I do love short stories. Bonbons in the world of fiction, they can be consumed in one or two bites and the best are filled with a powerful flavour that can make one long for more or be intensely satiated for much longer than it took to read them. Neither Asian-themed bonbons or full-course meals have appeared on my mela plan for a while, so after hearing a snippet of “Lulu” on, I think, The New Yorker Radio Hour, I felt I needed to hear the rest of the story.

These stories, quite wonderful in their scope, are set in a modern China and are about the people who live as individuals and in communities in a country that decided to try something completely different decades ago. A country that still suffers from some of the same problems haunting the countries that applied even fewer tweaks to the top-down systems that have run the world since humans started hoarding necessities (and continue to run it down as I type). Te-Ping Chen is a journalist at the Wall Street Journal and her writing style is probably all the easier to follow because of it. Her politics are also pretty much in keeping with what one would expect from a WSJ employee, but not overly so – she gets that having one’s material needs met in a country that has collective memories of war & famine horrors happening over & over regardless of who was in-charge can be a major behaviour motivator.

And these stories definitely explore the whys of people doing things: things that are or are not in their best immediate or long-term interests; things that are pleasurable or possibly self-harming; things that are done by choice or possibly by a mere desire to not rock the boat. Motivations are not so much spelled out (thank you!) but we, as readers, are given lots of information and should be able to figure out what’s going on in the heads of these characters … and wonder if we would do the same. Would we indulge in the new fruit? Would we stay in the train station? Would we blame the government for everything?