Alec Ash’s year of retreat in a Chinese village

After many years working as a journalist in Beijing, Alec Ash was craving the slowness of the unpolluted natural world. But when he sold his book proposal to editor Molly Slight at Scribe and set off to live in the village of Dali, among people who had lived there for generations as well as ‘new migrants’ like him who were trying to find a better way to live and think, he hadn’t expected a pandemic to hit.

This unique books describes a year in the Chinese countryside, one of ancient rituals marking seasonal change, and the newer personal routines of the people retreating there.

And here’s the village house in which Alec wrote it.

Happy publication day to a book that has been on a long journey.