A collection of 9 interlinked stories set in the suburbs of Beijing. Narrated by a single voice, a 17 years old boy from a small village in the deep province, the stories follow an almost continuous story of immigration to the big city and making your way into a city that is bigger than anyone can imagine. I am almost willing to call it a novel - I had read novels that were more loosely linked than these stories are.

Muyu, our narrator (whose name we do not get until almost the end), had dropped out of school due to what appears to be a mental illness and the only thing that makes his head not feel weak is running - and you can do a lot of running in a big city. He and his roommates and housemates post advertisements for false papers - needed in a country which is regulated. The stories are full of death and struggle but also of a lot of small things that hit hard - the parents of a sick child who consider paying the fine to have a second child... until they do not need to, the father leaving his family back home and still trying to control the family's life, the young men who come to the city and get beaten, both emotionally and physically, by the indifference of almost everyone they meet, the family losing a husband and a father who need to survive on almost nothing after that while the man who murdered their loved one can continue his own life, the 10 years old that is forced to beg, the pigeons who may be food for some people but are the life of others.

The stories are gritty and in some places hard to read - there is cruelty and gore but there is also friendship and humanity peaking from under the grittiness. And while there is some hope in some of the stories, the overall tone is depressing - the big city eats you alive even if you manage to get there (because internal immigration in China is not as easy as just deciding to move after all). ( )