Spotlight & Giveaway: Aftershock by Zhang Ling

A catastrophic disaster in China triggers a mother’s heartbreaking choice and a daughter’s  reconciliation with the past in this engrossing novel by the author of A Single  Swallow and Where Waters Meet. Perfect for fans of Amy Tan, Lisa See, and Min Jin Lee. 

In the summer of 1976, an earthquake swallows up the city of Tangshan, China. Among the  hundreds of thousands of people scrambling for survival is a mother who makes an agonizing  decision that irrevocably changes her life and the lives of her children. In that devastating split  second, her seven-year-old daughter, Xiaodeng, is separated from her brother and the mother she  loves and trusts. All Xiaodeng remembers of the fateful morning is betrayal. 

Thirty years later, Xiaodeng is an acclaimed writer living in Canada with a caring husband and  daughter. However, her newfound fame and success do little to cover the deep wounds that disrupt  her life, time and again, and edge her toward a breaking point. Xiaodeng realizes the only path  toward healing is to return to Tangshan, find her mother, and get closure. 

Spanning three decades of the emotional and cultural aftershocks of disaster, Zhang Ling’s intimate  epic explores the damage of guilt, the healing pull of family, and the hope of one woman who, after  so many years, still longs to be saved.

Excerpt

July 28, 1976 Tangshan, Hebei 

Parts of Wan Xiaodeng’s memory of that night were extremely clear, so clear that she could recall every texture of every detail. Other parts were blurred, only a rough outline with smudged edges remaining. Years later, she wondered whether her memories of that night were just an illusion, developed from reading so many documentary accounts of the event. She even thought that perhaps there had been no such night in her life at all. 

It had been hot. Summer nights were generally hot in Tangshan, but this particular night was outrageously so. The sky was like a large clay pot that had been baked all day, overturned and sitting atop the earth, blocking out even the slightest hint of a breeze. It was not just the people who were hot, but the dogs too. They barked from one end of the street to the other, filling the neighborhood with the sound of howling. 

The Wan family had an electric fan that Comrade Wan had built himself using leftover materials from the factory, but the fan’s motor had burned out after constant use. The Wan family, like all their neighbors, was left without a fan as they suffered through the raw heat that night. 

Her mother, Li Yuanni, slept alone in bed. Her father was on the road, and the two children were crammed into the other bed with their uncle. They had slung their army-green bags over their shoulders when they went to bed. Xiaodeng heard her mother and her uncle toss and turn, their thin fans sounding like firecrackers as they slapped, stirring up a breeze and driving away mosquitoes all at once. 

“Isn’t the food in Shanghai different from ours?” her mother asked her uncle through the thin wall separating the rooms. Her uncle’s troop was stationed in a suburb of Shanghai. 

“Everything comes in small servings. I’m so afraid I’ll finish it all in one bite that I don’t even dare start. It’s very refined, a mix of sweet and sour,” her uncle answered. 

Her mother tutted enviously. “No wonder those women in the South have such delicate skin. See how they eat, and how we eat. I heard that the weather in the South is good too. The summers and winters there are not as uncomfortable as ours, right?” 

“It’s a coastal climate with four distinct seasons. Their winter is warmer than ours, but it’s still uncomfortable without heating. In summer, it’s hot during the day, but cool at night, so at least you can sleep well.” 

Her mother sighed. “All my life, I’ve been a frog at the bottom of a well. I really want to see the big city one day.” 

Her uncle was silent for a while, then mumbled, “It’s my fault. If it wasn’t for that telegram, you would be living in the provincial capital—” 

Her mother interrupted. “It’s all up to fate. Who can fight against fate? If it were not that telegram, it would have been something else. God doesn’t like me.” 

Her uncle slapped a mosquito on his arm, killing it. He wiped the blood from his palm onto the wall. “When Xiaoda grows up, I’ll take him to Shanghai to study. That can count as fulfilling your dream too.” 

