Wonderful. Beijing Sprawl is one of Xu Zechen’s few works translated into English. All short stories in the collection are set in the western suburbs of Beijing. In the immensity of its growth since the 1990s, Beijing left behind a large underclass of migrant workers and the urban poor.
This is really a period piece of Beijing of the late 1990s and early 2000s. The migrants that occupied its western suburbs, the roughness of their siheyuan (四合院) homes, and the electronics grey markets don’t necessarily exist in modern-day Beijing. They were swept away in the lead-up to the 2008 Summer Olympics and in the years since.
These migrant workers moved to Beijing in the promise of a better life, better than what Eric Abrahamsen describes in an interview in Electric Lit:
[T]here’s a whole segment of China’s youth who just don’t have any good options. You can’t stay, you can’t go. If you go you’re not gonna have a job, but you can’t go back because that’s shameful. They’re economically and socially screwed.The reality of the promises are essentially false. They're fake and are unattainable (by design? by whom? Xu doesn't point fingers but there is some subtext). There is no nobility in what these migrants are doing. They're selling counterfeit goods, pasting ads for obviously illegal businesses, or doing tough work that pays little.
It is indeed fitting that the 2nd Chinese title of the book can be translated as: Look, This is Beijing. This is Beijing.
3.5/5
Written 11 November 2025
Adapted from my review on Goodreads.
Notes
- about the book
- original Chinese title is: 《看，这就是北京》
- short story collection
- Xu Zechen is apparently a fairly influential Chinese author
- writing
- reads a bit like Murakami IMO
- but the difference is that Xu’s protagonist has no real role in the story. he’s more involved than a passive observer but doesn’t really drive the story
- subject
- portraits of individuals, all essentially the same
- migrant workers that moved to Beijing in the promise of something better
- but the reality is essentially false. it’s a fake promise that is unattainable (by design? unintentionally?)
- what sacrifices do they make?
- there’s no nobility in what they do. it’s not like they’re building a