How does Can Xue in her stories “transmute impalpable fears, anxieties and human instincts into physical
sensation expressed in graphic detail”? How does Can Xue focus upon and portray individual perception,
inner reality and emotion? Explain her surreal mode of writing and what she is really expressing in her
fiction? How does her “world of irrationality and subjective perception” allow us to perceive our reality and
our selves in a new way, by refocusing our attention? How does she go against the realist mode of writing?
Look at specific passages in the texts and explain her techniques and their effects upon you as a reader.