Xiaoda stomped his foot on the bed board excitedly and said, “Xiaodeng and me will go together.” 

There was a rustling sound from their mother’s bed. She got up in the dark and took off her close-fitting undershirt. She had never slept topless, but the past few days had been so unbearably hot. 

“Isn’t this year wickedly hot? Look at the heat rashes on the kids. They’ve scratched so much they have little white spots all over. When their father comes back and sees it, he’s going to be so upset.” 

Their uncle laughed and said, “He seems easily upset with everyone, but when he sees these two precious kids, his temper disappears.” 

Their mother laughed too. “You should see his parents. They have three sons, but only one grandson, Xiaoda. They wish they could put him in the palm of their hand and worship him like a bodhisattva.” 

Their uncle felt Xiaoda’s leg. The boy was thin, but very strong. He didn’t move. He was probably asleep. 

“He’s grown well. He’s a good kid. I’ve never seen him throw a temper tantrum. But I think you two are fonder of Xiaodeng.” 

“A son forgets his mother as soon as he’s married, but when a daughter grows up, she’s her mother’s warm jacket. I just wish she were more easygoing. She holds a grudge.” Her mother yawned, a long, slow yawn. “Go to sleep. Those two rascals have been talking to you all night. You’re tired.” 

He grunted in agreement. The sound of fanning slowed down, and it was soon replaced by fine snoring. Xiaodeng’s eyelids drooped, but she felt that there were ten thousand bugs crawling over the wet, sticky mattress, biting her. She heard her mother get up in the dark, grope about, bump into something, and let out a pained yelp. Xiaodeng knew that her mother was going out to the courtyard to relieve herself. She usually used the chamber pot in the house, but with the awful heat these days, the smell would fill the whole house. When she finally stumbled her way into the courtyard, Xiaodeng vaguely heard her mumble to herself outside the window, “God, why is it so bright tonight?” 

Suddenly, an earth-shattering sound cut off her mother’s voice like a knife. 

Xiaodeng’s memory also cut off here, losing shape. All she could remember were faint pieces, like dust particles flickering at the beginning of an old film. Later, she would try and collect these dust particles to connect them into a whole picture, but it never worked. It remained a deep, impenetrable darkness. Not the kind of darkness that arrives when you turn off the light at night—no, that darkness could be torn with a slit in the curtains or a crack of light under the door. This shadow was a quilt with no seams, draped over her head, smelling like dirt, growing heavier and heavier, until it felt as if her forehead was squeezed flat and her eyes were about to pop out from her head. 

She heard people scream. Someone shouted, “The Soviets have dropped an atomic bomb!” Her mother was moaning, a string on a Chinese violin that was about to break. She tried to move, but found that only three toes on her right foot were functioning. She wiggled them back and forth, left and right. She bumped into something soft, a body. For a moment, she thought it was her mother—but it couldn’t be; her mother was moaning somewhere far away. It was Xiaoda. She wanted to shout, yell, cry for help, but she had no voice. 

After a great noise from the shifting rubble, her mother’s voice suddenly became clear. “I need to get dressed. This is humiliating.” 

“Saving lives is all that matters. You’re still worried about such things?” That was her uncle’s voice. 

Her mother remembered, and she suddenly screamed, “Xiaodeng! Xiaoda!” 

For as long as she lived, Xiaodeng would never forget her mother’s cries that day. 

In the darkness, Xiaoda suddenly started to slam himself violently against the solid walls around him. Xiaodeng couldn’t see his movements, but she could feel that he was like a fish stuck in a quagmire, desperate to escape. She moved her right hand and found that it was a little freer, so she directed all her strength into that hand and pushed upward. Suddenly, she saw a thin line of the sky. It was tiny, like the eye of a needle. Looking out through the needle’s eye, she saw a woman covered in blood. The woman was wearing only a pair of underpants, and there were two plaster-covered balls dangling from her chest. 

