"Lin Weipan's fiction has a strong sense of self. Through children's eyes he surveys the everyday life and traditions of the southern village and the fierce collision between village and city. This is a distant looking-back, where beautiful memory holds a deep sorrow."
— Ma Yuan, renowned novelist

"In this novel imbued with a fairy-tale hue, Lin Weipan sees the world through the innocent eyes of two children, making this imperfect world instantly lovely; he not only writes something new in rural literature, but catches the last warmth left amid the rapid change of village and city."
— He Ping, renowned literary critic

"Lin Weipan's fiction shows a special resplendence — an exaggerated vividness and an unannounced clear-cold. This quality is what sets him apart. He fashions a torch from vines that give off a faint sweet fragrance, and presses on into the dark corners of human nature. The torchlight cannot light the road ahead, yet the plant in his hand turns to clean ash — his narration carries just such a delicate sense of tragedy."
— Di An, renowned novelist

★ Established novelist Lin Weipan writes in prose both austere and resplendent; through the rising and falling imagery of twelve creatures, he polishes anew the hidden story of growing up in a southern village that modern civilization has forgotten.
★ Recommended by avant-garde literary master Ma Yuan and renowned novelist Di An! This young writer of a sharply recognizable voice sets aside rigid dogma and, using the innocent eyes of two children as a prism, seamlessly stitches together ancient clan taboos and the fable of the divine dragon tradition.
★ In an age where everyone is harshly disciplined by rural-urban migration and modern ways of living, ordinary people's inner feelings are often full of unspoken pretense.
★ This is a pastoral ode carried by a nine-year-old girl who climbs Great Summit in the night to guard the dignity of life and its last lingering warmth. With the most delicate, clear-cold torch of vines laced with a faint sweet fragrance, he offers it to everyone who, lost in a bewildering life, is walking backward to find their way.

Wutong, a girl named after the Chinese parasol tree, climbs Great Summit in the night to guard life's last warmth. When a dragon hatches in a southern village, two children become its keepers — a fairy-tale ode for everyone walking backward to find their way.

An echo of memory and the past, a hidden recess of childhood and growing up.
Tradition and modernity × village and city.
The collision of ways of living, the fusion of values.
A mystery of the world that no map can unravel;
Many a turn from darkness into light, yet still unable to break free from the web of memory.
Set in a small southern village, the story follows Wutong — a third-grade girl named after the Chinese parasol tree — who during winter break, while out observing life, unexpectedly discovers two dragon eggs on a mountain called Great Summit. One of them, deemed ill-omened, is cruelly smashed by Wutong's grandmother, and from it a young azure dragon hatches ahead of time.
The dragon's arrival sets off strange happenings: a village woman gives premature birth, and silkworm moths that cannot fly suddenly flutter toward Great Summit at night. To find out why, Wutong and her classmate Lu Lu climb the mountain in the dark, cradling the other dragon egg in search of the truth.
A novel with the quality of a fairy tale, it paints a group portrait of a southern hamlet — whether Ma Xianfeng the Chinese-language teacher who harbors a writer's dream, Feng Qin the music teacher who sings to tombstones, He Xi the fisherman who brooks no contradiction, or Lu Haikong who fears his wife — these kind villagers shape the girl Wutong's growth in no small measure.
The novel sketches the complexity of human feeling, which, like a prism, holds kindness and mutual aid alongside selfishness and meanness, even cruelty and coldness — it is these contradictory feelings that make up whole human beings.
It reveals that in ordinary life, a dragon-riding girl exists everywhere.

Lin Weipan
An emerging young writer currently based in Beijing. He has published in literary journals including Mengya ("Sprout"), Youth Literature, Fujian Literature, and Dajia ("The Masters"). His published works include the novel Following His Memory and the short-story collection When a Cloud Bumps into a Sheet of Paper. His short story The Death of a Writer won second prize at the 11th New Concept Writing Competition; Black-and-White Era won third place at the inaugural People's Literature Post-90s Rising Writers Competition; Riding the Whale won first prize at the inaugural Zhangyue Fiction Competition; and the novel When a Cloud Bumps into a Sheet of Paper won third prize at the 1st Bookworm Literary Prize.

Chapter 1 The Fish Trade
Chapter 2 Feeding the Dragon
Chapter 3 The Dove Trade
Chapter 4 The Camel
Chapter 5 The Penned Deer
Chapter 6 The Dwelling Crane
Chapter 7 The Marching Ants
Chapter 8 Riding the Elephant
Chapter 9 The Singing Cicada
Chapter 10 The Dreaming Butterfly
Chapter 11 The Silver Moth
Chapter 12 The Hen