Incienso

When Ge Weilong unexpectedly shows up at her aunt's house, Mrs. Liang, and asks to be taken in so that she can continue her studies in Hong Kong, she can't imagine how much her life will change. Mrs. Liang is the door to a world ruled by sumptuousness and hypocrisy, and Weilong will have to decide if she wants to be part of it. Thus begins the first of the two short novels contained in this volume: a splendid portrait of the decadent colonial China. Two stories that, as the narrator points out, are read in the time it takes for a handful of incense to burn. Eileen Chang, born in 1920 and considered the most important Chinese writer of the 20th century, knew how to portray with great clarity the charm and complexity of the times she had to live. Focusing on what seems apparently trivial, Chang captures the coexistence and contradiction between traditional values and our trouble modernity with a prose that carries on the lyricism of the Chinese classics.