Jia Pingwa 
Abandoned Capital 
Rice Paper Copy

Against the backdrop of the contemporary life in the ancient capital of Xi »an with a long history and rich culture, the novel narrates the daily life of "four celebrities": the writer Zhuang Zhidie hailed as "Leisurely Prose Literati", the calligrapher Gong Jingyuan, the painter Wang Ximian and the artist Ruan Zhifei, showing the condensed, varied views of the "abandoned capital" Xijing. With appropriate differentiation between priority and others in writing, the book is threaded upon the emotional entanglements of Zhuang Zhidie with several women, combined with interspersed narrations of several celebrities like Ruan Zhifei. Among the several female characters, Tang Wan »er, Liu Yue and Niu Yueqing represent the most successful and most enamored characters he created. In these characters who are intelligential, emotional, clever and rich in classical tragedy, the author »s supreme aesthetic ideals are reflected.