The Festival Stories

Rural China remains an enigma to the outside world despite Deng’s Open Door Policy in 1979, and nowhere is this more apparent than in Ningxia Province. This collection of stories deals with six Chinese festivals covering a single year. Each festival comprises one chapter and tells the fictional, but realistic events of one day. All the characters in this book are imagined although they are based on my observations over six years as an educational development-worker. The people all undergo a life-changing event during this time. One of the characters is an English volunteer, but Anna is only superficially like me. I wanted to bring to life the effects of ancient cultures living side by side as everyone struggles to cope with everyday life. Ningxia is a ated homeland for Chinese Muslims who live alongside the majority-culture of Han people. This book is unusual in both scope and subject-matter and offers new insights into fascinating and largely hidden lives.