanding them through experience are related activities, but they ask different things of the reader.

Xuemo responded by connecting interpretation with the interpreter’s inner life. People bring their own concerns and capacities to a classic, he suggested, and those shape what they discover in it. He described his approach to Laozi as an engagement with the experience behind the text, rather than an explanation limited to comparisons of wording.

One example came from passages about the people and the things they desire. The forum report notes that these passages have often been read in relation to government and public life. Xuemo proposed an inward reading, approaching the people as a figure for a mind easily pulled by desire. In this interpretation, the question becomes how a person can encounter the world without being continually carried away by what it offers.

The conversation then turned to non-contention. The term can seem difficult when effort and achievement are understood mainly through competition. Xuemo explained his reading through the distinction between wholehearted action and attachment to the rewards of action. A person can work carefully and contribute fully while spending less energy on winning recognition or possessing the result.

The image of water moving toward low places helped express that possibility. In the discussion, it suggested a way of acting that does not depend on occupying the highest position. Xuemo linked this with giving more and demanding less, treating non-contention as an active orientation toward life. The emphasis was on the quality and motivation of what someone does.

Hua also considered what translation can convey and where its reach becomes uncertain. Words, sentence structures, and philosophical propositions can be carried across languages. The rhythms of a text and the experience of putting its ideas into practice are harder to transfer directly. Her concluding image was a bridge: translation can make a crossing possible, while the path beyond it has to be walked by the reader.

Chen added the perspective of an editor who had worked throughout the nine-volume commentary. She described its engagement with Daoist, Confucian, and Buddhist texts, and its effort to bring those conversations into relation with personal experience. She suggested that contemporary commentaries could accompany translations of the classic, providing readers with further ways to approach it.

The evening therefore considered translation as one part of a longer encounter with a book. Comparing versions can deepen attention to language; commentary can introduce another reader’s understanding; daily practice can test what the ideas mean in a particular life. Each opens a different part of the experience the forum set out to explore.

Adapted from the Chinese report published by Xuemo Culture Network on October 13, 2026. This article looks back at the dialogue held on October 4, 2026. Read the original report.

A narrator named Xuemo steps into a novel to speak with its central character. The character then draws on Xuemo’s other books to explain his own experience. At the tenth World Literature Union Youth Forum, this unusual exchange became the starting point for a discussion of how a novel’s form can express an inner journey.

Held online on October 3, 2026, the forum was jointly organized by the World Literature Union and the Xuemo Foundation. Huang Jiajun and Liu Zhuoren led a close reading of The Undying Diamond Heart, exploring how northwestern China becomes a way of understanding life as well as a setting for fiction.

Huang approached the question through recent debates about regional literature. The significance of a region, he suggested, lies in the perspective it offers on people, history, and lived experience. Xuemo’s writing begins in the northwest, but its concerns gradually extend beyond the place itself.

Liu traced a broader literary history, from the vast landscapes of Tang frontier poetry to modern fiction rooted in local society and writing that uses faith to understand history. In The Undying Diamond Heart, he argued, the focus turns toward the transformation of an individual soul.

The novel follows Khyungpo Naljor’s search for spiritual understanding across Tibet, Nepal, and India. Huang described a journey through desire, doubt, and testing that ultimately turns inward. He distinguished this kind of writing from an account of a character’s psychology: inner change becomes the main action of the story. The narrator’s conversations with the protagonist also make the act of storytelling visible.

The speakers proposed four features of what they called a Xuemo style: spiritual experience drives the narrative; fiction draws on biography, spiritual songs, and discussion; author and character interpret one another; and readers are invited to participate in a process intended to change their own inner lives. The emphasis fell on forms arising from the writer’s experience.

Other participants offered qualifications. A contributor from the National University of Singapore suggested understanding the northwest as a structure of experience, leaving room for differences within the region. Another cautioned that a critical concept should open a path into a writer’s work while preserving its complexity. Huang added that the proposed Xuemo style was especially useful for examining formal changes in the author’s middle and later writing.

Adapted from the Chinese report by Xu Yujiao, published on Xuemo Culture Network on October 6, 2026, about the forum held on October 3. All speakers’ remarks are paraphrased. Read the original report.

It was the time for wheat seedlings to sprout.

Heaven was blind.

Laoshun complained that Heaven was blind, but complain was all he could do. Heaven was blind. They could reap a decent harvest if it spared a bit of rain; there would be some consolation, even though the little amount of income would go directly to pay taxes and fees. Who wouldn’t experience contentment at the sight of storage bins bursting at the seams? To be sure, it would not take long for them to empty out again, but they would still supply momentary satisfaction, like sweet dreams. Dreams are not real, of course, but what does remain real forever anyway? Mountains of gold and silver, power to rule the world, children, houses, land and everything else turns to nothing when one closes one’s eyes for the last time. Being alive is just having a long dream and what one encounters in life are short dreams, such as the annual harvest. Better to have dreams than not to have them, and good dreams are always preferable to bad ones. Laoshun had heard a Taoist priest chant the Sutra to Guide the Dead often enough to understand all this.

Naturally Heaven deserved to be cursed.

Looking at the wheat seedlings drooping under the merciless sun, Laoshun’s heart convulsed over his distress. He had been hoping to pay all their debts with what would rise out of the field. Blind Heaven was killing them. He looked up into the sky and sighed before saying to Beizhu, who was pulling up wild oat stalks.

“What’s the point? They’re turning into weeds.”

“We have to plant crops next year, don’t we? These wild oats are strange. See how the wheat seedlings are drying up in the sun, but these still look so full of life.”

“Of course. They’re like us humans. The worst no-good rascals thrive better than anyone else. Heaven has gone stupid. The Yellow River ran dry just when we needed to water our fields. Hei—Heaven meant to kill us and there’s nothing we can do about it.”

“When is Hantou having his surgery?” Meng Eight asked Laoshun.

“He’s already in the hospital, but the doctors say they need to observe him for a while, so we don’t know when he’ll have it. The surgeons will drag it out until who knows when if we don’t hand them something under the table. At least we have Lingguan’s old classmate—enough of that. Let’s not talk about him.”

“It’s not that serious, so have Lingguan stay with him,” Meng said, as he looked up into the sky before turning his gaze to the wheat seedlings. “What are you doing, Beizhu? Have you forgotten what I said a couple of years ago? I said it’s terrible the way people waste food, and that Heaven would punish us. Now see what’s happening? I heard that the Yellow River dried up. Who’s ever heard of that happening before?”

“You’re right,” Beizhu said. “That’s unimaginable.”

