Raymond Carver
American story writer and poet (1938–1988)
Raymond Clevie Carver Jr. (May 25, 1938 – August 2, 1988) was an American short story writer and poet. He published his first collection of stories, "Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?", in 1976. His breakout collection, "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" (1981), received immediate acclaim and established Carver as an important figure in the literary world. It was followed by "Cathedral" (1983), which Carver considered his watershed and is widely regarded as his masterpiece. The definitive collection of his stories, "", was published shortly before his death in 1988. In their 1989 nomination of Carver for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the jury concluded, "The revival in recent years of the short story is attributable in great measure to Carver's mastery of the form."
Early life.
Carver was born in Clatskanie, Oregon, a mill town on the Columbia River, and grew up in Yakima, Washington, the son of Ella Beatrice Carter (née Casey) and Clevie Raymond Carver. His father, a sawmill worker from Arkansas, was a fisherman and a heavy drinker. Carver's mother worked on and off as a waitress and a retail clerk. His brother, James Franklin Carver, was born in 1943.
Carver was educated at local schools in Yakima. In his spare time, he read mostly novels by Mickey Spillane or publications such as "Sports Afield" and "Outdoor Life", and hunted and fished with friends and family.
After graduating from Yakima High School in 1956, Carver worked with his father at a sawmill in California. In June 1957, at age 19, he married 16-year-old Maryann Burk, who had just graduated from a private Episcopal school for girls. Their daughter, Christine La Rae, was born in December 1957. Their second child, a boy named Vance Lindsay, was born a year later. Carver worked as a delivery man, janitor, library assistant, and sawmill laborer, while Maryann worked as an administrative assistant, high school English teacher, salesperson, and waitress.
Writing career.
Carver moved to Paradise, California, with his family in 1958 to be close to his mother-in-law. He became interested in writing while attending Chico State College and enrolled in a creative writing course taught by the novelist John Gardner, then a recent doctoral graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, who became a mentor and had a major influence on Carver's life and career. In 1961, Carver's first published story, "The Furious Seasons", appeared. More florid than his later work, the story strongly bore the influence of William Faulkner. "Furious Seasons" was later used as a title for a collection of stories published by Capra Press, and is part of the collection, "No Heroics, Please" and "Call If You Need Me".
Carver continued his studies under the short story writer Richard Cortez Day (alumnus of the Iowa program) beginning in autumn 1960 at Humboldt State College in Arcata. He chose not to take the foreign language courses required by the English program and received a B.A. in general studies in 1963. During this period he was first published and served as editor for "Toyon," the college's literary magazine, in which he published several of his own pieces under his own name as well as the pseudonym John Vale.
With his B-minus average, exacerbated by his penchant to forsake coursework for literary endeavors, ballasted by a sterling recommendation from Day, Carver was accepted into the Iowa Writers' Workshop on a $1,000 fellowship for the 1963–1964 academic year. Homesick for California and unable to fully adjust to the program's upper middle class milieu, he only completed 12 credits out of the 30 required for a M.A. degree or 60 for the M.F.A. degree. Although program director Paul Engle awarded him a fellowship for a second year of study after Maryann Carver personally interceded and compared her husband's plight to Tennessee Williams' deleterious experience in the program three decades earlier, Carver decided to leave the University of Iowa at the end of the semester. According to biographer Carol Sklenicka, Carver falsely claimed to have received an M.F.A. from Iowa in 1966 on later curricula vitae. Maryann, who postponed completing her education to support her husband's educational and literary endeavors, eventually graduated from San Jose State College in 1970 and taught English at Los Altos High School until 1977. After completing graduate work at Stanford, she briefly enrolled in the University of California, Santa Barbara's English doctoral program when Carver taught at the institution as a visiting lecturer in 1974.
In the mid-1960s, Carver and his family resided in Sacramento, where he briefly worked at a bookstore before taking a position as a night custodian at Mercy Hospital. He did all of the janitorial work in the first hour and then wrote through the rest of his shift. He audited classes at what was then Sacramento State College, including workshops with poet Dennis Schmitz. Carver and Schmitz soon became friends, and Carver wrote and published his first book of poems, "Near Klamath", under Schmitz's guidance.
1967 was a landmark year for Carver with the appearance of "Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?" in Martha Foley's annual "Best American Short Stories" anthology and the impending publication of "Near Klamath" by the English Club of Sacramento State College. He briefly enrolled in the library science graduate program at the University of Iowa that summer but returned to California following the death of his father. Shortly thereafter, the Carvers relocated to Palo Alto, California, so he could take his first white-collar job, at Science Research Associates, a subsidiary of IBM in nearby Menlo Park, California, where he worked intermittently as a textbook editor and public relations director through 1970.
Following a 1968 sojourn to Israel, the Carvers relocated to San Jose, California; as Maryann finished her undergraduate degree, he continued his graduate studies in library science at San Jose State through the end of 1969 before failing once again to take a degree. During this period, he established vital literary connections with Gordon Lish, who worked across the street from Carver as director of linguistic research at Behavioral Research Laboratories, and the poet/publisher George Hitchcock.
After the publication of "Neighbors" in the June 1971 issue of "Esquire" at the instigation of Lish (by now ensconced as the magazine's fiction editor), Carver began to teach at the University of California, Santa Cruz at the behest of provost James B. Hall, an Iowa alumnus and early mentor to Ken Kesey at the University of Oregon, commuting from his new home in Sunnyvale, California.
Having endured a succession of failed applications to the Stegner Fellowship, Carver was admitted to the prestigious non-degree Stanford University graduate creative writing program for the 1972–1973 term, where he cultivated friendships with Kesey-era luminaries Ed McClanahan and Gurney Norman in addition to contemporaneous fellows Chuck Kinder, Max Crawford, and William Kittredge. The $4,000 stipend enabled the Carvers to buy a house in Cupertino, California. He also took on another teaching job at the University of California, Berkeley that year and briefly rented a pied-à-terre in the city; this development was precipitated by his initiation of an extramarital affair with Diane Cecily, a University of Montana administrator and mutual friend of Kittredge who would subsequently marry Kinder.
