The Garlic Ballads
Paradise County orders its farmers to plant garlic, then shuts the cold stores and refuses to buy the crop, so the stalks rot in the road while the tax collectors carry on working and a blind ballad singer puts the whole business into verse in the market. Gao Yang, Gao Ma and Fourth Aunt's family are picked up after a crowd wrecks the county offices, and the book moves between the cells, the courtroom and the betrothal Gao Ma has been trying to break. Written in five weeks after a real riot in Shandong, and pulled from Chinese shops in the freeze that followed 1989.
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Archetype (Jung / Campbell)
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Emotional arc (story shape)
Quest object (Greimas)
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Conflict
Culture / tradition
Closest analogues
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- 52% · 12 shared