WEN ZHEN
If you have to choose a person who describes odour among thousands of people, writers must be the right choice.
They are probably the closest characters to scent, with an innate sensitivity to scent, olfactory associations, closely related to words, and in order to emphasise this association, there are even people abroad who specialise in scenting for deceased writers.
Together with renowned author Wen Zhen, publisher of <Love In The City>, and fragrance brand ‘LADYBUG’, we are launching <Love In The City> Literary Co-branded Fragrance Gift Set, a brand new collaboration spanning multiple disciplines by reconnecting writers and scent with a single novel.
This is a book that Wen Zhen regards as a milestone work in her writing career. The first edition and the reprint were exactly ten years apart, about the same time as the year it was released, and it has a special commemorative significance for her.
The eleven love stories in the book permeate all corners of Beijing, writing about the warmth and desolation of life, the abundance and confusion. One of the stories included in the book, An Xiang Road Love Story, won the Lao She Literature Prize for Excellence in Middle Grade Fiction, making Wen Zhen the youngest ever winner of the Lao She Literature Prize.
LOVE
IN
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CITY
In the book’s eponymous story “The City of Smells” alone, more than forty odours are described.
The oil smell of peanuts that have been left out for a long time, the smell of cat food, cat faeces and the cat itself, the aroma of coconut body milk, the smell of yellow fish between the aroma and the smell after it has been fried, the sweetness of a flower, and the sweetness of white rabbit milk candies in the cracks of the fingers. …..
These specific perceptible smells, such as the fullness of life, little by little to build the two people’s marriage “siege”. Each odour is the mark of a period of life, are the proof of “living through”.