During his years of working at miscellaneous jobs, rearing children, and trying to write, Carver started abusing alcohol. By his own admission, he gave up writing and took to full-time drinking. In the fall semester of 1973, Carver was a visiting lecturer in the Iowa Writers' Workshop with John Cheever, but Carver stated that they did less teaching than drinking and almost no writing. With the assistance of Kinder and Kittredge, he attempted to simultaneously commute to Berkeley and maintain his lectureship at Santa Cruz; after missing all but a handful of classes due to the inherent logistical hurdles of this arrangement and various alcohol-related illnesses, Hall gently enjoined Carver to resign his position. The next year, after leaving Iowa City, Carver went to a treatment center to attempt to overcome his alcoholism, but continued drinking for another three years.
His first short story collection, "Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?", was published in 1976. The collection itself was shortlisted for the National Book Award, though it sold fewer than 5,000 copies that year.
Personal life and death.
Decline of first marriage.
The following excerpt from Scott Driscoll's review of Maryann Burk Carver's 2006 memoir describes the decline of her and Raymond's marriage.
<templatestyles src="Template:Blockquote/styles.css" />The fall began with Ray's trip to Missoula, Mont., in '72 to fish with friend and literary helpmate Bill Kittredge. That summer Ray fell in love with Diane Cecily, an editor at the University of Montana, whom he met at Kittredge's birthday party. "That's when the serious drinking began. It broke my heart and hurt the children. It changed everything."
"By fall of '74", writes Carver, "he was more dead than alive. I had to drop out of the PhD program so I could get him cleaned up and drive him to his classes". Over the next several years, Maryann's husband physically abused her. Friends urged her to leave Raymond.
"But I couldn't. I really wanted to hang in there for the long haul. I thought I could outlast the drinking. I'd do anything it took. I loved Ray, first, last and always."
Carver describes, without a trace of rancor, what finally put her over the edge. In the fall of '78, with a new teaching position at the University of Texas at El Paso, Ray started seeing Tess Gallagher, a writer from Port Angeles, who would become his muse and wife near the end of his life. "It was like a contretemps. He tried to call me to talk about where we were. I missed the calls. He knew he was about to invite Tess to Thanksgiving." So he wrote a letter instead.
"I thought, I've gone through all those years fighting to keep it all balanced. Here it was, coming at me again, the same thing. I had to get on with my own life. But I never fell out of love with him."
After being hospitalized three times between June 1976 and February or March 1977, Carver began his "second life" and stopped drinking on June 2, 1977, with the help of Alcoholics Anonymous. While he continued to regularly smoke cannabis and later experimented with cocaine at the behest of Jay McInerney during a 1980 visit to New York City, Carver believed he would have died of alcoholism at the age of 40 had he not overcome his drinking.
Second marriage.
In November 1977, Carver met the poet Tess Gallagher at a writers' conference in Dallas, Texas. Gallagher later remembered feeling "as if my life until then had simply been a rehearsal for meeting him." Beginning in January 1979, Carver and Gallagher lived together in El Paso, Texas, in a borrowed cabin near Port Angeles, Washington, and in Tucson, Arizona.
In 1980, the two moved to Syracuse, New York, where Gallagher had been appointed the coordinator of the creative writing program at Syracuse University; Carver taught as a professor in the English department. He and Gallagher jointly purchased a house in Syracuse, at 832 Maryland Avenue. In ensuing years, the house became so popular that the couple had to hang a sign outside that read "Writers At Work" in order to be left alone.
In 1982, he and his first wife, Maryann, were divorced.
On June 17, 1988, six weeks prior to his death, Carver and Gallagher married in Reno, Nevada.
Death.
On August 2, 1988, Carver died in Port Angeles from lung cancer at the age of 50. In the same year, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is buried at Ocean View Cemetery in Port Angeles, Washington. The inscription on his tombstone reads:
<poem>
LATE FRAGMENT
And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.
</poem>
His poem "Gravy" is also inscribed.
As Carver's will directed, Tess Gallagher assumed the management of his literary estate.
Awards and memorials.
Carver was nominated for the National Book Award for his first major-press collection, "Will You Please Be Quiet, Please" in 1977 and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his third major-press collection, "Cathedral" (1983), the volume generally perceived as his best. Included in the latter collection are the award-winning stories "A Small, Good Thing", and "Where I'm Calling From". John Updike selected the latter for inclusion in "The Best American Short Stories of the Century." For his part, Carver perceived "Cathedral" as a watershed in his career for its shift toward a more optimistic and confidently poetic style amid the diminution of Lish's literary influence.
Carver won five O. Henry Awards with "Are These Actual Miles" (originally titled "What Is It?") (1972), "Put Yourself in My Shoes" (1974), "Are You A Doctor?" (1975), "A Small, Good Thing" (1983), and "Errand" (1988).
In Carver's birth town of Clatskanie, Oregon, a memorial park and statue are at the corner of Lillich and Nehalem streets, across from the library. A block away is the building where Carver was born.
Legacy and posthumous publications.
In December 2006, Gallagher published an essay in "The Sun magazine", titled "Instead of Dying", about alcoholism and Carver's having maintained his sobriety. The essay is an adaptation of a talk she initially delivered at the Welsh Academy's Academi Intoxication Conference in 2006. The first lines read: "Instead of dying from alcohol, Raymond Carver chose to live. I would meet him five months after this choice, so I never knew the Ray who drank, except by report and through the characters and actions of his stories and poems."
Chuck Kinder's "Honeymooners: A Cautionary Tale" (2001) is a roman à clef about his friendship with Carver in the 1970s. Carver's high school sweetheart and first wife, Maryann Burk Carver, wrote a memoir of her years with Carver, "What it Used to be Like: A Portrait of My Marriage to Raymond Carver" (2006).
In 2009, "The New York Times Book Review" and "San Francisco Chronicle" named Carol Sklenicka's unauthorized biography, "Raymond Carver: A Writer's Life" (2009), published by Scribner, one of the Best Ten Books of that year; and the "San Francisco Chronicle" deemed it: "exhaustively researched and definitive biography". Carver's widow, Tess Gallagher, refused to engage with Sklenicka.
