"A life burns into a fire, its symmetry a thousand angry orange lines. The orange of the sun of the purview of the long-leafed plane trees at Shanyin Road. The orange of the sum of the parts of the long-standing pastel-tinged shame of the artist. The fire rages on, on from the minute that these words are spoken, on like it could burn no brighter without suffocating, on still as if the dingy apartment, the streets of Shanghai, and to be honest, the world was always its kindling. Suddenly, it realizes that it really could burn no brighter, that it really was suffocating, that the inferno was quicksand -- its embers, macquillage. Upon this realization, it explodes in a second's pilgrimage; then, like a whisper, evaporating into monoxide. It looks down. The world was charred to a stratum. The shadows of men and women, birds and beasts, were slanted on the ground." This is a story of art, and therefore, this is a story of madness. Of the down-on-his-luck painter Luo Ye, of the female student who sacrificed everything, of the silver cat and the devil that followed. In Huoshuyinhua, Akugatawa's "Hell Screen" provides the narrative backbone for a temporal, powder-red plunge into a politically turbulent 1990's Shanghai and the China that breathed inside of it.
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