Pig Heads in the Snow

Su Tong, the prolific author of complex historical narratives like The Opium Family, 1934 Escape and My Life as an Emperor, is best known in the West through the translation of his novels Rice and Wives and Concubines (filmed respectively by Li Shaohong as Blush, and by Yang Zhimou as Raise the Red Lantern). He first read a draft of his story "Pig Heads in Snow" at a public reading in Iowa City in the fall of 2001, with a simultaneous translation by Ye Yunshan.