His final (incomplete) collection of seven stories, titled "Elephant and Other Stories" in Britain (included in "") was composed in the five years before his death. The nature of these stories, especially "Errand", have led to some speculation that Carver was preparing to write a novel. Only one piece of this work has survived – the fragment "The Augustine Notebooks", first printed in "No Heroics, Please".
Tess Gallagher fought with Knopf for permission to republish the stories in "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" as they were originally written by Carver, as opposed to the heavily edited and altered versions that appeared in 1981 under the editorship of Gordon Lish. On October 1, 2009, the book, entitled "Beginners", was released in hardback in Great Britain, followed by its publication in the Library of America edition which collected all of Carver's short fiction in a single volume.
The Raymond Carver Reading Series at Syracuse University is a reading series program which annually brings 12 to 14 prominent writers to the campus. It is presented by the "Creative Writing Program" in SU's College of Arts and Sciences.
Literary characteristics.
Carver's career emphasized short stories and poetry. He described himself as "inclined toward brevity and intensity" and "hooked on writing short stories" (in the foreword of "", a collection published in 1988 and a recipient of an honorable mention in the 2006 "New York Times" article citing the best works of fiction of the previous 25 years). Another stated reason for his brevity was "that the story [or poem] can be written and read in one sitting." This was not simply a preference but, particularly at the beginning of his career, a practical consideration as he juggled writing with work. His subject matter was often focused on blue-collar experience, and was clearly reflective of his own life.
Characteristics of minimalism are generally seen as one of the hallmarks of Carver's work, although, as reviewer David Wiegand notes:
Carver never thought of himself as a minimalist or in any category, for that matter.
"He rejected categories generally," Sklenicka says. "I don't think he had an abstract mind at all. He just wasn't built that way, which is why he's so good at picking the right details that will stand for many things."
Carver's editor at "Esquire", Gordon Lish, was instrumental in shaping his prose in this direction – where his earlier tutor John Gardner had advised Carver to use fifteen words instead of twenty-five, Lish instructed Carver to use five in place of fifteen. Objecting to the "surgical amputation and transplantation" of Lish's heavy editing, Carver eventually broke with him. During this time, Carver also submitted poetry to James Dickey, then poetry editor of "Esquire".
Carver's style has also been described as dirty realism, which connected him with a group of writers in the 1970s and 1980s that included Richard Ford and Tobias Wolff with both of whom Carver was closely acquainted, as well as others such as Ann Beattie, Frederick Barthelme, and Jayne Anne Phillips. With the exception of Beattie, who wrote about upper-middle-class people, these were writers who focused on sadness and loss in the everyday lives of ordinary people—often lower-middle class or isolated and marginalized people.
In his essay "On Influence", Carver states that, while he was an admirer of Ernest Hemingway's fiction, he never saw him as an influence, citing instead the work of Lawrence Durrell.
References.
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What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
1981 short story collection by Raymond Carver
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love is a 1981 collection of short stories by American writer Raymond Carver, as well as the title of one of the stories in the collection. Considered by many one of American literature's most ambitious short-story collections, it was this collection that turned Raymond Carver into a household name in the publishing industry.
Content.
"Why Don't You Dance?".
"Why Don't You Dance?" tells the story of a middle-aged man overseeing a yard sale, where many of his possessions are being sold. A young couple stops by to select furniture for their new apartment. They briefly haggle with him over prices, buying a TV and a bed. The man tells the young woman to put a record on, and, when the music begins, asks the couple to dance. The young man is reluctant, but they dance. When the middle-aged man dances with the girl she tells him "You must be desperate or something." Several weeks later, the woman is telling her friends about the man at his yard sale. She indicates the record player and records he gave them, saying: "Will you look at this shit?" She repeatedly and unsuccessfully tries to describe the man's situation to others, hoping to make sense of the man's situation, before eventually giving up.
"Viewfinder".
A hook-handed man takes a photograph of the narrator's house from the street, then sells it to him. The narrator asks the photographer in for coffee. The manuscript version of the same title appears in "Beginners" (2009).
"Mr. Coffee and Mr. Fixit".
A man reflects "about three years back" on his struggle to come to grips with a couple of troublesome relationships. He was surprised to see his elderly single mother kissing a man on the sofa upstairs. He says his kids were crazy and so was his wife, Myrna, who eventually fell for another man named Ross whom she met at Alcoholics Anonymous. He remembers how his father died and suggests to Myrna that they "hug awhile" and have a "real nice supper," and she responds somewhat lukewarmly. The manuscript version titled "Where Is Everyone?" appears in "Beginners" (2009).
"Gazebo".
Set in a roomy upstairs suite, motel managers Holly & Duane discuss the disintegration of their marriage. Duane has been having an affair with a cleaning lady, Juanita. Duane tries to convince Holly that their love can be rekindled and reconciled but Holly does not agree. Duane is left hopelessly bemoaning the future he had envisioned with Holly. Though he is self aware that it might not have really been the future he wanted himself. The manuscript version of the same title appears in "Beginners" (2009).
"I Could See the Smallest Things".
Nancy wakes up in the middle of the night because of a noise outside. She realizes it's the open gate, and hesitantly she goes to the kitchen to smoke for a while before going out to investigate, leaving her alcoholic husband Cliff "passed out" and snoring loudly in bed. At the fence, Nancy meets her neighbor Sam, a widower, who is spreading insecticide to kill slugs which are ruining his garden. Nancy & Sam talk and it becomes clear Sam and Cliff, once good friends, have had a falling-out. Lonely and wishing to patch up their relationship, Sam asks Nancy to tell Cliff he said hello. Nancy says she will and goes back to bed, realizing she forgot to latch the gate shut. The manuscript version titled "Want to See Something?" appears in "Beginners" (2009).
"Sacks".
Les, a textbook salesman, reflects back a year ago on an incident where he met up with his father in a Sacramento airport. It's been two years since his father's divorce from his mother. While the wife was away, the father had been having an extramarital affair with a Stanley Products saleswoman. The father asks Les if everything is okay, and Les lies, saying everything is fine. A fissure seems to grow between the father and son during the uncomfortable, transient, confusing meeting. Fairly sure that his father will play a negligent to nonexistent role in his future, Les boards his flight. The manuscript version titled "The Fling" appears in "Beginners" (2009).
