He has not reached the heights of popularity that a few other major contemporary Chinese writers such as Mo Yan, author of Red Sorghum, or Yu Hua, who wrote To Live, once commanded.

Instead, he keeps to himself, reading, thinking and writing undisturbed. And after several years, he interrupts his silent work by surprising the literary world with a new book.

The latest one is Tale of Silver City (Yincheng Gushi), published first in the bimonthly Harvest magazine in January 2002, then by the Yangtze Literature and Arts Publishing House in May 2002.

It's no secret that Li has received more attention from overseas scholars than most of his fellow contemporary Chinese writers. Some of his works have been translated into different languages by some of the best Sinologists today.

Goran Malmqvist, the sole Chinese-speaking member of the Swedish Academy which awards Nobel prizes, has followed Li's works ever since his first success with Thick Earth (Houtu) in 1989. The Swedish scholar has translated three of Li Rui's five major books and is working on the fourth, while expressing great interest in translating the newest addition, Tale of Silver City.

Li's other translators include Howard Goldblatt of the United States, and Annie Curien of France, both influential Sinologists.

Follow No Fashion

One reason for Li Rui's relatively low profile in the domestic market is that he has never been prolific. He takes a long time contemplating and preparing for each of his novels.

When Li starts to write, he writes slowly. Before he felt ready to start writing The Old Site (Jiu Zhi) (translated by Goldblatt as Silver City), he had turned it over in his mind for about seven years, while Tale of Silver City took him still longer to prepare.

He seems extraordinarily averse to repeating himself in his books. In the postscript to each of his novels, he often describes his deliberate efforts to transcend himself as well as the joy he derives from new adventures and discoveries during the creative process.

The result is impressive. His five books range from Thick Earth (1989) and The Old Site (1992) to Trees under No Wind (Wufeng Zhi Shu) (1994), Cloudless within Ten-Thousand-Li (Wanli Wu Yun) (1996), and finally Tale of Silver City (2002). Each exhibits sometimes radically different features to its predecessor in style and narrative manner. The settings of the stories also differ.

However, all of his stories could be seen as variations on a theme -- explorations of the essence of human existence -- that has obsessed Li over the years.

Another reason why Li could be unfamiliar to readers is that he always keeps his distance from literary fashions.

Chinese literature since the late 1970s has seen several trends.

"Scar literature," which sold millions of copies at its peak in the early 1980s, is represented by works describing the trials and tribulations of the "cultural revolution" (1966-76).

It was followed by "root-seeking literature," characterized by novels recalling youthful experiences during the "cultural revolution" with a certain nostalgia.

Then some maverick writers launched avant-garde writing, which stalled before long amid a rush of imitators.

Since the 1990s, commercial culture has dominated many Chinese writers, who are turning literature into light entertainment.

"Refuse chorus" is the name of an essay written by Li in 1994, as well as the name of one of his collections of essays.

"Ever since the first emperor of the Qin Dynasty unified the weights and measures of China, many Chinese have been only willing to sing in chorus," he writes in the essay. "The deafening chorus is too disappointing and stifling. Do we really not have the courage to sing a solo?"

Thick Earth

Until now, Li Rui's literary allegories have had two geographic centers: Luliang Mountain and Silver City. The narrative of the former comes from his own life experience, the narrative of the latter originates from the history of his family. In his five books, he has returned to the two places alternately.

Li's personal history is typical of the deprivation and poignancy many young people his age went through during the "cultural revolution."

When the "cultural revolution" broke out he was barely 16.

Before then, he lived in the suburbs of Beijing. His father was then a high-ranking Party official. Li passed the earlier stage of the "cultural revolution" as a member of the Red Guards like most middle-school students at that time, and started teaching himself about literature by reading and copying prohibited Chinese and Western classics stolen from a deserted school library.

One of Li's lifelong memories, shared by urban students of his generation, started in the third year of the "cultural revolution," when he was sent to the countryside to join peasants in their daily life for reeducation.

Li was sent to the deep hinterland of the Luliang Mountains in North China's Shanxi Province, settling down at an isolated little village with only 11 families.