“Mama! Mama!” 

Xiaoda started shouting at the top of his lungs. Xiaodeng had lost her voice, so Xiaoda’s voice was now their common voice. He shouted for a long time, until his voice gradually weakened. 

“It hurts, Xiaodeng.” Xiaoda fell silent, as if he knew their situation was hopeless. 

“Oh God! Xiao . . . Xiaoda is under here. Help! Someone help me!” their mother cried. 

Their mother’s voice was not at all like her usual voice. It was more like a current that had broken from her body and gone on its own way, sharply barging through the air and cutting through everything that blocked its path, smashing it all to pieces. 

There was a burst of chaotic footsteps, and the sliver of sky disappeared from Xiaodeng’s sight. It was probably someone lying on the ground, listening. 

“Here. I’m here,” Xiaoda said weakly. 

Then there was their mother’s roaring, gasping sound, like a wolf. Xiaodeng guessed that their mother was digging through the rubble. 

“It’s useless. The child is under a cement slab. You can only pry it with tools. You won’t be able to dig them out with your hands.” This was the voice of a strange man. 

There was another burst of chaotic footsteps, and someone said, “I’ve got the tools. Get out of the way.” 

There was a jingling sound, then it stopped again. A voice stammered, “This slab was laid flat. If we pry up one end, it will slide all the way to the other.” 

The two children were stuck, one on each side of the slab.
There was a dead silence all around.
“Please, tell me which one to save.” It was her uncle talking now. Her mother banged her forehead on the ground. “Oh God! God!” Following a brief struggle, her mother’s voice fell. Xiaodeng heard her uncle snap at her mother. “If you don’t tell me which one, they’ll both be gone.” 

After a seemingly infinite silence, her mother spoke. 

Her mother’s voice was low. The people around her may have only guessed at what she said. But Xiaoda and Xiaodeng both heard the two syllables perfectly, and the slight pause in the middle. 

Her mother’s words were “Xiao . . . da.” 

Xiaoda’s body suddenly tightened, becoming a rocky lump. Xiaodeng expected him to say something, but he said nothing. There was a noise like rolling thunder overhead, and Xiaodeng felt that some- one had slammed a hammer into her head. 

“My sister . . . Sis!” 

That was the last thing Xiaodeng heard before she fell into a deep sleep. 

It grew light. The sky was ugly, full of disjointed, cottony clouds. The earth still trembled intermittently, and the razed city had suddenly broadened, making the horizon visible at first glance. Without the familiar buildings, the boundary between sky and earth seemed to have changed drastically. 

That day, they found a little girl lying face up beside a huge, half- fallen banyan tree. It was a corpse that had just been dug up, and it had not been moved yet. There was a good deal of blood on her forehead but almost no visible injury to other parts of the body. Her eyes, nose, and mouth were covered with mud. It seemed she had suffocated. The sky-blue shirt she wore had been torn to shreds. She was practically naked, but she still had a nearly perfect army-green bag with an image of Tiananmen Square on it slung across her shoulder. 

“What a pretty little girl.” 

Someone sighed regretfully, but no one stopped. They had seen too many bodies like this along the way, and they would see still more as they continued. That day, their concern was only for the living. They had no time to look after the dead—not now, and not for quite some time. 

Then came the rain, a rain that stirred up dust and stories, a rain that carried color and weight. The raindrops hit the little girl, and beautiful mud flowers opened one after another on her face. When the mud was washed away, a clean water droplet that had sat on the girl’s eyelid for some time suddenly quivered and rolled down. She opened her eyes. 