"The Bath".
On his birthday, young Scotty is walking to school when he is hit by a car and knocked unconscious. "The Bath" is a predecessor of "A Small, Good Thing," one of Carver's most famous stories, which was published in "Cathedral". It is much shorter than "A Small, Good Thing" and ends on an ambiguous note as Scotty's mother goes home from the hospital to take a bath, which is where this version of the story gets its name.
"Tell the Women We're Going".
Two close childhood friends, identified by the author as Bill Jamison & Jerry Roberts, are out of school and have married. After Jerry married, Bill sensed a change in his friend, something that he'd never once shown. One afternoon, the two men leave both their wives and Jerry's kids to go out for a drive, for old-time's sake. They play pool and drink beer at the Rec Center while reminiscing about the olden days. On their way out, they see two women biking down the road. Jerry proposes turning back and chatting them up, juvenile and excited. They pull up to the women and Bill introduces himself and Jerry, but the girls, named Barbara and Sharon, seem completely uninterested. They drive ahead and wait for the women to pass. The women, when they arrive, drop their bikes and cut down a path away from the men, which doesn't really bother Bill but angers Jerry, who devises a plan to cut them off. The story ends in a surprise twist, with Jerry bashing Sharon and Barbara over their heads with a rock, ostensibly killing them both and proving Jerry's deep unhappiness with life. The manuscript version of the same title appears in "Beginners" (2009).
"After the Denim".
James and Edith Packer, an elderly couple, go out for the night to play bingo at the local community center. While there, James is perturbed by a young hippy-like couple dressed in denim who go on to ruin his fun and evening: they take the Packers' parking spot; James sees the young man cheating and confronts him but the man denies the allegation. Later, when the young girl gets bingo, everybody but James claps. James is certain the couple will use the victory money on drugs. That night as the Packers are getting ready for bed, Edith reveals to James that she's been "bleeding" and "spotting," and she'll require medical attention. Restless and upset over his wife's sickness, James wonders why it isn't the young couple who has all the problems. The manuscript version titled "If It Please You" appears in "Beginners" (2009).
"So Much Water So Close to Home".
As she is having breakfast, Claire, is shocked to learn that her husband, Stuart, and his three buddies found the body of a girl washed up on the rivershore upon arriving in the afternoon for their yearly camping trip, as reported by the morning newspaper that day. Instead of reporting the body to the police immediately, the four rather enjoy their vacation, spending some time fishing, getting to eating, and drinking whisky as they sit by the fire, all the while the body of the dead girl lays there. As the quartet packs up the next morning, Stuart uses a payphone to alert the police about the corpse found by the riverbed. Claire feels deeply distanced from her husband, whom she thought she knew, and cannot stop wondering about the dead girl, to whom she feels oddly connected. She starts believing that Stuart and his friends could be behind the girl's murder. Claire wonders why they didn't go fishing locally and why they didn't report the body quickly, as she'd have. Later, after the body is identified and Stuart is at work, Claire reads the funeral plans in the newspaper and decides to attend. On her way to the funeral, a man in a pickup truck pulls her over and asks to talk to her. Though he claims he just wants to make sure she's safe, Claire believes that he is looking at her sexually through the glass. Claustrophobic and frightened, Claire clicks her car locks shut and says she's fine. After the funeral Claire overhears a woman saying they caught the killer, but Claire is not so certain they have the right man. The story ends with Stuart making a sexual advance on Claire in the kitchen. As he reaches for her breasts, she hears water running in the sink and is reminded of the girl floating in the river. The manuscript version of the same title appears in "Beginners" (2009).
"The Third Thing That Killed My Father Off".
The character of Jack Fraser, in classical Carver style, tells the story of a local outsider named Dummy who worked in the same sawmill as Jack's father Del. Del gets Dummy to fill a pond on his land with bass, but Dummy eventually builds an electric fence around it so people stop coming by. Dummy drifts further into isolation and his wife starts going around with another man, much to his discontent. The story ends with Dummy murdering his wife and committing suicide by drowning in his beloved pond. Del impresses upon Jack what a wrong woman can turn a man into. Later, Jack understands Dummy's plight more clearly. The manuscript version titled "Dummy" appears in "Beginners" (2009).
"A Serious Talk".
Burt finds himself incapable of leaving his wife Vera alone. On Boxing Day, Burt comes back to his wife's house to try and explain away his poor behavior from the night before. On Christmas Day, Burt put too many logs in the fire which could've burned the place down. On his way out to make room for Vera's boyfriend Charlie, Burt finds it appropriate to steal six pies from the kitchen counter left unattended. On the 26th, Vera does not want to talk to Burt; she doesn't have the time, it's obvious she has plans already. Burt tries again and again to apologize but Vera does not think it's sincere. Burt notices cigarette butts that are not Vera's regular brand collected in the ashtray, "their ashtray," and feels out of place. While Vera is the bathroom the phone rings and she shouts at Burt to answer it. It's a call for Charlie and Burt responds curtly, saying he's "not here" before leaving the phone off the hook. Vera comes back into the kitchen, and it's clear she cannot tolerate Burt sticking around. The phone rings again and Vera says she'll answer it from the bedroom. Instead of hanging up when Vera commands, Burt takes a knife from the cabinet and cuts the cord in two. Vera realizes what's happened and yells for Burt to leave, saying she'll get a restraining order. Burt leaves calmly and, as he drives away in his car holding their ashtray, he is deludedly convinced that in a few weeks they'll have a "serious talk" and get back together. The manuscript version titled "Pie" appears in "Beginners" (2009).
"The Calm".
A man sitting in a barber's chair getting a haircut listens as three men waiting their turn argue about a hunting story one of the men is telling. The manuscript version of the same title appears in "Beginners" (2004).
"Popular Mechanics".
The protagonist is seen first packing a suitcase, all the while a woman swears at him and yells loudly, glad that he's finally leaving her. Their baby won't stop crying. The protagonist decides he wants to bring the baby with him but the woman won't let him even get near their baby. The two get into a tussle and a tug-of-war over the baby. The story ends with the man and the woman pulling tremendously on the baby, with somewhat ambiguously grim and dark possibilities. Titled "Little Things" in "" (1988); the manuscript version titled "Mine" appears in "Beginners" (2009).