“Even if the Yellow River wasn’t dry and we had electricity, that doesn’t mean you should waste food. When you go into the city, the sewers are a place for noodles, steamed buns, pork, anything you can think of. That really saddens me. In ancient times white flour rained down from the heavens, and double tassels grew on each wheat stalk. People had so much to eat they wiped their asses with steamed buns. Heaven was so enraged it turned the flour into snow and removed one of the tassels. The people were punished for their sins. Heaven can commit sins, but when we commit evil deeds, we’re doomed. There’s nothing you can do if Heaven wants you dead. Heaven can find ways to punish us, even if we have electricity and water. Once back in the Republican Era, I forgot which year it was, we had an unusually abundant harvest. One day a dark cloud flew over and landed on the wheat fields. Aiya, it was a swarm of locusts, blanketing the field and blotting out the sky, as they crunched away until, in no time, there was nothing left to harvest. You see, Heaven can always find a way if it wants you to perish. In 1960, we ate anything we could find, anything but shit. We couldn’t have eaten that even if we’d wanted to. Where do you find shit when people have nothing to eat? But now, people waste food whenever there’s a good harvest. Heaven would surely be blind if it didn’t mete out some punishment. Those who take good care of their clothes always have something to wear, and those who cherish food never go hungry. If you don’t, you can’t even eat shit, let alone grain.”

From Desert Rites by Xuemo. Translated by Howard Goldblatt and Sylvia Li-chun Lin. Chapter Sixteen, section 1.

When he had finished chopping the yam, he had a look at the stove. This kang stove was easy to use, it fired up quickly. He put a small pan on its top and took out the can of oil. He wrapped the chopsticks in a rag, dipped them and oiled the bottom of the pan. It gave off a good smell. This was sesame oil, which he liked better than rapeseed oil. Though when he had no sesame oil, he’d use the rapeseed oil and it smelled just as good. And if that was gone, he did without oil. He always had noodles and yams, so that was all right. Apart from the Three Years of Famine in 1960s, when they hadn’t had yams, or anything else, he’d had to live on sow thistles. Anyway, the good thing was that he hadn’t starved to death. So many had. He was lucky. Very lucky. He’d come through without any major illness or other disaster. But then, you take what life throws at you, good or bad…

The house was quite still, the only noise his occasional mumbles. The bits of yam sounded good as they went into the pan. It was a nicer sound than the songs that came over the village loudspeakers. Not that there was anything wrong with those women’s voices, but what he really liked was Shaanxi opera, with its high-pitched singing and fiery rhythms. He’d never bought a radio of his own, so he hadn’t listened to it for years. But the hissing sound of the hot yam sounded good too. Pity it didn’t last long, then you had to add the water. Old Man Xinjiang ladled out a potful of water. That was all he used at each meal. It wasn’t a big pot, the size of a bowl, but that amount of water was enough for one meal. It floated in the water-jar all day, bobbing gently from side to side apparently at whim. This was something else he’d had for decades. It had no lip, but that was all right. It had started out with a lip, but one day he’d had it on the stove-top to heat some water, and the cat with the white nose had sent it flying. It was still useful though, as a ladle. His bowl was no good for that because you couldn’t get it through the neck of the water jar. But the lip-less pot was fine. It was hard to explain things in this life; a lip-less pot was good for some things and a lipped pot was good for others. And who was to say which use was more important?

The water soon came to the boil. Old Man Xinjiang began to make noodles. He got out a big china bowl. It was thick, heavy and sturdy. You couldn’t buy bowls like that in the market any more. Sturdy things had many uses, and he used this bowl both to eat out of and to mix noodle dough in. It saved him buying a special mixing bowl. He put in a scoop of flour and some water and rubbed in the flour. He gave it a quick knead and brought it together in a lump the size of his fist. Then he flattened it onto his chopping board and cut it into long strips with his knife. One by one, he rubbed each strip between his hands to thin it. It was quick work. Simple food never took long to prepare.

He’d eaten like this for several decades.

He was old, really old, and rich food gave him indigestion. He liked plain food with plenty of soupy liquid. You didn’t need money for the good things in life. Like a simple meal, like fetching a stool and sitting down to look at the stars and the moon. The sun came up and went down, the leaves of the trees started green and went yellow. They were the good things in life and no one could take them from him.

It was dusk and the darkness crept up on him. Old Man Xinjiang’s dinner was cooked and he carried his bowl to the doorway and sat down. He picked out a morsel with his chopsticks and offered it to the guardian spirits. Then he began noisily slurping his noodles. Steam rose from the bowl and up over his head. There was another bowl in front of him on the ground with the same food in it, prepared for a friend the black dog. Just then, the black dog turned up, having made its leisurely way from the woman’s house on the east side of the village in the pale moonlight. Noiselessly it lapped its dinner, then raised its head in greeting. This was the time when Old Man Xinjiang felt most contented. He could forget himself, and the dog, and all the villagers.

From “Old Man Xinjiang,” in Selected Stories by Xue Mo (2023). By Xuemo. Translated by Nicky Harman. Pages 8–10.

It was all becoming clear…He remembered the times when he had wanted to sleep with her before the wedding, and Yue had said: ‘What’s the hurry? Wait till we’re married, and then I’ll be yours.’ He had taken that as evidence of Yue’s chastity. He had known so many women who were easy. Yue’s show of resistance moved him. In his years away from home, he had lived a lot. He knew quite well that love these days was a luxury. He had not remotely guessed that the real reason was that his new bride had syphilis, and knew it. He was in the depths of despair.

The doctor tried to reassure him. ‘This disease is extremely infectious. You should be grateful that she held out on you, and you didn’t catch it too.’

Meng Zi laughed bitterly. All the same, he realised he’d had had a narrow escape. He no longer blamed Yue so harshly, but his anguish was as acute as ever. He made up his mind: He’d get a divorce. The decision made him feel relieved. At the same time, he could not help asking himself: What would happen to Yue after that?

Yue was sitting on a bench at the far end of the corridor, her head in her hands, looking full of trepidation. Meng Zi went up to her. She did not look up, just shifted along a bit. Meng Zi just said: ‘Let’s go.’ Then he left without waiting to see if she was following.

Outside, it was bright and sunny, in stark contrast to the gloom that filled their hearts. Meng Zi let out a long breath. He thought of his parents and all the money they had paid for his wedding, and was furious with Yue. He halted and turned around. He suddenly noticed how thin she looked. Her clothes hung loose on her. A breeze caught her hair and blew it across her pale, unhappy face. She looked hopelessly frail. Meng Zi softened. He could not leave her to fend for herself. He decided that he would stick around until she was cured of her illness, then get an immediate divorce.