She sat up and stared blankly at the wilderness surrounding her, having completely lost her bearings. After a while, her eyes fell onto the bag she clung to, and the scattered memories gradually began to fall into place. She recalled something that seemed to have happened in the distant past. She stood up, swayed, and tore at the bag strap on her shoulder. It was a strong strap. She could not tear it off. She bent to bite it. Her teeth were as sharp as a little beast’s, and the threads began to slip between them, groaning miserably. Finally, the cloth broke. She rolled the bag into a ball, then flung it away ruthlessly. It spiraled through the air and got entangled in the branches of the half-fallen banyan tree, where it hung alone and helpless. 

She only had one shoe left. Using her clad foot, she searched for the road, which was really no road at all anymore. She walked along it for a while, then stopped and looked back at the path she had traveled. She saw the bag she had tossed, like an old sparrow hawk shot by a hunter, one dirty wing drooping from the branches of the tree. 

Wan Xiaodeng did not know at the time that this would be her last memory of her childhood. 

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About the Author

Zhang Ling (張翎) is the award-winning author of ten novels and numerous collections of novellas and short stories. Born in China, she moved to Canada in 1986. In the mid-1990s, she began to write and publish fiction in Chinese while working as a clinical audiologist. Since then, she has won the Chinese Media Literature Award for Author of the Year, the Grand Prize of Overseas Chinese Literary Award, and Taiwan’s Open Book Award. Among Zhang Ling’s works are A Single Swallow, The Sands of Time, Gold Mountain Blues and Where Waters Meet, her first novel written in English.  Aftershock, which was adapted into China’s first IMAX movie with unprecedented box-office success, will be translated into English by Shelly Bryant and published by Amazon Crossing on February 6, 2024.

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Spotlight: Where Waters Meet by Zhang Ling

A daughter discovers the dramatic history that shaped her mother's secret life in an emotional and immersive novel by Zhang Ling, the bestselling author of A Single Swallow.

There was rarely a time when Phoenix Yuan-Whyller's mother, Rain, didn't live with her. Even when Phoenix got married, Rain, who followed her from China to Toronto, came to share Phoenix's life. Now at the age of eighty-three, Rain's unexpected death ushers in a heartrending separation.

Struggling with the loss, Phoenix comes across her mother's suitcase--a memory box Rain had brought from home. Inside, Phoenix finds two old photographs and a decorative bottle holding a crystallized powder. Her auntie Mei tells her these missing pieces of her mother's early life can only be explained when they meet, and so, clutching her mother's ashes, Phoenix boards a plane for China. What at first seems like a daughter's quest to uncover a mother's secrets becomes a startling journey of self-discovery.

Told across decades and continents, Zhang Ling's exquisite novel is a tale of extraordinary courage and survival. It illuminates the resilience of humanity, the brutalities of life, the secrets we keep and those we share, and the driving forces it takes to survive.

Excerpt

Pp. 17 - 24

The suitcase retrieved from Pinewoods had remained in Rain’s old bedroom, untouched for two days. Phoenix waited till George left town for a clinical seminar to open it. The time had come, she realized, for her to have the conversation with Mother. Alone, face to face, soul to soul. 

Mother’s room was kept exactly the same, as if she had never left. The last rays of the sun raged through the half-rolled curtains like a mad bull, smashing themselves against the wall, leaving behind a trail of angry dust. It was probably new dust, dust that had never seen Mother. The bed was neatly made, every corner of the quilt stretched out smooth and flat. Phoenix noticed a hair on the pillow slip, a fine thread of silver against the dark blue fabric, left there before Rain’s departure for Pinewoods. Still breathing, it seemed. 

Can a hair live on when its root has expired? 

Kneeling on the floor, Phoenix buried her face in the pillow, astonished at the dogged lifespan of someone’s smell. It was nearly three years since Mother had moved to Pinewoods. A faint mixture of sugar and sweat, like some overripe fruit. It was the smell, it suddenly hit her, of age and decay. 

She felt strangely connected to Mother, though fully aware that they, the hair and the smell, were just what Mother had left behind, like the skin shed by a snake. The real Mother was lying on the dresser, inside the metallic urn glittering with a detached coolness made absolute by death, mocking the futile efforts of all the mortals who, regardless of how far they had fled, would all inevitably return to it in the end. 