"Everything Stuck to Him".
A father tells his young adult daughter what life was like for their family when she was a young child, all while on vacation in Milan. The manuscript version titled "Distance" appears in "Beginners" (2009).
"One More Thing".
At the kitchen table, L.D. argues with his daughter Rae, age 15, about her beliefs. Maxine, the wife, comes home and notices L.D. is drunk. Maxine sides with Rae, saying she can like what she likes. In a moment of fury, L.D. throws a pickle jar through the window, shattering the glass. Maxine gives L.D. an ultimatum: he must pack his things and go or she'll call the police. L.D. starts packing, stuffing not only his belongings into his suitcase but also vindictively taking womanly toiletries he could make no use of. Taking one last look around, about to leave for good, L.D. says he has one more thing to tell his wife and daughter but, suddenly inarticulate, he is unable to put what he feels into words. The manuscript version of the same title appears in "Beginners" (2009).
"What We Talk About When We Talk About Love".
Mel McGinnis is a 45-year-old cardiologist married to Teresa, also known as Terri. They live together in Albuquerque. The narrator, Nick, describes Mel as tall and rangy with curly soft hair and Teresa (who is Mel's second wife) as bone-thin with a pretty face, dark eyes, and brown hair. Nick is 38 years old, and married to Laura, 35, who works as a legal secretary. The four sit around a table at Mel and Terri's, drinking gin in the afternoon.
They soon start to talk about love. Terri has had an abusive relationship; the abuse, she says, derives from love. Ed, Terri's former abusive boyfriend, "loved her so much he tried to kill her." Ed would beat Terri; he dragged her around the living room by her ankles knocking her into things along the way. Terri believes that Ed loved her and his abuse was his way of showing it. No matter what Terri says, Mel refuses to believe that was "love". Ed also stalked Mel and Terri and called Mel at work with threatening messages. At one point, Mel was so scared he bought a gun and made out a will. Mel even wrote to his brother in California, saying that "if something happened to him" to look for Ed.
Terri's abusive boyfriend eventually committed suicide after two attempts (as Terri sees it, another act of love). Ed's first attempt at suicide was when Terri had left him. Ed had drunk rat poison, but was rushed to the hospital where he was saved. In Ed's second, successful attempt he shot himself in the mouth. Terri and Mel argued about whether she could be in the hospital bedroom with him when he died. Terri won and was with Ed as he died; as Terri puts it, "He never came up out of it."
Soon afterward, Mel begins a story about an elderly couple struck by a drunk driver, a teenager who was pronounced dead at the scene. Mel was called into the hospital and saw how badly the elderly couple had been injured. He says that they had "multiple fractures, internal injuries, hemorrhaging, contusions, and lacerations." The couple were in casts and bandages from head to toe. Mel's point in telling the story is the husband's consternation when the couple was moved into the intensive care unit. Mel would visit the couple daily, and when he put his ear to the husband's mouth-hole, the latter told Mel he was upset because he could not see his wife through his eye-holes.
Mel strays from the topic with more talk about Ed, his personal thoughts about love, hatred toward his ex-wife, and life as a knight. Mel feels even though one loves a person, if something were to happen to them, the survivor would grieve but love again.
After finishing the second bottle of gin, the couples discuss going to dinner, but no one makes any moves to proceed with their plans.
Earlier version.
Carver's original draft of the story "Beginners" was heavily edited by Gordon Lish, who cut out nearly half of Carver's story, adding in details of his own. Carver's original draft, released by his widow Tess Gallagher and published in a December 2007 issue of "the New Yorker", reveals the extensive edits. For instance, the character Mel was originally named Herb, and the abusive boyfriend, renamed Ed by Lish, was originally named Carl. Additionally, Herb's story about the old couple was cut nearly in half, with Lish removing the story of the old couple's home life, love, and reunion in the hospital. In Carver's original version, the two had separate rooms, which caused them to pine for each other and eventually led to a scene when they met again. Lish removed all of this, rewrote the couple into the same room, but in body casts that prevented them from seeing each other, and then explained the old man's distress thus:
 "I mean, the accident was one thing, but it wasn't everything. I'd get up to his mouth-hole, you know, and he'd say no, it wasn't the accident exactly but it was because he couldn't see her through the eye-holes. He said that that was making him feel so bad. Can you imagine? I'm telling you, the man's heart was breaking because he couldn't turn his goddamn head and 'see' his goddamn wife."
 Mel looked around the table and shook his head at what he was going to say.
 "I mean, it was killing the old fart just because he couldn't 'look' at the fucking woman."
Lish also cut out eight paragraphs at the end, in which Terri communicates her worry over Herb's depression to Laura and Nick, and another aspect of love is shown as Laura comforts Terri, tying together all the types of love discussed in the story.
Editing.
There was some contention between Raymond Carver and his editor Gordon Lish over several stories in the collection; the author complained about the "surgical amputation and transplant that might make them someway fit into the carton so the lid will close." Eventually, the book was published with Lish's extensive alterations, and received critical acclaim.
Shortly before his death, Carver arranged the publication of his own selection of 37 of his stories, "". He included some stories as edited by Lish, some restored from his original manuscripts, and some unpublished stories.
Carver's widow, Tess Gallagher, fought with Knopf for permission to republish the 17 stories in "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" as they were originally written by Carver. These original versions eventually appeared in "Beginners", published by Jonathan Cape in 2009, and in the Library of America volume "Collected Stories".


Zhejiang
Province of China
Zhejiang is an eastern coastal province of the People's Republic of China. Its capital and largest city is Hangzhou, and other notable cities include Ningbo and Wenzhou. Zhejiang is bordered by Jiangsu and Shanghai to the north, Anhui to the northwest, Jiangxi to the west and Fujian to the south. To the east is the East China Sea, beyond which lies the Ryukyu Islands. The population of Zhejiang stands at 64.6 million, the 8th largest in China. It has been called "the backbone of China" because it is a major driving force in the Chinese economy and being the birthplace of several notable people, including the Chinese Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek and entrepreneur Jack Ma. Zhejiang consists of 90 counties (incl. county-level cities and districts).
