In this issue we turn a spotlight on the best contemporary writing happening now in Mainland China. It's been a decade since Granta magazine's last major look at East Asia - Granta 127: Japan was a landmark introduced that introduced English-reading audiences to writers like Sayaka Murata, Hiromi Kawakami, and Mieko Kawakami for the first time. This new issue will be an anthology of fiction, non-fiction, photography and poetry, mostly in translation. It will feature new work from established talents, often tipped for the Nobel Prize, like Yu Hua, Yan Lianke and Can Xue. It will also introduce a new generation of writers, like Shuang Xuetao - whose work recently appeared in the New Yorker, and is known as a leading figure of the 'Dongbei Renaissance', a literary movement known for its combination of gritty realism with a magical, surrealist turn. We'll also feature new writing by Zhang Yueran, whose book Cocoon was published in 2023, alongside writers who have never before appeared in English. The issue aims to look at Chinese writing in the round, and will feature a new science fiction story from Chen Quifan, author of Waste Tide - which, from a futuristic perspective, looks back at catastrophic events through Chinese history (the Opium Wars, the Taiping Rebellion, the colonisation of Hong Kong). On the non-fiction side we have Yan Ge writing on the differences between the Chinese and English languages, and how things like the lack of tenses in Chinese has led to the development of very distinct cultural tastes in literature.

We'll also have an essay from Han Zhang on migrant workers literature from Picun, and the uneasy relationship between the Chinese Communist Party and a new wave of writers emerging from the working class.