Rain’s initial signs of dementia had been minor and harmless, an occasional mixing up of dates, a rare instance of a door left unlocked, or a pill-time missed. Then, one day, Phoenix found a shoe in the fridge. Standing before the fridge with its door open and cool air blowing at her, she began to shudder. She had finally found herself face to face with the beast. 

Then George came along. 

They shared everything, or he thought they did, the bumps and bruises in life. He let her into his memory of Jane, who had died of pancreatic cancer ten years ago, and spoke to her about their daughter Kate, now teaching English in Japan, and of his father, a political science professor in Cincinnati, too liberal for his time, who taught him to read beyond what was taught in school. 

Father’s bold ideas had nearly cost him his teaching position at the university, when one day the FBI made a surprise call to his office, inquiring about a box of propaganda mailed to his home from the Soviet embassy, at the request of his son George, then an eighth grader. In a letter addressed to the ambassador, George had written that he didn’t “quite believe what the history teacher says in class about your country.” Father was astounded by George’s reckless naiveté́, but never, in any way, discouraged or prohibited it. 

Several years later, when Vietnam started to drain the cream of the crop from America, Father helped George plan the move to Canada as a draft dodger. That was the last time they had seen each other. When the pardon finally came a decade later, Father had been dead for years. 

Phoenix shared her story with him too. Her childhood in Wenzhou, a little town about five hundred kilometers south of Shanghai, the things her mother had endured while bringing her up, “three lifetimes’ dose,” in Rain’s words, her father’s experience fighting three wars, still winning no peace on his deathbed, and the heartbreaking spring night in 1970 when Mirs Bay, the body of water between Hong Kong and mainland China, took away the man she loved and left her a sudden adult. 

She told him about everything but her fear. 

She was driven to him by that fear. The fear of taking care of an ailing parent all by herself. The prospect of being a part of Mother’s aging process, a realm totally alien to her, horrified her to her core. She had never witnessed a close relative growing senile before her eyes, as her father hadn’t made it to his golden years and she never met any of her grandparents. 

When they moved into George’s house, Rain’s symptoms had, for a while, seemed a little alleviated. It had done Mother good, Phoenix thought, this new living environment; Mother’s every muscle had to tense up to adapt, as she had done for every major change in her life. It kept her alert and sharp. 

Then, when they had finally settled in, over the course of a year or so, Rain’s defense system gradually relaxed. Dementia, having ground its teeth impatiently, now launched a full-scale attack, leaving ruthless bite marks, first on her memory, then on her emotions, reducing her to a sodden wreck, forgetful, unpredictable, and impossible to reason with. 

The first major incident, to be followed by many more, happened on a night close to Thanksgiving, during the second year of their marriage. After dinner, when Phoenix was marking student assignments in the kitchen, she heard a string of odd cries, more like the muffled wail of an injured animal, from Rain’s room. Pushing open the door, she found Mother on the floor, curled into a tight ball, hands cupping her ears, shoulder blades sticking out sharp as blades. The TV was blasting, showing a miniseries drama about the Second Sino-Japanese War, on a new Chinese language channel Phoenix had subscribed to for Rain to view in the privacy of her room. 

The first thought shooting through Phoenix’s mind was a heart attack. “George!” she screamed frantically, blood rushing to her head, pounding it like a mad war drum. Hovering over Mother, she shook uncontrollably with fear, unsure whether it was safe to move her. Then the tight ball on the floor relaxed, squirming slowly towards her, cradling itself on her lap. 

“Liars.” Rain lifted a fist, feebly, in the direction of the TV, now showing a deafening battle scene. Something white and fluffy caught Phoenix’s eyes: they were cotton balls stuffed in Rain’s ears. 