The area of Zhejiang was controlled by the Kingdom of Yue during the Spring and Autumn period. The Qin Empire later annexed it in 222 BC. Under the late Ming dynasty and the Qing dynasty that followed it, Zhejiang's ports became important centers of international trade. It was occupied by the Empire of Japan during the Second Sino-Japanese war and placed under the control of the Japanese puppet state known as the Reorganized National Government of China. After the establishment of the PRC, Zhejiang's economy became stagnant under Mao Zedong's policies. Nevertheless, after China's economic reform, Zhejiang has grown to be considered one of China's wealthiest provinces, ranking fourth in GDP nationally and sixth by GDP per capita, with a nominal GDP of US$1.14 trillion as of 2022.
Zhejiang consists mostly of hills, which account for about 70% of its total area, with higher altitudes towards the south and the west. Zhejiang also has a longer coastline than any other mainland province of China. The Qiantang River runs through the province, from which it derives its name. Included in the province are three thousand islands, the most in China. The capital Hangzhou marks the end of the Grand Canal and lies on Hangzhou Bay on the north of Zhejiang, which separates Shanghai and Ningbo. The bay contains many small islands collectively called the Zhoushan Islands.
Hangzhou is a historically important city of China and is considered a World City with a "Beta+" classification according to GaWC. It includes the notable West Lake. Various varieties of Chinese are spoken in Zhejiang, the most prominent being Wu Chinese. Zhejiang is also one of China's leading provinces in research and education. As of 2024[ [update]], two major cities in Zhejiang ranked in the world's top 200 cities (Hangzhou 13th and Ningbo 123rd) by scientific research output, as tracked by Nature Index.
Etymology.
The province's name originates from the Zhe River (), the former name of the Qiantang River which flows past Hangzhou and whose mouth forms Hangzhou Bay. It is usually understood as meaning "Crooked" or "Bent River", from the meaning of Chinese , but is more likely a phono-semantic compound formed from adding (the "water" radical used for river names) to phonetic (Pinyin "zhé" but reconstructed Old Chinese *"tet"), preserving a proto-Wu name of the local Yue, similar to Yuhang, Kuaiji and Jiang.
History.
Prehistory.
Kuahuqiao culture was an early Neolithic culture that flourished in the Hangzhou area in 6,000-5,000 BC.
Zhejiang was the site of the Neolithic cultures of the Hemudu (starting in 5500 BC) and Liangzhu (starting in 3400 BC).
Ancient history.
The area of modern Zhejiang was outside the major sphere of influence of Shang civilization during the second millennium BC. Instead, this area was populated by peoples collectively known as Dongyue.
The kingdom of Yue began to appear in the chronicles and records written during the Spring and Autumn period. According to the chronicles, the kingdom of Yue was in Northern Zhejiang. Shiji claims that its leaders were descended from the Xia founder Yu the Great. The "Song of the Yue Boatman" () was transliterated into Chinese and recorded by authors in North China or inland China of Hebei and Henan around 528 BC. The song shows that the Yue people spoke a language that was mutually unintelligible with the dialects spoken in north and inland China. The Sword of Goujian bears bird-worm seal script. Yuenü () was a swordswoman from the state of Yue. To check the growth of the kingdom of Wu, Chu pursued a policy of strengthening Yue.
Under King Goujian, Yue recovered from its early reverses and fully annexed the lands of its rival in 473 BC. The Yue kings then moved their capital center from their original home around Mount Kuaiji in present-day Shaoxing to the former Wu capital at present-day Suzhou. With no southern power to turn against Yue, Chu opposed it directly and, in 333 BC, succeeded in destroying it. Yue's former lands were annexed by the Qin Empire in 222 BC and organized into a commandery named for Kuaiji in Zhejiang but initially headquartered in Wu in Jiangsu.
Han and the Three Kingdoms.
Kuaiji Commandery was the initial power base for Xiang Liang and Xiang Yu's rebellion against the Qin Empire which initially succeeded in restoring the kingdom of Chu but eventually fell to the Han. Under the Later Han, control of the area returned to the settlement below Mount Kuaiji but authority over the Minyue hinterland was nominal at best and its Yue inhabitants largely retained their own political and social structures.
At the beginning of the Three Kingdoms era (AD 220–280), Zhejiang was home to the warlords Yan Baihu and Wang Lang prior to their defeat by Sun Ce and Sun Quan, who eventually established the Kingdom of Wu. Despite the removal of their court from Kuaiji to Jianye (present-day Nanjing) and they continued development of the region and benefitted from influxes of refugees fleeing the turmoil in northern China. Industrial kilns were established and trade reached as far as Manchuria and Funan (southern Mainland Southeast Asia).
Zhejiang was part of the Wu during the Three Kingdoms. Wu (229–280), commonly known as Eastern Wu or Sun Wu, had been the economically most developed state among the Three Kingdoms (220–280). The historical novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms records that Zhejiang had the best-equipped naval force. The story depicts how the states of Wei () and Shu (), lack of material resources, avoided direct confrontation with the Wu. In armed military conflicts with Wu, the two states relied intensively on tactics of camouflage and deception to steal Wu's military resources including arrows and bows.
Six Dynasties.
Despite the continuing prominence of Nanjing (then known as Jiankang), the settlement of Qiantang, the former name of Hangzhou, remained one of the three major metropolitan centers in the south to provide major tax revenue to the imperial centers in the north China. The other two centers in the south were Jiankang and Chengdu. In 589, Qiantang was raised in status and renamed Hangzhou.
