Era Innovation Press announces that Dwelling in Silence《居者无声》, the latest work by author Desolate Isle, will be published in its Chinese edition in June. The book is described as follows:
This book speaks to anyone seeking to understand the social realities of China between 2020 and 2025, and will be of particular value to scholars, researchers, and professionals engaged in Chinese studies, sociology, public health, and contemporary history.
Dwelling in Silence《居者无声》: Essays on Identity, Belonging, and the Unspoken brings（为什么无声、谁在无声、无声的背后是什么） together 131 essays written by Gan Liu (pen name: Desolate Isle) over six years, from 2020 to 2025. The collection spans topics including the pandemic, real estate, livelihoods, and society in both China and the United States, and is organized into four sections: “Epidemic & Control,” “Housing & Burden,” “Voices & Questions,” and “West & East.” For readers and researchers seeking to understand the true social landscape of China during and after the three-year pandemic, this book offers an invaluable record — a cross-section, a case study, and a primary source — documenting the lived experiences, the collapse of property values, and the sweeping economic and human costs of that era.
The six years from 2020 to 2025 were extraordinary in the darkest sense. Many in China felt as though they were passing through a trial of life and death — careers destroyed, families bankrupted, and some driven to end lives that should never have been cut short. Misfortune compounded misfortune: economic decline, pandemic lockdowns, and the relentless pressure of social competition arrived in succession, and property prices — long rising, long celebrated, hotly pursued for nearly two decades — began to fall. Government interventions at every level proved largely ineffective, and the assets of countless households and businesses, both movable and immovable, followed real estate values downward.
As a writer long devoted to social observation and nonfiction, Gan Liu holds to a single conviction: every voice raised must be grounded in fact. Not every Chinese person, he believes, is willing to be silent. In the midst of pain, hardship, and even despair, there are far too many who have something to say but nowhere to say it — who want to cry out but find no one listening. It is his hope that this book may speak on behalf of those who have had no choice but to remain silent, and carry their shared voice to a wider world.
