Ordinary World - Audio Book app for iPhone and iPad

Audio books in Chinese.
Author: Lu Yao.
Reader: Li YeMo.

Lu Yao (Chinese: 路遥; 1949–1992) was a Chinese writer. He was born on 3 December 1949 in Qingjian County, Shaanxi Province, and died on 17 November 1992. He had six siblings and grew up in a very poor family. He began writing novels when he was a college student, and graduated from Chinese Department of Yanan University in 1973. After graduation, he became an editor of Yanhe magazine. In 1982, Lu Yao published his novella "Life", which was made into a film in 1984. It was at this time that he started to become well-known across China. In 1991, Lu Yao finished his most famous work, Ordinary World, which won the Mao Dun Literature Prize. His writing was closely related to his own life and experiences, and focused mostly on young people from his native Shanbei striving to change their lives.

Ordinary World (Chinese: 平凡的世界; pinyin: Píng Fán de Shì Jiè) is a novel by Chinese author Lu Yao. It consists of three volumes with a total of 1.1 million Chinese characters. In 1991, it won the Mao Dun Literature Prize and was honored with the title "a bright pearl of the Mao Dun Literature Prize crown".

The first volume
The story begins in the autumn of 1975, a year before the end of the Cultural Revolution in an unknown province in China.. An ordinary teenager going into adulthood in a distant village in Western China, Shaoping Sun goes to the county of YuanXi to complete his high school. His humble decent makes him shy and diffident. He falls in love with his classmate Hongmei Hao, a girls with upper class decent, which is notorious during the Cultural Revolution. However, this relationship is revealed by their classmate Yuying Hou, and the abashed Hao have no choice but to end this relationship. Hao then quickly begins another relationship with her monitor, Yangmin Gu, a young man whose family is relatively much better than Suns. After Suns graduation from high school, he went back home and becomes a teacher in the local village school and then becomes friend with Xiaoxia Tian, daughter of Fujun Tian, the vice president of the countys revolutionary committee.

The second volume
After the Chinese eleventh CPC Central Committee Third Plenary Session in 1976, the CPC decided to end the Cultural Revolution that was first established in 1966 and modified many concepts that are called Maoism, attributed the Chinese Communism leader Mao Zedong, during the Cultural Revolution. The new governor of the province proposed a new Household Contract Responsibility System, which contradict the central belief of Maoism. Futang, a loyal fan of Maoism, however, opposes to operate under the new system but fails; he is depressed by the great turning point of the nation. Shaoan then establishes a factory to fabricate brick in the city and becomes the wealthiest person in the village. Shaoping goes to a near city to find opportunity and finally become a miner in a nearby mine. He then starts to see Xiaoxia, who becomes a journalist after her graduation from the local normal university. Runyes life after marriage with Xiangqian is not happy. She deicides to focus back on family after Xianqian is wounded in an accident.

The third volume
Shaoping is promoted in the mine but his girlfriend Xiaoxia dies when she is reporting a flood within the province. Shaoans factory is ruined by a fake technician and he desperately finds himself in debt. However, with the assistance of his friends, he manages to re-establish the factory and becomes the most productive person in the whole region. Shaoping is wounded and disfigured in an accident in the mine. When he is recovering in the capital of the province, his friends sister and his sisters friend Xiu Jin expresses her feeling to him and her desire to start a relationship with him. After careful consideration, Shaoping decides that he, a disfigured miner, should not marry Xiu, a university student who has great expectations in the future.