It suddenly hit Phoenix that this was one of Mother’s little tricks, to wring the nerves of the household to extract attention. She remembered countless evenings of heated discussions hurled across the dinner table, between her and George, two damned gullible fools, about Mother’s enigmatic hearing loss and the need for hearing aids, while Mother sat next to them, quietly listening, with an innocent smile and the occasional timid interjection of “me no English, not understanding.” 

“Ma, are you playing some sort of prank on me?” bawled Phoenix in exasperation, while reaching for the remote from the nightstand to kill the TV. 

“What’s up?” Hearing the commotion, George had rushed upstairs from the basement where he was doing his laundry. 

Startled at the sight of George, as if he were a complete stranger, Rain became agitated again. Pointing to the door, she growled, in a strange tongue, “Get the hell out of the house, you!” 

During the last few months, Rain had largely abandoned whatever little English she had picked up over the years in Canada, reverting, almost exclusively, to her local dialect. Dementia, like a plaster trowel, had scraped off the top layer of her memory, leaving only a base coat, the language of her birth, intact. 

“Ma, it’s his house,” Phoenix reminded Rain, wearily, also in dialect. “Out, him,” insisted Rain, ignoring Phoenix’s attempt at reasoning. 

“She wants to be alone with me, for a few moments.” Phoenix motioned George to leave, carefully picking out the barbs from Rain’s tone. 

“Tell them, you, tell them . . .” As soon as George had left the room, Rain clutched at Phoenix, sobbing like a child terribly wronged by some unreasonable adult. 

“Tell whom what?” 

“Them, the soldiers, on TV. They should have saved their bullets, not wasted them like this. They should save the last one, always, for . . .” Rain suddenly stopped, with a petrified look, as if she had just seen a ghost drifting around. 

“For what?” Phoenix finally managed to get Rain up from the floor and sat her down on the bed. A little wrestling match, leaving her sweaty and drained. She wasn’t even halfway through the marking due the next morning. 

“For himself, the last bullet,” replied Rain, stressing each syllable. 

Later that night, while in bed, Phoenix told George about Rain’s earlier behavior. “Probably a bad memory of the war,” sighed George. “I know a Korean War veteran, once a POW, still can’t bear the sight of an Asian face in a white coat, fifty-odd years later.” 

A dreadfully morbid way to comfort somebody. George immediately regretted it, but his occupational habit wouldn’t leave him alone. 

“What happened to her during the war, do you know?” 

Phoenix shook her head in the darkness. “Ma says she doesn’t remember much, but I know Auntie Mei joined the resistance forces at some point. They lost their mother in an air raid.” 

“We always remember what we want to forget, and forget what we want to remember,” muttered George in reply, his breathing growing guttural and groggy. 

Mother’s room was dead quiet now, but the beast still lurked in the dark. That polymorphous, heinous beast, coming in the form of a refrigerated shoe, cotton balls, phantom soldiers and bullets, and perhaps, at some point, a house on fire. The world war was behind them now, but the war against the beast might have just begun. Phoenix’s own war, fought alone. Sure, she had George, but how engaged was he? She wasn’t sure. 

Sleep refused to come. George’s roaring snores poked hole after hole in her eardrums. Cotton balls—now she knew what they were for. 

During the next little while, Rain seemed to succumb, more and more deeply, to the fear of being left alone. She would suddenly stop eating in the middle of breakfast, turn towards Phoenix, and gaze, intently and teary eyed, as if her daughter, instead of going to work, was about to embark on a journey of no return, and their parting an act of final farewell. 

It rubbed a raw spot in Phoenix’s heart watching Rain, once a fierce woman who would walk through fire to save her family, now a helpless child. 

But Phoenix was fooled again by Rain, even with her Alzheimer’s. That fierce woman was not gone but in hibernation, and she would suddenly leap to life when least expected, breaking loose from the shell of a meek child. 

