Rainbow chronicles the political and social disruptions in China during the early years of the twentieth century. Inspired by the iconoclasm of the "May Fourth Movement," the heroine, Mei, embarks on a journey that takes her from the limitations of the traditional family to a discovery of the new, "modern" values of individualism, sexual equality, and political responsibility. The novel moves with Mei from the conservative world of...

Mao Dun originally published the short stories, "The Shop of the Lin Family" and "Spring Silkworms," in 1932. The first, which Zhu Ziqing considers Mao Dun's finest work, tells the story of a shop that sells foreign goods in a small town in China. The second is about a silk weaver, Old Tong Bao, who takes very good care of his silkworms, until the Japanese invasion of Shanghai in 1932 destroys his livelihood. The stories are available here for the first time in traditional Chinese characters.