My Beijing: Four Stories of Everyday Wonder

Nie Jun is one of China’s leading cartoonists, and in his graphic novel My Beijing: Four Stories of Everyday Wonder, he takes us to Beijing, into the dense web of alleyways known as Hutong. Here we meet Yu’er, a little girl who can no longer walk due to a congenital malformation in her legs, but who dreams of becoming a swimmer. Yu’er’s grandfather is called Doubao and he teaches her that in life you must always fight and never give up. The elegance of Nie Jun’s watercolours – one of the main forms of Chinese painting – and the wealth of details in the plates plunge us into the alleys and courtyards that form the heart of the Chinese capital, where we see the beauty of the little stories of Yu’er’s daily life as they unfold along the streets. I racconti dei vicoletti Nie Jun ; traduzione di Francesco Savino Bao, 2017