One night, feeling thirsty, Phoenix got up to fetch a glass of water. On her way downstairs, she stumbled into something and nearly fell. It was Rain sitting where the stairs turned, eyes glittering in the faint night light. 

“I heard you, Ah Feng.” Rain still called Phoenix by her baby name. “You and him, in the room.” 

Speechless, face throbbing with heat, Phoenix felt the sting of shame of someone standing before a crowd stark naked. 

Groping at the wall for support, Rain slowly got herself up and put her arm around Phoenix’s hip, her cold, gnarly hand against Phoenix’s soft flesh beneath the nightdress, warm and moist from lovemaking. The air grew thick with Rain’s foul breath, now on Phoenix’s neck. 

“Here,” Rain hissed, pinching Phoenix on the fullness of her but- tock. “You need to exercise, to be stronger. It’ll hurt less when he does that to you.” 

Recoiling from her touch, Phoenix grew stiff. How many times had Mother sat here, outside their bedroom, with ears that grew eyes and a nose, so intent, that no hearing loss could impair? Phoenix fled as fast as she could without saying a word. 

She didn’t tell George about this incident, but sex was not the same afterwards. Whenever George made a suggestive move, she would see Rain’s faceless eyes floating in the room, glittering, watchful, all knowing, instantly drying up the surging of her moistened womanhood. 

A fastidious person till her last day, Rain normally took her shower around eight o’clock in the evening, with few exceptions. Over time, this fixed routine began to deviate—or rather, expand—from once a day to twice, sometimes even three times. Phoenix noticed, one Sunday, that it had reached a peak of four showers, spaced out through the day. 

One evening, shortly after Rain slipped into the bathroom, Phoenix, while clearing away the dishes, heard her mother singing over the shower. Rain had a good voice. “A gift from heaven,” as Auntie Mei would say, not without jealousy, “even her first cry from Mother’s womb was musical.” 

Phoenix remembered falling in and out of sleep as a little girl, listening to Mother humming to her. Lullabies and nursery rhymes in the beginning, then revolutionary war anthems, Mao’s praises, later popular love songs from Hong Kong, whatever Mother could pick up from the radio as the tide changed. 

But this time it was a song alien to Phoenix’s ear, with strange lyrics woven into a string of strange melody. Later, in one of Rain’s more lucid moments, Phoenix asked her what it was. Rain, after a long pause, said she didn’t remember. 

The singing eventually stopped, but the water didn’t. It kept running, splashing against the tiled floor, uninterrupted and sinisterly loud. Phoenix looked at the clock on the kitchen wall. It’d been over an hour since Mother entered the shower. 

Rushing into the bathroom, she found Rain standing under the showerhead, frantically scratching her scalp, covered in a rich lather of shampoo, so hard that her body shook. Cold air bursting through the door thinned out the dense vapor, revealing a wet, thin figure with sagging breasts and a hollow belly creased by dark stretch marks. 

The room suddenly grew quiet as Phoenix turned off the tap. Rain’s lips opened in the smile of a child, knowing neither shame nor hurt. 

“Filthy, so filthy . . . ,” Rain murmured, a feeble defense. 

Incidents like this happened over and over again, raising the level of tolerance, soon to be reached and broken, becoming the new norm. Then one day, came the last straw. 

Buy on Amazon | Audible | Bookshop.org

About the Author

Zhang Ling (張翎) is the award-winning author of nine novels and numerous collections of novellas and short stories. Born in China, she moved to Canada in 1986. In the mid-1990s, she began to write and publish fiction in Chinese while working as a clinical audiologist. Since then, she has won the Chinese Media Literature Award for Author of the Year, the Grand Prize of Overseas Chinese Literary Award, and Taiwan’s Open Book Award. Among Zhang Ling’s work are A Single Swallow, The Sands of Time, Gold Mountain Blues and Aftershock, which was adapted into China’s first IMAX movie with unprecedented box-office success. Where Waters Meet is her first novel written in English.