"From the cry of a tiny insect, one can hear the sound of a vast world. . . ."

So begins Zhang Daye's preface to The World of a Tiny Insect, his haunting memoir of war and its aftermath. In 1861, when China's devastating Taiping rebellion began, Zhang was seven years old. The Taiping rebel army occupied Shaoxing, his hometown, and for the next two years, he hid from Taiping soldiers, local bandits, and imperial troops and witnessed gruesome scenes of violence and death. He lost friends and family and nearly died himself from starvation, illness, and encounters with soldiers on a rampage.

Written thirty years later, The World of a Tiny Insect gives voice to this history. A rare premodern Chinese literary work depicting a child's perspective, Zhang's sophisticated text captures the macabre images, paranoia, and emotional excess that defined his wartime experience and echoed through his adult life. The structure, content, and imagery of The World of a Tiny Insect offer a carefully constructed, fragmented narrative that skips in time and probes the relationships between trauma and memory, revealing both history and its psychic impact. Xiaofei Tian's annotated translation includes an introduction that situates The World of a Tiny Insect in Chinese history and literature and explores the relevance of the book to the workings of traumatic memory.

Tian

About the Author

Zhang Daye (b. 1854) is known only as the author of The World of a Tiny Insect. Xiaofei Tian is professor of Chinese literature at Harvard University. Among her recent publications is Visionary Journeys: Travel Writings from Early Medieval and Nineteenth-Century China.

Reviews

"As an important primary source, I highly recommend the English version of this memoir to students of the modern history of China."

-- Kent Dang * Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) *

"[L]ucid and erudite. . . . With Tian's translation, we now have represented in English a wide range of different primary source perspectives on the Taiping civil war. This is an important and highly readable translation and an outstanding resource for teaching."

-- Tobie Meyer-Fong * Monumenta Serica *

"[A] fascinating memoir. . . . The World of a Tiny Insect makes the human cost of the rebellion more concrete and comprehensible, especially for students. . . . Xiaofei Tian has done an excellent job as translator. . . . [A] unique and extremely valuable source for understanding rebellion and its impact in nineteenth-century China. . . . [A]ccessible and highly engaging."

-- Carl Kilcourse * Journal of the American Oriental Society *


Awards
Winner of Patrick D. Hanan Book Prize for Translation (China and Inner Asia) 2016 (United States).



Book Information
ISBN 9780295993188
Author Zhang Daye
Format Paperback
Page Count 208
Imprint University of Washington Press
Publisher University of Washington Press
Weight(grams) 295g