Memories of change

Liu Ting, a critic with the newspaper Wen Yi Bao, says Yin's book is meant for all ages.

"We find out from Yin's book that not all childhood retelling is poetic, lighthearted or happy as we'd thought. The memories are mixed with frustrations, pain and loneliness," Liu says.

"Yin shows us how to alleviate the pain with gentle hands, how to treat life with warmth and strength, and how to contribute to the explanation of how modernity has been structured in the country," Liu adds.

Veteran critic Li Jingze calls the book "beyond expectations" because Yin is not only a recorder but a creator, who provides keys to many current social, historical and educational challenges.

Yin, who is also a journalist with the Shanghai-based Xinmin Evening News, started to publish her work at age 18. She has written a wide range of fiction for children and teenagers.

In her latest book-her first nonfiction book about childhood-Yin records what the interviewees told her and adds her own observations to each interview. She completed the book while on a two-month residency program at Michael King Writers' Center in New Zealand. She says Belarusian journalist and Nobel-winner Svetlana Alexievich is an inspiration for her nonfiction writing.

Nonfiction has become more popular in China in recent years. More fiction writers are attempting to pen nonfiction, based on oral histories they have recorded or investigative findings.

Yin's highly readable and detailed narration makes her new book stand out.

"Yin's language expresses the scenes in her book with audible, visible, olfactory and sensible details-a multidimensional world," Chen Xiang, a critic and editor of China Reading Weekly, says.

Yin has published collections of essays and poetry, stories and novels in Chinese, Swedish, English, French, Japanese and Korean. Her notable works include Paper Girl and Ye Mang Po. Her novel Summer Song has been translated by Chinese Nobel-winner and author Mo Yan's Swedish-language translator, Anna Gustafsson Chen.

Helen Wang with the British Museum, who has translated Chinese author Cao Wenxuan's award-winning Bronze and Sunflower, has shown interest in translating Paper Girl, a story about adolescence and love, Yin says.

Veteran illustrator Cai Gao's works accompany Yin's text in Childhood Revisited. Changjiang Literature and Art Publishing House, the book's publisher, has made an introductory brochure in English. A taste of the 26 stories is also available under the headline, The Weight of Life, in the first English-language issue of the 65-year-old Chinese magazine, Shanghai Literature.

Contact the writer at meijia@chinadaily.com.cn