Overview
Set in early twentieth-century Manchuria, The Shadow Lands Yonder (2022) depicts the aftermath of the collapse of the traditional empire, when massive population displacement, driven by war and colonisation, led to the creation of a new nation. The agrarian emigrants became an alternative instrument of colonial policy, developing a new world, making ‘home’ in the foreign land with fertile black soil, abandoning their origins and rediscovering their identity while trapped in a cycle of longing–developing–leaving–stagnation–repatriation–being rejected.