炸裂志  阎连科 著 

• Nobody denies that China is doing well in becoming world’s second economic power. There is nothing but good stories coming out of China these days. Everything is on the way up. Is it really? With common sense, everybody also knows that it is impossible for everything in China to be that good, since China is not an Utopia. No country is an Utopia. From China, however, there is hardly any report on what is not right, since unfavorable reports are usually suppressed. 

• In the form of a satire, the author documented how a fictitious rural village, 炸裂镇, grew from a backwater mining town to a shining megapolis in just a few years - through robbing, sex, cheating, bribing, and corruption. All these were tolerated in the name of making money, since getting rich was considered glorious. Even prostitution was encouraged by families if daughters could bring money back from big cities. Exaggeration, of course. Entirely fictitious, not necessarily.

• Simply, the work is an anti-establishment publication. It reminds that it is impossible for everything in China to be that rosy according to the official reporting. While one does not need to dwell on negatives only, ignoring all negatives in the still booming China can be detrimental to country’s future.

• The author is both bold and clever in presenting an important documentation in the form of a satire through sarcasm. It’s, perhaps, the only possible way to do so in a political system without the total freedom of expression. On the other hand, the fact that this Nobel potential author was not jailed for his work shows that the present day China has come a long way.