The important Chinese novelist and academic Xiao Su 晓苏 died earlier this month at the age of 64. I’ve been seeing a number of appreciation posts by fans of Xiao’s lightly experimental “intellectual novels” 知识分子小说, especially his long-running series of stories set in the fictional town of Youcaipo 油菜坡, near Xiangyang 襄阳 in Hubei province.

Xiao was never well known outside of China (as far as I can tell, this post is the closest thing to an English obituary he’s going to get). But he was one of the first Chinese authors whose work I encountered, many years ago, through two translated pieces by Josh Stenberg (“Our Privacy”) and Nick Stember (“The Cold”). Revisiting those stories now, having spent some time living in Hubei, I find that Xiao’s humorous small-town tales work better for me than many similar pieces from authors of his generation.

A few lines from an appreciation by Yu Xiaowei 于晓威, an author and friend of Xiao’s:

“Xiao Su was a first-class author who was always undervalued in literary circles, especially in his capacity as a masterful short-story writer. He was not only a key representative of Wuhan and Hubei literature, but a key figure in Chinese literature as a whole. He bore witness to the entire Reform and Opening-Up era, and, through his nearly ten million characters of published writing and his widely admired personal character, he embodied the spirit of that era. . . Rest in peace, Xiao Su laoshi. I trust that even greater writings and friendships await you in heaven.”