*Salted Jokes* by Liu Zhenyun Publisher: People's Literature Publishing House

"Salty Jokes" continues Liu Zhenyun's creative approach of "writing about all living beings," using humorous strokes to reflect the daily lives of ordinary people through laughter and anger, and also the possibility of everyone making peace with life.
The protagonist, Du Taibai, moves through various occupations such as teacher, master of ceremonies for weddings and funerals, and vendor, struggling through life.
Facing life's hardships that cannot be taken seriously and where suffering cannot be expressed, Du Taibai sees through the rules but is not bound by them, and despite having tasted bitterness, he still dares to enthusiastically engage.
"Jokes" are both everyday jokes and the sudden bitter experiences of life; they can be a knowing smile, and even more, they are our survival wisdom for dealing with life's changes and dispelling difficulties.
"Salty Jokes" not only writes about life but also about the principles of life; it not only creates fictional characters but also sees everyone in the world.
Many jokes in the world are destined to be told with tears.

About the Author
Liu Zhenyun, Han Chinese, from Yanjin, Henan, graduated from the Chinese Department of Peking University, and is a professor and doctoral supervisor at the School of Literature, Renmin University of China.
His long novels include "Yellow Flowers All Over My Hometown," "My Hometown's Enduring Story," "My Hometown's Face and Flowers" (four volumes), "A Bunch of Nonsense," "My Name Is Liu Yuejin," "A Word Is Worth Ten Thousand Words," "I Am Not Madame Bovary," "The Children of the Melon-Eating Era," and "One Day, Three Autumns," among others; his novellas and short stories include "Tapu," "New Recruit Company," "The Unit," "A Mess of Feathers," and "Recalling 1942," among others.
His works have been translated into English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Czech, Dutch, Russian, Hungarian, Serbian, Turkish, Romanian, Polish, Macedonian, Hebrew, Persian, Arabic, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Thai, Mongolian, Kazakh, Nepali, Uyghur, and many other languages.
In 2011, "A Word Is Worth Ten Thousand Words" won the Mao Dun Literature Prize.
In 2018, he was awarded the Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by France.
Films adapted from his works have also won numerous international awards.