Yang Jiang, Questo gatto, 2017

Macchia, the protagonist of the story, refers to one of the moments in the author’s biography; the most human cat of the humans of the time, suspicious of the very concepts of humanity and humanism, accompanies Yang Jiang (1911-2016) who goes to critizise and self-critizise the Safan Movement (against corruption, waste and bureaucracy, gathering notoriety through reports on the re-education in the countryside and the memories of the persecutions suffered during the Cultural Revolution), and awaits her on the door step. And if even at the end it reveals its feline nature, attached more to the house than to people, it can only be evoked in Qian Zhongshu’s closing poem as one of the few kind presences.