He waited for Yue to catch up and they walked along together. Neither spoke. Around them everything was still, in spite of the usual city noises. They were desolate, each in their own silent, lonely world, and had no desire to talk.

Meng Zi saw how dry Yue’s lips were, and bought an ice cream. ‘Don’t fret about things,’ he said, giving it to her. ‘We’ll get it sorted.’ Yue was dumb for a moment, then burst into tears. She began to talk. She had gone to work in Lanzhou when she decided to get out of the village, she told him, but she soon discovered that Lanzhou was not her city. She was a drifter there, with nowhere to go, a bit of pondweed. She had taken a string of jobs but never slept around. Then she was taken up by a businessman from Beijing who promised to marry her. They slept together, and she got syphilis from him. After she got sick, she went through a lot, and it taught her the value of true love as simple country folk experienced it. She went back to the village and threw herself at Meng Zi. She had been treating herself for the syphilis as she made the wedding preparations, confident that she would be cured in time. She would give her all for true love.

Meng Zi listened, feeling a strange sort of calm. He understood exactly what she meant. He had gone looking for labouring jobs in the towns and the mines, and had suffered the pain of being an outsider too. One night, he was wandering the streets, gnawed by feelings of hunger, cold and loneliness. On all sides, the buildings towered above him, their brightly-lit windows looking down like eyes. He could not find any corner to shelter from the cold. He wandered up and down the avenues, under the pale street lighting, counting his footsteps, then counting the time. How could a night drag on for so long? All his time away, he had never stopped feeling like an outsider.

He shook his head, then turned around and saw Yue looking at him. It was exactly the same way his big brother Han Tou had looked at the doctor when he was dying. He suddenly felt a rush of affection, put his arm around her waist and squeezed her tight. She burst into tears.

They were in the town of Liangzhou. In the noise and bustle, no one paid any attention to a woman crying, or a man looking anguished. There were people all around, but Meng Zi felt distanced from them all. His arm still around his wife’s waist, he walked on. She was still sobbing. Meng Zi was overwhelmed with pity and tenderness.

He knew now that his fate was forever bound up with this woman.

From “Beauty,” in Selected Stories by Xue Mo (2023). By Xuemo. Translated by Nicky Harman. Section 1, pages 12–14.

From The World Is a Reflection of the Mind by Xuemo. Translated by Suosalang Translation Group. From “True Happiness Is the Light Within.”

Many individuals tirelessly pursue external goals, hoping to create the right conditions for happiness. Some find consistent success, others face constant failure, and yet others remain caught in an endless, fruitless pursuit. However, none truly achieve happiness. Those who constantly gain often end up with only temporary possessions and fleeting pleasures, failing to fulfill their true desires, leading to disappointment. Conversely, those who consistently face loss believe that happiness lies in acquiring more, yet their failure to achieve this leaves them in despair. And those who relentlessly chase happiness without results often forget their original aspirations along the way. They blindly follow their previous footsteps, unwittingly moving further away from true happiness. In fact, happiness does not solely depend on success or failure; joy can also be found by those who are still on the road.

So, what is true happiness? Before I answer, you may need to shift your mindset; otherwise, you might not fully grasp my explanation. If I say that true happiness is simply a subjective feeling of the soul, would you understand its meaning? Could you experience a sense of soulful refreshment? Perhaps not, as it involves a set of values you might not be familiar with or have never encountered, differing vastly from the prevalent materialistic mindset. So, I invite you to momentarily set aside all idealized models of apartments, cars, salaries, stocks, and even relationships. Only then can you lower your defenses and truly enter the “world” I am about to describe...

I always say that my goal is not to change the world, but to transform myself. I don’t seek to illuminate the world, but rather to find light within myself. My use of literature isn’t to make the world hear my voice, nor is it to push any agenda through my writing. It’s more about having a personal dialogue with myself in the world of words. The ultimate aim of my spiritual journey is to achieve absolute freedom and happiness for myself, nothing more.

Coincidentally, many share the same quest as me, seeking unconditioned freedom and happiness. This pursuit is deeply rooted in our human nature and instinct to yearn for love and freedom. Having found this path earlier, I feel a sense of duty to share the methods and experiences that guided me. Thus, my writings often convey ideas that might challenge some to understand or require patience to appreciate. But these thoughts arise from the bottom of my heart, and I believe those who resonate with me will readily smile and know what I mean. Some friends and students relayed to me how these heartfelt words had reignited their courage, dreams, and love, empowering them to transform their lives. This outcome is good, and yet, not entirely surprising to me, as I have traversed this path myself and understand its nuances.

Although I always look like this—a bearded man in a red checkered shirt and light blue jeans, finding delight in small things and holding a carefree attitude—I too underwent a journey of soul-searching, much like those who desperately seek happiness but struggle to find it. Therefore, I can deeply empathize with them, and perhaps with you too.

You walk with your head down on your night path, sometimes contemplating past events, sometimes pondering future expectations. You cannot feel the moon’s presence, especially when you enter the shade of trees or tall buildings, feeling engulfed by infinite darkness, with flickering and mysterious shadows all around. Your heart fills with loneliness, desolation, and panic. However, once you stop the endless stream of thoughts, lift your head, and gaze at the deep night sky, you will discover a bright full moon accompanying you. Silent and serene, it seemingly emits a gentle smile in its tranquility. This smile seeps into your heart, evoking warm and soothing emotions, and you strangely perceive the beauty of the silent night. As you traverse through the night, you no longer feel lonely, as the moon’s smile fills your soul, bringing a poetic charm to your journey.

I once wrote a doggerel to dispel some people’s “deification” of my persona, but it also expresses my attitude: “Xue Mo is a donkey, wandering with its head bowed in the night. Occasionally, it raises its gaze, catching sight of the moon in the distant horizon. Searching for wisdom, but finding none. Seeking intelligence, but finding none. Yet, its mind is illuminated, leaving behind no regrets.” Indeed, when I become enlightened, I am simply that donkey with a luminous mind.

True happiness is actually quite simple—it is the light within you. You might find it hard to believe, but things are often that simple, aren’t they? The most beautiful tulip you travel far and wide to find—it turns out to be blooming right in your garden, but regrettably, you never noticed it. When you, like the old me, “Occasionally, it raises its gaze” and see the tranquil and poetic moon in your heart, you will slowly emerge from the long night and leave behind no regrets.

