One hundred years old and confined to a nursing home, Ears looks back on his life. His story begins when he is sixteen and a slave in the corrupt Cao household. The wayward young master of the house returns to China from France with a dashing foreign engineer and plans to establish a match factory. He also has a beautiful new wife who is adored by Ears but who embarks on a disastrous affair with the French engineer. In disgrace, the young wife asks Ears and her servant girl to escape with her on a barge down the Green River.

Green River Daydreams is a story about unrequited love; the collision between East and West; the tensions between China's feudal past and its communist present; and the complex relationship between master and servant. It is a heroic, tragic and stunningly accomplished novel by the foremost voice in contemporary Chinese literature.

Translated by: Howard Goldblatt