Following the fall of Wu and the turmoil of the Wu Hu uprising against the Jin dynasty (266–420), most of elite Chinese families had collaborated with the non-Chinese rulers and military conquerors in the north. Some may have lost social privilege and took refuge in areas south of the Yangtze River. Some of the Chinese refugees from North China might have resided in areas near Hangzhou. For example, the clan of Zhuge Liang (181–234), a chancellor of the state of Shu Han from Central Plain in north China during the Three Kingdoms period, gathered together at the suburb of Hangzhou, forming an exclusive, closed village Zhuge Village (Zhege Cun), consisting of villagers all with family name "Zhuge." The village has intentionally isolated itself from the surrounding communities for centuries to this day and only recently came to be known in public. It suggests that a small number of powerful, elite Chinese refugees from the Central Plain might have taken refuge south of the Yangtze River. However, considering the mountainous geography and relative lack of agrarian lands in Zhejiang, most of these refugees might have resided in some areas in South China beyond Zhejiang, where fertile agrarian lands and metropolitan resources were available, mainly Southern Jiangsu, Eastern Fujian, Jiangxi, Hunan, Anhui and provinces where less cohesive, organized regional governments had been in place. Metropolitan areas of Sichuan was another hub for refugees, given that the state of Shu had long been founded and ruled by political and military elites from the Central Plain and North China. Some refugees from North China might have found residence in South China depending on their social status and military power in the north. The rump Jin state or the Southern dynasties vied against some elite Chinese from the Central Plain and south of the Yangtze River.
Sui and Tang eras.
Zhejiang, as the heartland of the Jiangnan (Yangtze River Delta), remained the wealthiest area during the Six Dynasties (220 or 222–589), Sui and Tang. After being incorporated into the Sui dynasty, its economic richness was used for the Sui dynasty's ambitions to expand north and south, particularly into Korea and Vietnam. The plan led the Sui dynasty to restore and expand the network which became the Grand Canal of China. The Canal regularly transported grains and resources from Zhejiang, through its metropolitan center Hangzhou (and its hinterland along both the Zhe River and the shores of Hangzhou Bay) and from Suzhou and thence to the North China Plain. The débâcle of the Korean war led to Sui's overthrow by the Tang, who then presided over a centuries-long golden age for the country. Zhejiang was an important economic center of the empire's Jiangnan East Circuit and was considered particularly prosperous. Throughout the Tang dynasty, The Grand Canal had remained effective, transporting grains and material resources to North China plain and metropolitan centers of the empire. As the Tang dynasty disintegrated, Zhejiang constituted most of the territory of the regional kingdom of Wuyue.
Wuyue era.
After the collapse of the Tang dynasty in 907, the entire area of what is now Zhejiang fell under the control of the kingdom Wuyue established by King Qian Liu, who selected Hangzhou (a city in the modern day area of Zhejiang) as his kingdom's capital. Despite being under Wuyue rule for a relatively short period of time, Zhejiang underwent a long period of financial and cultural prosperity which continued even after the kingdom fell.
After Wuyue was conquered during the reunification of China, many shrines were erected across the former territories of Wuyue, mainly in Zhejiang, where the kings of Wuyue were memorialised, and sometimes, worshipped as being able to dictate weather and agriculture. Many of these shrines, known as "Shrine of the Qian King" or "Temple to the Qian King", still remain today, with the most popularly visited example being that near West Lake in Hangzhou.
China's province of Zhejiang during the 940s was also the place of origin of the Hú family (Hồ in Vietnamese) from which the founder of the Hồ dynasty who ruled Vietnam, Emperor Hồ Quý Ly, came from.
Song era.
The Song dynasty re-established unity around 960. Under the Song, the prosperity of South China began to overtake that of North China. After the north was lost to the Jurchen Jin dynasty in 1127 following the Jingkang Incident, Hangzhou became the capital of the Song dynasty under the name Lin'an, which was renowned for its prosperity and beauty, it was suspected to have been the largest city in the world at the time.
From then on, northern Zhejiang and neighboring southern Jiangsu have been synonymous with luxury and opulence in Chinese culture. The Mongol conquest and the establishment of the Yuan dynasty in 1279 ended Hangzhou's political clout, but its economy continued to prosper. The famous traveler Marco Polo visited the city, which he called "Kinsay" (after the Chinese "Jingshi", meaning "Capital City") claiming it was "the finest and noblest city in the world."
Greenware ceramics made from celadon had been made in the area since the 3rd-century Jin dynasty, but it returned to prominence—particularly in Longquan—during the Southern Song and Yuan. Longquan greenware is characterized by a thick unctuous glaze of a particular bluish-green tint over an otherwise undecorated light-grey porcellaneous body that is delicately potted. Yuan Longquan celadons feature a thinner, greener glaze on larger vessels with decoration and shapes derived from Middle Eastern ceramic and metalwares. These were produced in large quantities for the Chinese export trade to Southeast Asia, the Middle East and (during the Ming) Europe. By the Ming, however, production was notably deficient in quality. It is in this period that the Longquan kilns declined, to be eventually replaced in popularity and ceramic production by the kilns of Jingdezhen in Jiangxi.
Yuan and Ming eras.
Zhejiang was finally conquered by the Mongols in the late 13th century who later established the short lived Yuan dynasty. Zhejiang became part of the much larger Jiangzhe Province.
The Ming dynasty, which drove out the Mongols in 1368, finally established the present day province of Zhejiang with its borders having little changes since this establishment.
As in other coastal provinces, number of fortresses were constructed along the Zhejiang coast during the early Ming to defend the land against pirate incursions. Some of them have been preserved or restored, such as Pucheng in the south of the province (Cangnan County).
Qing era.
Under the late Ming dynasty and the Qing dynasty that followed it, Zhejiang's ports were important centers of international trade.
"In 1727 the to-min or 'idle people' of Cheh Kiang province (a Ningpo name still existing), the yoh-hu or 'music people' of Shanxi province, the si-min or 'small people' of Kiang Su (Jiangsu) province and the Tanka people or 'egg-people' of Canton (to this day the boat population there), were all freed from their social disabilities and allowed to count as free men." "Cheh Kiang" is another romanization for Zhejiang. The Duomin () are a caste of outcasts in this province.
During the First Opium War, the British navy defeated Eight Banners forces at Ningbo and Dinghai. Under the terms of the Treaty of Nanking, signed in 1843, Ningbo became one of the five Chinese treaty ports opened to virtually unrestricted foreign trade. Much of Zhejiang came under the control of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom during the Taiping Rebellion, which resulted in a considerable loss of life in the north-western and central parts of the province, sparing the rest of Zhejiang from the disastrous depopulation that occurred. In 1876, Wenzhou became Zhejiang's second treaty port. Jianghuai Mandarin speakers later came to settle in these depopulated regions of northern Zhejiang.