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When he was going down into the pit, the earth squeaked and squawked as it pressed violently against the wooden wall support. The earth had greeted the digging of the first pit without the safety framework with sinister laughter, and then when it shook, sand boys lost their lives. After that, they built wooden supports with crisscrossed logs woven with willow and birch branches. But the earth did not give up easily, refusing to let holes be opened up on its body. So it pushed and pressed, sending creaks to Mengzi’s ears, who steeled himself to keep going, following a rope ladder that trembled under his feet, swaying dizzily. It did not bother the other sand boys, who ignored the screeching earth and quaking rope. His manhood at stake, he followed them down.

His nose was immediately struck by a humid mildew odor; signs of moisture were everywhere, but no water was oozing out yet. It was a newly dug pit, still a long way from the bottom; this was the hardest part of the process, where there was scant hope to see gold. All he could do was work like a demon, filling his basket with sand and rocks before climbing up the quivering rope ladder to empty the contents onto a man-made hillock.

As space down in the pit was limited, four men worked as a shift, two to carry up the sand and rocks that a third man shoveled into their baskets, and the fourth doing the digging. At Mengzi’s pit, Baldy Wang was the digger, who swung his spade like a madman, littering the scarred earth. Mengzi shuddered when he saw the look of loathing in Baldy’s eyes. He thought the work must be hurting the Earth God. The long spade cut into the earth, making a noise that set his teeth on edge and made his gums hurt. Ordinarily, he’d cover his ears, but on this day, he wanted to see how much he could take. You damned ears can take it if I can! Recalling the glint in Shuangfu’s eyes, brimming with mockery, Mengzi sneered and spat before picking up the full basket and getting onto the rope ladder.

His basket had been overfilled, probably because the man wanted to get in Shuangfu’s good graces. Mengzi had noticed that, but was unfazed. In his eyes the man might as well be Shuangfu. Go ahead, fill it as much as you can, and I’ll carry it up, Mengzi fumed. But the rope cut so painfully into his shoulder, so he adjusted it before continuing up the ladder.

Made of thick coir ropes and stakes for rungs, the ladder jerked perilously, sending the basket thudding hard into his body; his back began to ache after he’d taken only a few steps up. Rippling like waves, the ache quickly spread throughout his body, but he said to himself spitefully, I’m going to hurt you, hurt you badly, damned worthless back!

He looked up and saw they were watching him, probably having assumed that the shovel-man had played a trick on him and that he was suffering. So Mengzi stomped on the rungs, his energy nearly spent, sending him to the brink of total collapse. He was thirsty, his temples were pulsing, and the rope on his shoulder pressed hard down. I could fall! He dared not look down; bedeviled by acrophobia since childhood, he was terrified of losing his grip.

He held his breath and tried to swallow, but his mouth was dry. Damn you Shuangfu, you ass! But I don’t give a damn. The thought of Shuangfu gave him a strange new supply of energy. Mengzi climbed a few more rungs before leaning against one of the steps to catch his breath. He sensed the danger he faced; if he lost control of his hands and feet, he would plummet to the bottom and wind up as a pile of broken flesh, like an old cow rolling down a hollow.

Oddly, he was reminded of what his father said, “I can take whatever is doled out to me.” His father had directed his retort at Heaven, but for Mengzi, that would be Shuangfu. He disliked the comparison, but there was nothing he could do about that; he had no control over Shuangfu’s intent to take the place of Heaven. Which was why Mengzi protested silently: Yes, I can take whatever you dole out to me.

“Come on up,” Huaqiu shouted from above, after carrying one load. “The first load is always the hardest.”

Mengzi struggled to climb up, cursing as if it were a contest. Strangely, each curse seemed to invest his feet with greater strength, which then got him closer to the bright spot step by step.

From White Tiger Pass by Xuemo. Translated by Howard Goldblatt and Sylvia Li-chun Lin. Chapter Nine, section 1.

They were singing when they reached a sand dune on the village outskirts. It was the spot where, in her imagination, she had stood to watch Lingguan recede into the distance. She’d created a tableau next to an Artemisia bush, a deeply touching scene to her. A path, like a thin gray line, extended into the distance and led to a larger world. There ought to be someone walking down the sandy path, growing smaller under her gaze, eventually blending into the horizon. She would sing “a tearful tune flooded my heart,” her voice painting an intoxicating image of a world set off by sand.

Bunchgrass and other desert vegetation covered the dune, rat holes were everywhere. Rats were running amok, so frightening Yue’er that she shrieked and held onto Ying’er, who wore a faint smile. She had once been afraid of the rats, but, after her husband’s death, nothing scared her anymore. That was true. Was there anything more horrifying than death? If there was, then it had to be her dead heart.

An inch worm on Yue’er’s shoulder insolently arched its body as it moved. Immersed in the realm of the folk tune, the women were oblivious of the outside world, including caterpillars weaving spider-like webs under the trees. One had made it onto Yue’er’s shoulder. Ying’er quietly flicked it off without alarming her friend, before discovering another one crawling boldly up her pant leg. She flicked that one off too.

Ying’er realized that she had become a different person, seeming to have understood a great many things, her spirit reaching a wide, open space. What had she finally understood? She wasn’t sure, except that she felt a new understanding, and could let go of things that had once bothered her. Her heart had been elsewhere, led astray by some sentiment. For instance, caterpillars had once frightened her, their fuzzy green bodies raising goose bumps all over. Now she realized there was nothing to fear from caterpillars, which neither bit nor attacked people. Another example: she had been loath to part with Lingguan, the mere thought of which led her to despair, as illustrated by the line in one of the tunes, “After you left, melons are my sole companion/I hold a melon vine, my heart a gray pall.” Now that she had experienced desolation, she knew her heart would be warm and resplendent again. None of her fears mattered much. Maybe she had made some progress. If so, what had caused it? She knew, of course—it was death.

Her husband was dead. Someone she’d spent every moment with, but had not loved, had suddenly disappeared from her life. Death was the best teacher. You can learn about life from it.

Ying’er sat down, squinting at the path that, in her imagination, Lingguan had taken to reach the outside world. She looked back at the village through the clumps of Artemisia; the houses seemed sparse, compared with the vast desert behind her. With the sand as a backdrop, the village appeared bleak. On a large plot of land close to the dune a farmer was plowing his field behind an ox. Chickens pecked for food around wheat mounds at the edge of the field. That was it: desert, village, people, ox, chickens, wheat mounds, and rats scampering at her feet made up the world of her existence.

Over the past few years, depending on her experience and emotions, that simple but crowded world was alternately ugly, pretty, romantic and sad, before eventually becoming insipid again. It was a manifestation of the lyric: “An ordinary life, that is reality.”

“See that? That’s our hometown.” Yue’er stopped singing and sneered.

