Writing the blues

Changes in the country's rural areas during the past 30 years have made farmland and village scenes unrecognizable for those who spent their childhood days there.

Though now based in Hainan, writer Zhao Yu was born in Henan province and it is the memory of his first 18 years spent in Henan's countryside that has become an inexhaustible nutrition bar that nourishes and inspires his career and life.

Last year, with his book of essays entitled Little Trifles (Xiao Xian Shi), Zhao caused a flutter among literature readers by his interpretation of Lu Xun (1881-1936), one of modern China's key writers and also a deified figure, as a man deeply in love.