Standing in the center of the village, staring intently, Liu gently wrote about all the warmth and unchanged: the village where people and animals lived together, the soft and joyful details of daily life, the ancient and solemn order, the fair and beautiful fate.
—Li Juan, author of Winter Pasture

Liu is the closest human being to Chuang Tzu, the ancient philosopher. While we all feel there is not enough time for everything, he spends a lot of time introducing two ants to each other and researching why donkeys don't wear underwear. This book is a guide for readers to
appreciate the cuteness of nature.
—Liang Wendao, writer and critic

★ Liu Liangcheng is hailed as “the last essayist of 20th-century China” and a “village philosopher.” He has received the Lu Xun Literary Prize, the Prose Award of the 16th Baihua Literary Award, and the 11th Mao Dun Literary Prize (often referred to as China’s Nobel Prize in Literature). As a true pastoral writer of the 21st century, he stands as a guardian of the spirit amid the clamor of materialism, embodying the serene detachment of Tao Yuanming and the timeless, otherworldly quality of Hayao Miyazaki.
★ This work is Liu Liangcheng’s signature masterpiece—a vibrant, life-affirming book that some say I cannot surpass. “Someone once said I can’t go beyond ‘A Village of One.’ I say they’re right—I don’t need to.”
★ A Chinese Walden, an evergreen favourite for 24 years, a heartwarming classic for over 80 million people
★ More than 50 essays—including “The Cold Wind Blows Through,” “Evidence of This Life,” “Sleeping with Insects,” “Smiling at a Flower,” and “Firewood”—have been included in middle school Chinese textbooks and reading comprehension tests for junior and senior high school students across China.
★ After more than 20 years, this classic is being reissued with the author’s first major revision in over two decades. Sixty-two issues from the original edition have been corrected, and a brand-new afterword has been written to explain the revisions.
The "Liu Liangcheng Works Collection" includes:
Novels: "Bomba", "Drifting Soil", "Hollower Out", "Bearing Word", "Longevity"
Prose collection: "A Village of One's Own"
Interview and essay collection: "Chatting about Earthly Matters in the Sky"

Background link:
The Mao Dun Literature Prize, one of the most prestigious literary awards in China and the one with the highest monetary reward, can be regarded as China's Nobel Prize in Literature. It is hosted by the Chinese Writers' Association and established in accordance with the will of Mr. Mao Dun to encourage the creation of outstanding long novels and promote the prosperity of socialist literature in China. It is one of the most prestigious literary awards in China. The award is presented every four years, and the works submitted for evaluation must be long novels with a word count of over 130,000. Mo Yan has also won this award.

The prose collection A Village of One's Own has great popularity English sample chapter available all over China. It has been perceived as a must-read for those
who want to experience the culture and tradition of Chinese rural scenery and life.

From the perspective of an "idle person", the author poetically depicts the woods, animals, winds, nights, moonlight, and dreams in this village. This "idle man" subordinates sowing and harvesting to observing the sun's rising and setting, as well as the flowers'booming and withering.

He indulges himself in a natural way of living to feel the dignity of the universe. He lies down on the broad fields, listening attentively to the hum of insect s, and smiles at a flower in this desolate place. He finds out the donkeys that push carts and work for human beings are sophisticated intellectuals, and the rats that are busy collecting foods may also joyously celebrate their ga in s… All these stares into, touches upon, and conversations with every living thing on the earth have breathed life into the book, hence rid this contemporary classic of chaos of the secular society, but let it embrace a natural way to survive and thrive.

In the village of Huangshalang, where humans and livestock live side by side, the idler Liu Er finds his greatest joy in wandering through the village: He plays with insects, watches others at work, greets the little birds perched on branches, and savors the “smile” of a flower. He empathizes with the hardships of mice, feels the strength of oxen and horses, watches the wind tilt shadows, and measures just how far a gust of wind can carry its influence. Whenever he visits someone’s home, he never pushes the door open himself; instead, he waits for the wind to blow it open, then slips inside—and as soon as he’s in, the wind closes the door behind him. The biggest event of each day is, in the early morning, standing at the edge of the village and greeting the sunrise all by himself.

From the withering and renewal of a single tree, he comes to understand the impermanence of life and death; from the mournful cry of a bird, he reflects on the fate of his ancestors. Drawing on thousands of years of poetic tradition in the East, Liu Liangcheng has created a literary realm—a spiritual sanctuary in words—that stands as an unsurpassed classic of the Chinese language to this day.

Liu Liangcheng

Born in 1962 in Shawan County, Xinjiang, he is a Chinese writer. Currently, he serves as the deputy director of the Prose Committee of the Chinese Writers' Association, a member of the 10th National Committee of the Chinese Writers' Association, the chairperson of the Xinjiang Writers' Association, the part-time vice chairperson of the Xinjiang Federation of Literary and Art Circles, and a director of the China Written Works Copyright Society. He is also a senior cultural advisor to the Xinjiang Wild Camel Protection Association. He is hailed as "the last prose writer of the 20th century in China" and "the philosopher of the countryside". He has won the Lu Xun Literature Prize, the 16th Hundred Flowers Literature Award for Prose, and the 11th Mao Dun Literature Prize.

His work A Village of One's Own caused great sensation both at home and abroad. His otherworks, including Hollowed Out, Drifting Soil and In Xinjiang, have all focused onthe village in Xinjiang where he lived for years - hence his reputation as a "bucolicphilosopher".

Volume One: Villages Where Humans and Livestock Coexist
Volume Two: The Courtyard Gate in the Wind
Volume Three: Evidence of This Life and This World
Afterword