What are you reading?

@xiumukediao

That is awesome, enjoy it. It's a great novel and as you know our right of passage as Chinese learners cracking a novel. 孽子！蒸腾！心甘情愿！红卫兵！陈米行……

I've been getting into 简书 recently, for both reading and writing.

Many people submit their writing there, so it's less "formal written news" and more "daily diary" and "amateur stories".  Lots random thoughts about lots of topics.  And there's a lot less slang than on, say, Weibo.  The writing is less rigorously polished, and feels more natural and spontaneous.  And you get a whole mix of writing styles.

For writing, they have a 300字 daily streak challenge 日更挑战, where you get badges for maintaining your streak (writing 300+ characters daily), so I've been doing that recently too.  And it's nice to get "likes" on your writing.

I'm into Chapter 5 of 福爾摩沙血寶藏 by 主兒. Although it's fiction, the author is apparently a history professor with some local archaeology under their belt. The story is neat, but where it (so far) really shines is in the scenes about the history of locations, customs, and verbal expressions. My only complaint is a bit of cultural blindness. Two 荷蘭人 supposedly speaking 荷語 but arguing about which is to be addressed as uncle?!

On 1/24/2026 at 2:05 PM, Lu said:

Now reading Hu Anyan's book on being a parcel delivery man in Beijing, in Dutch translation. It's good so far, a nice insight in the life of such a worker.

I ordered the Chinese version in my February Taobao haul based on @Lu and @matteo's posts. 

On 1/24/2026 at 2:22 PM, matteo said:

Oh I'm reading it as well, it's really interesting - at times even eye-opening - if maybe a bit monotonous. It's really more a diary or a documentary rather than a novel, recommended in simplified as the prose is simple and easy to understand. 

It's quite interesting to hear about the life of a migrant worker. There were a couple of times where a package I ordered while living in China was too big for the local package delivery point/shop to hold, and I wasn't always available to accept the package. Now I feel really bad knowing that the delivery guy is paid per delivered order and makes less money if people aren't available to accept packages. 

The book is a series of non-sequential vignettes written by a migrant worker (Hu Anyan). He's self aware that he's nice to the point of being a pushover who doesn't always advocate enough for his own interests with employers. He tried entrepreneurship a couple of times and that mostly didn't work out either. Halfway through the book he starts mentioning how he's reading and learning to be a writer in his spare time.
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This book has been a pretty big hit in China, I'm glad he now has the financial freedom to be a writer.