Ying’er frowned. There was a lot she liked about Yue’er, but one thing she disliked. Yue’er longed for the outside world, which was acceptable, but her longing was accompanied by a denunciation of Shawan, which bothered Ying’er. She found the village remote and backward, but could not abide criticism from Yue’er. Shawan might have been small, impoverished, and barren, but it was her hometown, Lingguan’s hometown, the baby’s too. Her heart skipped a beat at thoughts of her baby. This was the place that had produced Lingguan, who had gifted her with the most brilliant, most splendid period of her life. You shouldn’t complain about the place, Yue’er, she said silently. The city might be great, but it doesn’t belong to you. She frowned, but did not share her thoughts. Her breasts were full, so she opened her blouse and squeezed to relieve the tension, shooting milky white liquid at the Artemisia.

From White Tiger Pass by Xuemo. Translated by Howard Goldblatt and Sylvia Li-chun Lin. Chapter Five, section 1.

On October 10, 2026, Xuemo received an Author of the Year recognition from the International Impact Book Awards at a ceremony in Hollywood. Xuemo Culture Network reported the completed event on October 12, in an article by Liu Xiaoling.

The report connects the recognition with the writer’s sustained attention to Gansu and western China: its villages, landscapes, folk traditions, and the lives of ordinary people. It presents translation as the means by which readers elsewhere can encounter these places and experiences.

That focus offers a useful starting point for English-language readers. A story rooted in a particular village does not require its reader to have lived there. The detail of an unfamiliar place can be the beginning of recognition: a family’s hardship, a person’s difficult choice, or the search for a way to live.

The October account describes the award in terms of cultural connection. Read in that spirit, the news is also an invitation to spend time with the writing itself, and with the lives it brings into view.

A second recent announcement points to a specific English-language book. On September 11, the same website reported that Eternal Love, the English edition of 爱不落下, had received a 2026 NYC Big Book Award on September 9. The book was translated by Howard Goldblatt and Sylvia Li-chun Lin and published by Ruxue International Media Inc.

As the September report describes it, the novel follows a woman who leaves an abusive marriage and is later diagnosed with a terminal illness. After losing her ability to speak, she begins a correspondence with a spiritual mentor. Those letters become the form through which the story considers suffering, freedom, and the possibility of inner peace.

This is a novel about how someone meets circumstances she cannot easily change. For a new reader, its exchange of letters offers an intimate point of entry into Xuemo’s recurring concern with the life of the mind amid physical hardship.

The two announcements concern different recognitions: an October award for the author and a September award for Eternal Love in English. Each offers an occasion to begin reading.

Sources: Xuemo Culture Network, October 12, 2026; Xuemo Culture Network, September 11, 2026.

The sky was dusty gray when Lingguan and the others set out in late autumn. The sun, its rays muted, hung in the air like a gigantic Ping-Pong ball, slicing the sky into two halves, one dark, the other bright. Smoky shadows spread above the ball, beneath which lay a white stratum infused with gray dust mites. They were barely on the road when a breeze slowly gathered enough force to send howling sand whipping against their faces. Rings from the camel’s bell interwove with the shrieking wind before drifting into sand hollows.

As a child, Lingguan had gone with his father into the desert, where they had had lit a bonfire when darkness fell after they’d collected a load of the cactus-like plant shami, or desert rice. The crackling fire was a fitting ornament for a night cooled by a gentle breeze that got the men talking. They conjured up stories of Shawan’s past, including a notorious affair between the collier and a village woman, and then sang Liangzhou songs, most with off-color lyrics. Lingguan had not understood the lyrics, but had blushed even so. The men had sung in gravelly voices that brimmed with emotion and blended with the wind-blown sand to produce sounds colored by the yellow hue of an arid landscape. What Lingguan wanted most was to see the chilled, lonely moon hang suspended in the sky. The desert exuded an unfathomable tranquility, like a fairy-tale world, by the time the moon emerged. Under its milky light, the dunes alternated between dark and bright. A languid breeze prompted the men to break into song again, which in turn drew fascinating echoes from the sand hollows and startled birds out of their roosts in the desert rice plants. Every time Lingguan heard the drawn-out calls, his body shook, and he shouted at the top of his lungs; a magical internal force compelled him to roll in the sand. Then he grew into adulthood. The sandy ocean remained unchanged, as did the desert winds, but he no longer felt the same joyful surprise; the child had disappeared into the stillness of the sand hollows and the wrinkles of the desert. The wind could continue to blow with all its might, and the bonfire could keep burning bright, but the adult Lingguan never could dislodge the emotional burden that frequently weighed him down.

They reached Magang in three days, when the sun had sunk into the sand, leaving a gaunt first-quarter moon suspended above the desert to sprinkle the area with its icy beams. Pale moonlight whitened the shifting hills to the south and darkened the steep ridges to the north, creating a mysterious haze with contrasting colors. Only Meng Eight knew how to read the enigmatic desert night. Soon they had gathered enough dry twigs and weeds to start a bonfire, which injected vitality and a poetic aura into the quiet desert; crackling Artemisia twigs sent flames whooping into the air and reawakened the child in Lingguan. A mysterious power churning inside drove away his fatigue and numbness. Late autumn nights in the desert are bone chilling cold; the night air seethes as it spreads wetly over the heaving waves of sand and seeps under the skin. Lingguan’s sweat-soaked underwear was icy and as stiff as armor. The fire drenched him with warmth that reminded him of his mother, so he lay down near it, eyes shut and his mind clear, to let its softness soothe his weary body and mind.

With the aid of the firelight, Meng Eight and Huaqiu set up a “home” for themselves with a few wooden stakes, a tent, three sets of bedding, some simple cookware, and other basic necessities. Home, how cozy it sounded in this bleak spot. Meng had brought along his shaggy fur blanket, a prized possession woven from golden camel hair that protected him against moisture while keeping him warm. Over the days that followed, the feel of home would greet Lingguan whenever he saw the blanket.

The night was strangely quiet, but for the roaring bonfire; night seemed to have turned into a gigantic black pot, which, when gently overturned, cloaked the entire desert. Stars hung low above them, solidly three-dimensional, as if all the men had to do was reach up and pluck them out of the sky. Sandy hummocks came in and out of view in the firelight, like an ink-wash painting. Huge Artemisia plants curled into ghostly shadows, visible only when the flame burned brightly.

Meng Eight and Huaqiu were talking, but they sounded distant, almost unreal. In fact, everything appeared far away, all but the tranquility, a sensation Lingguan had not felt for a very long time. Turbulence had long filled his mind, both when he was at school in the city and back in the countryside, where people eked out a living. A restless mind was not a mind at all. To him, a real mind had to be an independent realm unaffected by outside factors. Yes, the mind and the outside world had to be distinct.

