Braised Pork

Summary

One autumn morning, Jia Jia walks into the bathroom of her lavish Beijing apartment to find her husband dead.
One minute she was breakfasting with him and packing for an upcoming trip, the next, she finds him motionless in
their half-full bathtub. Like something out of a dream, next to the tub Jia Jia discovers a pencil sketch of a strange
watery figure, an image that swims into Jia Jia’s mind and won’t leave.
The mysterious drawing launches Jia Jia on an odyssey across contemporary Beijing, from its high-rise apartments
to its hidden bars, as she encounters some of the people who call the city home, including a jaded bartender whose
caring support turns to a romantic interest. Unencumbered by a marriage that had constrained her, Jia Jia travels into
her past to try to discover things that were left unsaid by the people closest to her. Her journey takes her to the high
plains of Tibet, and even to a shadowy, watery otherworld, a place she both yearns and fears to go.
Exquisitely attuned to the complexities of human connection, and an atmospheric and cinematic evocation of
middle-class urban China, An Yu’s Braised Pork explores the intimate strangeness of grief, the indelible mysteries of
unseen worlds, and the energizing self-discovery of a newly empowered young woman.