He lived there for more than six years. Shortly after he left Beijing, his mother and father died in the political storm.

From that period of history, there emerged in the early 80s a group of young writers called "educated youth writers," and a specific literary genre called "educated youth literature."

The experiences of the era also gave birth to the writer Li Rui. "I got the most crucial personal experience of my life there, which determined all my later writing," he said.

But he did not join the chorus of protests against and denouncements of the "cultural revolution" as exemplified in the novels of other writers of his generation, immediately after the turmoil was over.

Instead, Li began to write Thick Earth, a collection of 17 short stories, as late as 1986 and with a totally different perspective.

With detached observation, a composed demeanor, highly controlled narrative, and intense emotional core, he portrays the daily life of the peasants in the Luliang Mountains -- a life of toil, suffering, affliction and scourge, as well as hope, love, sympathy and dignity.

Li vividly depicts the local culture and psychology of a specific rural area of China.

But the toil and suffering on the silent "thick earth" also tell of states of human existence that transcend geographical boundaries.

The setting for the struggles of these humble peasants is the Luliang Mountains and a specific era in Chinese history, but readers can just as well say they are set on the boundless earth and in timeless history. The peasants seem to be plodding across the vast desert of history, with relentless Time devouring and erasing all before and behind them.

In 1994 and 1996, Li returned to the Luliang Mountains again in his two novels Trees under No Wind and Cloudless within Ten-Thousand-Li.

The two novels exhibit Li's conspicuous attempts to explore new narrative possibilities by introducing multi-person narrative and the unrefined spoken language of the narrators' streams of consciousness.

As to the content, Li foregrounds in the two books the "cultural revolution," which in Thick Earth is a distant and vague menace. By placing these poor peasants under the omnipresent shadow of the "cultural revolution," Li emphasizes the spiritual suffering of human beings rather than material poverty.

Silver City

Unlike the Luliang Mountains, Silver City is a fabricated place. After painstakingly doing his homework by delving into all kinds of historical materials, Li elaborately creates the people and customs, mountain and river, flourishing well-salt (salt mine) industry, detailed daily life, and all the vicissitudes of the Silver City.

But behind all these fabrications, there is a real city which serves as its archetype: his hometown, the city of Zigong in Sichuan Province. Li has only returned to his hometown once, where he and his siblings are the only ones left of a whole local clan. He claimed that his clan used to be one of the most illustrious and ancient families in the city.

Tale of Silver City tells of a few days in the lives of several people who, in the face of crisis, were supposed to affect history. The story centres on a historical turning point -- the autumn of the year before the 1911 Revolution that overthrew the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), the last feudal dynasty in Chinese history.

The heroes of the novel include three young intellectual revolutionaries, each with their own secret backgrounds, experiences and personalities, one corrupt but adamant Qing Dynasty loyalist military leader, and one semi-feudal, semi-capitalist patriarch, who is desperate to save his family and well-salt dynasty.

But just as Li said, "The real hero of the novel is 'history'." As he admits, his motivation for writing the book was to try to answer, or at least put forward, the question of "what is the real nature of history." He deeply distrusts established "History," which always seems rational and unfailing.

In the book he suggests the readers put aside temporarily the entrenched concept of "History" from textbooks, and enter into that specific historical moment, to closely observe the struggles of individuals who were meant to change history.

What the readers may perceive under his pen is a series of accidents and events which ultimately confound the deliberate decisions and efforts of individuals.

At the end of the novel, all the heroism, faith, courage and sacrifice were “lost” or were "about to be lost” in the “irrational, indifferent flood of history," in his words. But readers may also feel enormous sublimity -- however sad it may be -- and vast solitude.

Alongside the main plot, Li elaborately describes the rhythmic breath and pulse of Silver City's daily life, which seems unchanged in the face of time.

Oblivious to the violent revolution around them, Silver City's cow-dung peddlers, well-salt workers and others immerse themselves in their own little sadnesses and pleasures, and silently swallow their respective shares of sorrow, suffering, and death. Their names cannot be found in "History," but they are the real history.

(China Daily January 24, 2003)