From Desert Rites by Xuemo. Translated by Howard Goldblatt and Sylvia Li-chun Lin. Chapter Three, section 1.

An excerpt from The World Is a Reflection of the Mind, “True Solitude Is a State of Being,” by Xuemo. Translated by Suosalang Translation Group.

What exactly is spirituality? Essentially, spirituality is a form of freedom. It transcends “isms,” going beyond human concepts, limitations, and standards, thereby transcending the entirety of human constructs. This transcendence, also a form of freedom, involves surpassing constraints akin to suits and bindings like ties, thus achieving a state of liberation. So, spirituality is about achieving a higher state of freedom, a transcendence that is not bound by the limitations of human society. In today’s literary world, it is rare to encounter works that transcend worldly matters. This comes from the social pressures exerted on the writer as a free-willed individual.

In 2004, I flew to Romania to attend an international literary festival themed “Solitude in the Global Village.” There were over 150 writers from more than 20 countries, and everyone talked about solitude. However, the solitude they discussed pertained merely to the pressure exerted by contemporary media on writers. They lamented that writers can no longer “command hundreds with one call” as in the past, nor can they be as “high and mighty” as before, that their status is no longer as illustrious as it once was, lacking the earth-shattering fame and past glory. Therefore, writers feel very lonely. This “loneliness” pervades the entire literary world.

In an interview with an international radio station, I mentioned that those writers had misunderstood “solitude,” confusing it with loneliness, a negative emotion. I explained to the reporter that I, Xue Mo, also experience solitude. What is my solitude? It’s my desire to create something eternal and indestructible. Yet, in this world, there is no true eternity. We cannot find everlasting existence, nor can we build something immune to the ravages of time. Still, I aspired to achieve it. This created a great contrast, and that was my solitude. This dilemma is unsolvable, not just for me but for many great writers and philosophers too. They feel solitary and anguished because, to them, the world is rapidly vanishing into an unknown space, and we, as humans, are powerless to stop it, unable to capture even a fragment of the eternity we seek to preserve. It is this unsolvable problem that causes my solitude.

For this reason, I quit writing for a long time, unable to find a purpose for it. Though I believe my works might achieve a form of eternity in this world, I am aware that the lifespan of this world is uncertain. Humans have manufactured so many nuclear weapons and atomic bombs, with the capacity to destroy the Earth many times over. Besides, a great amount of people are madly plundering its resources, thus devastating our homeland. A friend once told me about the rising water levels in Venice, warning that the city might soon be submerged. The world is rapidly fading into the unknown, but I still strive to create something eternal. This solitude, an unsolvable human dilemma, leaves me feeling deeply lonely.

My solitude isn’t my failure to earn money, gain benefits, or achieve fame, nor from the pressure that television and the Internet exert on print media. Not at all. Solitude is something that comes from within, independent of the outside world. When a writer becomes overly concerned with how the world perceives them, they have already diminished themselves. They may experience agony when they desire a beautiful girl but cannot get her, or feel distressed when they wish for massive wealth and to emulate Bill Gates but couldn’t achieve it. However, the disappointment in these cases is not solitude.

Solitude is a state of being, a high level of realization. Jesus Christ aspired to love humanity and show universal love, but he was rejected and crucified by the world, leading to his solitude. His words, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,” epitomize this solitude. Similarly, when Siddhartha Gautama, after attaining enlightenment under the Bodhi Tree, saw many deceived by illusory and fleeting phenomena and consumed by greed, hatred, and ignorance, his inability to immediately relieve their suffering made him feel solitary. Confucius, too, was solitary when he shared his concept of “benevolence” with the world but ended up wandering like a homeless dog. Thus, true solitude is more than a feeling; it’s a state of being. Those who haven’t reached this state may feel loss, but not solitude.

As a lotus flower, looking upon the pond, you see many lotus seeds, each with the potential to bloom. Yet, for reasons unknown, they stay trapped in the mud, unable to sprout. In such moments, the lotus flower may feel solitary, longing for all the seeds to rise above the mire. When this hope goes unfulfilled, a sense of solitude emerges. True solitude arises only when a person transcends their living environment.

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A well, a stretch of pasture, a flock of sheep: in Xuemo’s fiction, these are parts of a shared world in which the fate of one life affects another. That interdependence was a central theme when Xuemo met Stephen Roddy for the twenty-fifth session of Xuemo in Dialogue with International Scholars on September 6, 2026.

The online event was organized by the World Literature Union and the Xuemo Foundation. Roddy, introduced in the report as Professor of Asian Studies at the University of San Francisco, discussed the relationship between western China, ecological experience, and literature’s movement across cultures. Yanjin Chen, an editor of Xuemo’s work and the author of The Code of Xuemo, moderated.

Roddy began with the Hexi Corridor, considering the region through its Gobi landscapes, deserts, mountains, and accumulated cultural histories. He described a place shaped by Han Chinese culture, Tibetan Buddhist traditions, Hui and Mongolian cultures, and the journeys of people travelling the Silk Road. In his reading, Xuemo’s writing grows from this layered environment.

Xuemo responded by connecting the desert to his own experience of growing up and writing. The landscape is a lived environment, carrying the presence of animals, ordinary people, folk stories, and the demands of survival. Its physical conditions are inseparable from the ways he thinks about life and death.

For Roddy, the ecological force of the fiction lies in that connection. Mountains, grasslands, and sources of water do more than establish a setting. People and animals depend upon them together. When a well runs dry or pasture deteriorates, the consequences move through the entire community of life.

The discussion became particularly concrete around the figure of the wolf. Roddy brought other contemporary Chinese writing about wolves into the conversation, including Wolf Totem. Xuemo explained that the wolf in Desert Hunters should first be understood as another life within nature. Its significance does not rest on an ideal of conquest or competitive strength.

From that perspective, conflict grows when human beings keep occupying the space other species need to survive. The literary question turns back toward people: how do desires shape conduct, and how might a different relationship with other forms of life become possible? The conversation placed these questions within experience of a particular landscape while recognizing their wider relevance.

Questions from other participants moved the forum toward the possibilities and limits of inner change. Asked what traditional wisdom concerning the heart and mind could offer people today, Xuemo distinguished individual transformation from institutional and material problems. Those problems require their corresponding social mechanisms. Work on the self, in his account, also needs a cultural environment that can support it.

A further question concerned an author’s authority over a finished book. If a writer continues explaining the work through talks and interviews, could that narrow the range of possible readings? What should happen when readers elsewhere understand a book differently from its author, or respond critically?

