Rice
by Su Tong
Rice is a collection of fictional works by Su Tong, which includes Rice, Three Lamps and Fish of the People. Rice, a tale of desire, agony, existence and destruction, is a novel Su Tong wrote in the early 1990s. It depicts the samsara-like life of a man who migrated to the city by train to run away from famine and who eventually returns to his hometown also by train. The wandering life in a strange place is the basic generalization of his life and his death on the way home marks the climax of the whole story. Rice is the most noteworthy one among the few novels Su Tong has written so far.