Xuemo answered by placing himself among the readers once the work is complete. He compared a book entering someone’s inner life to a stone entering water: its effects vary with the person who encounters it. Different interpretations, questions, and criticism can keep the exchange alive. Agreement with an author’s intention is not the only meaningful outcome.

The forum closed with another ecological image: a forest made up of works, translations, scholars, and readers. Each contributes to the conditions in which the others can flourish. In that image, literature reaches the world through a continuing relationship among many participants, while retaining the particular ground from which it began.

Adapted from the Chinese report by Jiayue Shen, published on Xuemo Culture Network on September 12, 2026. This is a retrospective account of the September 6 dialogue. Read the original report.

Black Pine Ditch was so well known as a dirt-poor area that there was even a doggerel: Black Pine Ditch, Black Pine Ditch, one crop out of ten within reach/bones of the dead for kindling/the crows eat only rock-pilings.” The last line referred to the fact that they had no firewood and nothing to eat. Later they solved the problem of firewood by digging holes in the hills to scrounge for coal. It was soft coal, which smelled terrible. Though it produced enough fire to cook, the pervasive use of it caused a widespread lung inflammation in the women, whose throats seemed to play music with each breath.

Their so-called farmland was on Monk Hill. In the spring, they sowed the seeds and waited for Heaven’s reaction. If it was kind enough to let out a few moist farts and send them some rain, they’d manage to fill their bellies. If not, the seedlings would turn into dry grass, good only for livestock. And when it rained, they had to pray it wasn’t a storm. A few days earlier, after a bit too much rain, half the land was underwater and mudslides buried houses, crushed their crops and opened up a gulch so wide and deep that careless night travelers fell in with grave results.

The twisted path along the gulch was their road; when it was not raining, it was serviceable for donkey carts and three-wheelers, but nothing larger. To get into town, the villagers had to first walk, or ride in a cart or three-wheeler, rocking for several hours on a path strewn with rocks and lined with ruts to a relatively flat spot to wait for a bus. Every morning a bus passed through on its way to town. This was why Meng was making his first visit to Zhang’s house. Whenever he mentioned it, his friend would say:

“Why would you want to visit an awful place like that? You get tossed around in the cart so much your guts could spill out.”

“We had a drought this past summer, so no harvest,” Sanzhuan’er said.

“But it rained this year.”

“It didn’t come at the right time. Rain is useless once the seedlings have dried up. We can only hope for a better fall harvest. We’ll have to eat the wind if it doesn’t rain soon. It’s been like this for three years. Heaven is killing us. Many of the villagers have gone west already, leaving their land behind. It’s probably better that way. It’s demoralizing after you sow the seeds and fertilize the land, only to end up with a few handfuls of dry grass.”

Ahead on the path a few farmers were looking up at the sky, while another one was leading a horse to stomp on ashes on hillside field. Once the earth was tamped solid by the galloping hoofs, it was then cut into squares and piled up to form walls, leaving an opening for coal and firewood to heat the soil that would turn into ashy clay. The villagers would smash the clay and sprinkle it in fields as fertilizer, a technique passed down from their ancestors, but later abandoned when they favored chemical fertilizers. When it got too expensive, they switched back to the age-old method.

“Has your father taken a break, Sanzhuan’er?” an old man asked.

“No,” The young man replied. “But it’s a matter of days now, I’m afraid.”

“Once he has, you’ve lost a big tree,” another said.

“Let’s not talk about that now.” He sighed. “We’ll take it one day at a time. There’s no need for the rest of us to join him.”

Meng knew that by taking a break the locals meant dying, a taboo subject for them. As long as you lived, you had to toil like cattle and could take a break only when you died. The word alone signified the hardships of farming, no time off as long as you lived. As Laoshun liked to say, “An old ox continues to shit until it dies,” and “the millstone never comes off.” Elders instructed their children to be industrious and thrifty in running a household. The farmers were that for sure; they worked hard up until they took their last break; they were also thrifty, not throwing away even moldy, blackened steamed rolls. But why were they still poor? Why did they have trouble surviving, when they were industrious and thrifty?

“Worst case, we’ll head west too,” the young man said. “We have to find a way to stay alive.”

From Desert Hunters by Xuemo. Translated by Howard Goldblatt and Sylvia Li-chun Lin. Chapter Fourteen, section 2.

An autobiography can hold several lives at once: the person remembering, the younger self being remembered, and the future self still taking shape. That idea ran through the first World Literature Union Youth Forum, held online on July 25, 2026, with Xuemo’s One Man’s West at the centre of the discussion.

Organized by the World Literature Union and the Xuemo Foundation, the forum brought together Wu Lingxiao, a researcher in literary geography and biographical literature who holds a doctorate in literature from Peking University, and the young writer Chen Jianxin. Xu Yujiao (Joy), a World Literature Union secretary and an editor involved in presenting Xuemo’s work internationally, moderated the conversation.

The discussion began with a question about place. When a book is described as literature from western China, does that mean its deserts, villages, and landscapes? Or does it also mean the ways those surroundings shape a person’s habits, memories, and understanding of life?

Chen, who grew up in Liangzhou, Gansu, emphasized the second possibility. In his reading, Xuemo approaches the region through ordinary lives rather than through a distant, picturesque image of the desert. Water, land, neighbours, family, and belief become part of the self. Chen interpreted the resilience of Xuemo’s father as a refusal to surrender one’s dignity, even while accepting circumstances that cannot simply be wished away.

Wu then turned to the autobiography’s handling of time. A fifty-year-old Xuemo writes about his twenty-year-old self, while that younger self imagines how an eighty-year-old might judge the present. Wu read this structure as a conversation among different ages. Youthful uncertainty is allowed to remain visible instead of being tidied away by the knowledge of what happened later.

That distinction mattered to both speakers. A life story written only as the explanation of eventual success can make growing up appear inevitable. Their reading of One Man’s West instead made room for hesitation, interruption, and competing possibilities. The younger Xuemo becomes compelling precisely because his future is still unsettled.

The forum also considered what this might mean for young people facing pressure to follow a prescribed sequence of education, work, and family life. Drawing on the idea of branching, non-linear growth, Wu contrasted a fixed social path with Xuemo’s changing aspirations: dreams of heroism, a commitment to writing, and an interest in drawing later in life.

Chen described these changes as evidence of an enduring direction rather than a single, permanent destination. In the account discussed at the forum, setbacks and periods of uncertainty did not fit a ready-made formula. Letting go of an insistence on becoming a particular kind of person was part of finding another way forward.

To consider the relationship between leaving home and remaining rooted, the speakers used the image of a pair of compasses. Xuemo’s mother, staying on the land in Liangzhou, represented the fixed leg; Xuemo’s journeys represented the moving one. Chen treated both choices as ways of taking responsibility for a life, with exploration still carrying the imprint of home.

The conversation ended with writing’s role in cultural memory. Wu pointed to fading wedding customs, local speech, and Liangzhou’s xianxiao storytelling tradition. A written record cannot reproduce an entire vanished world, but it can preserve details through which later readers encounter it.

Across these themes, the forum approached the book as more than a story of literary achievement. It became an invitation to consider how a person grows within a place, carries that place elsewhere, and leaves something of its life for others to read.

Adapted from the Chinese report by Xu Yujiao, published on Xuemo Culture Network on July 30, 2026. This is a retrospective account of the July 25 forum. Read the original report.

The rabbit-hawks come in late summer, around the time of Bailu, or White Dew, when the desert sand yellows, the grass grows tall, and the rabbits are plump. After a restive summer, they swoop down from the Qilian Mountains and wheel toward the Tengger Desert in Gansu.

Laoshun set his snare on the dry Dasha River bed.

Constructed of cotton thread on three sides, it formed a tripod over a tethered pigeon—the bait. A hawk, famished from failing to catch any of the increasingly elusive rabbits, flew headlong into it.

With eyes that can see for miles, it did not notice the snare right in front of it.

The usual morning task: “crush” a hawk.

Laoshun awoke early that morning, jolted out of a dream teeming with rabbits that descended on him with bloody mouths, so many they nearly blotted out the sky. A believer in retribution, he was sure they were animals that had died at his hands, now coming to claim his life. He had dreams like that all the time, and after the first time actually decided to stop flying hawks altogether.

“Nonsense!” Meng Eight had exclaimed. “Stop and the rabbits will ruin our crops. We’d be lucky if we didn’t starve.”

That comment persuaded Laoshun that flying hawks was in fact a moral act that accumulated good karma. Mostly, though, he grew restless and hated the idea of giving up the tasty rabbit meat after White Dew passed. And yet the killing of sentient beings cast a shadow on his mind, so the dream haunted his sleep, and he awoke in a cold sweat each time it visited him. The dream recurred, yet he kept flying his hawks. Rabbits ruined the crops, and that thought was the “broom” with which he managed to sweep the shadow off across the mountains.

The moment he turned on the light, the hawk named “Stubborn Yellow” flapped its wings to show its agitation. Obviously, it too was having visions, likely dreaming of soaring aloft. That must be it, Laoshun said to himself. Humans smack their lips when they dream of eating meat, and a hawk flaps its wings when it dreams of flying. He noticed that the bird’s eyes were open. Those commanding eyes were always in motion; he loved eyes like that, true hawk eyes, the windows through which he could see what made a hawk a hawk.

Stubborn Yellow was an exasperating bird, hard to care for, with a violent temper; but that meant it was a good hawk, the way an unbroken horse can travel a thousand li, and a loyal minister is staunch and upright. The hotter the temper, the more likely that the bird will turn out to be a treasure. Once tamed, it will be an expert rabbit hunter and unfailingly dependable. A second-rate hawk like Indigo Widow, on the other hand, turns docile the moment it is trapped; it eats what it is given and allows itself to be touched. On the surface, it appears to have been subdued, but it will fly away the moment it is released. Catch a rabbit? Sniff a rabbit’s rear end is more likely!

Laoshun preferred spirited hawks.

A thumb-sized ball of wool lay on the ground. He had forced it down Stubborn Yellow’s craw the night before, and the bird had expelled it in the morning with a twist of its neck. He picked the ball up and examined it under the light; it was spotless, which meant that the bird had cleaned out its phlegm and was now ready to be flown over rabbits. This was the seventh ball. The previous six had gone in at night and come out the next morning covered with a viscous yellow substance called “tan,” a term passed down by Laoshun’s ancestors. Lingguan, his youngest son, said it was fat. It did not matter to Laoshun what it was called, only that it was the substance that made a hawk wild. Without removing it, he would lose the bird the moment he let it go. Swoosh—into the sky and out of sight by the time it went into its dive. Once the phlegm was cleared, the hawk would experience vertigo when it flew too high, and hunger would force it to pounce on the first rabbit it saw.

Laoshun decided that this was the day to let Yellow Stubborn hunt. Timing was critical. If he held off too long, it might be too tame to recall that it was a bird of prey. Everything was ready, and what he needed now was the proverbial east wind. All his training led to this singular act of setting it loose; Laoshun was as keyed up as a soldier before battle.

From Desert Rites by Xuemo. Translated by Howard Goldblatt and Sylvia Li-chun Lin. Chapter One, section 1.

Xuemo in Dialogue with International Scholars E19

Translation Analysis of Desert Hunters through Manipulation Theory

Event Description

Join us for the 19th session of Xuemo in Dialogue with International Scholars, a thought-provoking discussion on the English translation of Xuemo’s novel Desert Hunters. This event explores the application of Manipulation Theory in literary translation and its role in fostering international communication. The dialogue will highlight how translation choices shape cultural resonance and global understanding.

Guest Speakers

• Xuemo — Writer & Cultural Scholar

• Xuezhao Li — PhD Candidate, Ohio State University

Organizers

World Literature Union & Xuemo Foundation

Time

• 8:00 PM Beijing

• 5:00 AM U.S. Pacific Time

• 8:00 AM Toronto

• 1:00 PM UK

• 2:00 PM Central Europe

Platform

Live on Zoom

WLU Youth Forum · Session 01

The Geography of Western Chinese Literature

Homeland, Automatic Writing, and Xuemo’s One Man’s West

Join Dr. Lingxiao Wu of Peking University and Jianxin Chen of Xuemo Academy for an illuminating conversation on the landscapes, memory, and creative spirit of western Chinese literature.

This first session of the WLU Youth Forum explores how homeland shapes literary imagination, how automatic writing opens new pathways of expression, and how Xuemo’s One Man’s West portrays the cultural and spiritual geography of western China. Together, the speakers will consider the connections between place, identity, and literary creation across contemporary Chinese literature.

Speakers
Dr. Lingxiao Wu — Peking University
Jianxin Chen — Xuemo Academy

Date & Time
July 25 2026, 8:00 PM Beijing, 5:00 AM U.S. Pacific, 8:00 AM Toronto, 1:00 PM UK, and 2:00 PM Central Europe

Live on Zoom

Organized by the World Literature Union and the Xuemo Foundation.