Republican era.
During the Second Sino-Japanese War, which led into World War II, much of Zhejiang was occupied by Japan and placed under the control of the Japanese puppet state known as the Reorganized National Government of China. Following the Doolittle Raid, most of the B-25 American crews that came down in China eventually made it to safety with the help of Chinese civilians and soldiers. The Chinese people who helped them, however, paid dearly for sheltering the Americans. The Imperial Japanese Army began the Zhejiang-Jiangxi Campaign to intimidate the Chinese out of helping downed American airmen. Imperial Japanese forces killed an estimated 250,000 Chinese civilians from the area of Hangzhou to Nanchang and also Zhuzhou while searching for Doolittle's men.
People's Republic era.
After the People's Republic of China took control of Mainland China in 1949, the Republic of China government based in Taiwan continued to control the Dachen Islands off the coast of Zhejiang until 1955, even establishing a rival Zhejiang provincial government there. During the Cultural Revolution (1966–76), Zhejiang was in chaos and disunity and its economy was stagnant, especially during the high tide (1966–69) of the revolution. The agricultural policy favoring grain production at the expense of industrial and cash crops intensified economic hardships in the province. Mao's self-reliance policy and the reduction in maritime trade cut off the lifelines of the port cities of Ningbo and Wenzhou. While Mao invested heavily in railroads in interior China, no major railroads were built in South Zhejiang, where transportation remained poor.
Zhejiang benefited less from central government investment than some other provinces due to its lack of natural resources, a location vulnerable to potential flooding from the sea and an economic base at the national average. Zhejiang, however, has been an epicenter of capitalist development in China and has led the nation in the development of a market economy and private enterprises. Northeast Zhejiang, as part of the Yangtze Delta, is flat, more developed and industrial.
Geography.
Zhejiang consists mostly of hills, which account for about 70% of its total area. Altitudes tend to be the highest to the south and west and the highest peak of the province, Huangmaojian Peak (), is located there. Other prominent mountains include Mounts Yandang, Tianmu, Tiantai and Mogan, which reach altitudes of .
Valleys and plains are found along the coastline and rivers. The north of the province lies just south of the Yangtze Delta and consists of plains around the cities of Hangzhou, Jiaxing and Huzhou, where the Grand Canal of China enters from the northern border to end at Hangzhou. Another relatively flat area is found along the Qu River around the cities of Quzhou and Jinhua. Major rivers include the Qiangtang and Ou Rivers. Most rivers carve out valleys in the highlands, with plenty of rapids and other features associated with such topography. Well-known lakes include the West Lake of Hangzhou and the South Lake of Jiaxing.
There are over three thousand islands along the rugged coastline of Zhejiang. The largest, Zhoushan Island, is mainland China's third largest island, after Hainan and Chongming. There are also many bays, of which Hangzhou Bay is the largest. Zhejiang has a humid subtropical climate with four distinct seasons. Spring starts in March and is rainy with changeable weather. Summer, from June to September is long, hot, rainy and humid. Fall is generally dry, warm and sunny. Winters are short but cold except in the far south. Average annual temperature is around , average January temperature is around and average July temperature is around . Annual precipitation is about . There is plenty of rainfall in early summer and by late summer Zhejiang is directly threatened by typhoons forming in the Pacific.
Administrative divisions.
Zhejiang is divided into eleven prefecture-level divisions: all prefecture-level cities (including two sub-provincial cities):
The eleven prefecture-level divisions of Zhejiang are subdivided into 90 county-level divisions (37 districts, 20 county-level cities, 32 counties, and one autonomous county). Those are in turn divided into 1,364 township-level divisions (618 towns, 488 townships, and 258 subdistricts). Hengdian belongs to Jinhua, which is the largest base of shooting films and TV dramas in China. Hengdian World Studios is called "China's Hollywood." At the year end of 2021, the total population was 65.40 million.
Urban areas.
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Politics.
The politics of Zhejiang is structured in a dual party-government system like all other governing institutions in mainland China. The Governor of Zhejiang is the highest-ranking official in the People's Government of Zhejiang. However, in the province's dual party-government governing system, the Governor is subordinate to the secretary of the Zhejiang Provincial Committee of the Chinese Communist Party.
Several political figures who served as Zhejiang's top political office of Party Secretary have played key roles in various events in PRC history. Tan Zhenlin (term 1949–1952), the inaugural Party Secretary, was one of the leading voices against Mao's Cultural Revolution during the so-called February Countercurrent of 1967. Jiang Hua (term 1956–1968), was the "chief justice" on the Special Court in the case against the Gang of Four in 1980. Three provincial Party Secretaries since the 1990s have gone onto prominence at the national level. They include CPC General Secretary and President Xi Jinping (term 2002–2007), National People's Congress Chairman and former Vice-Premier Zhang Dejiang (term 1998–2002), and Zhao Hongzhu (term 2007–2012), the Deputy Secretary of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, China's top anti-corruption body. Of Zhejiang's fourteen Party Secretaries since 1949, none were native to the province.
Zhejiang was home to Chiang Kai-shek and many high-ranking officials in the Kuomintang, who fled to Taiwan in 1949 after losing the Civil War.
Economy.
Zhejiang is one of the richest and most developed provinces in China. As of 2022[ [update]], its nominal GDP was US$1.15 trillion (CN¥ 7.77 trilion), about 6.42% of the country's GDP and ranked 4th among province-level administrative units; the province's primary, secondary and tertiary industries were worth CN¥232.48 billion (US$34.56 billion), CN¥3.3205 trillion (US$493.67 billion) and CN¥4.2185 trillion (US$627.18 billion) respectively. Its nominal GDP per capita was US$17,617 (CN¥118,496) and ranked the 6th in the country. The private sector in the province has been playing an increasingly important role in boosting the regional economy since Economic Reform in 1978. Zhejiang is generally regarded as having one of the strongest private sectors among Chinese provinces and its local governments typically adopt permissive business policies.186
Zhejiang's main manufacturing sectors are electromechanical industries, textiles, chemical industries, food and construction materials. In recent years Zhejiang has followed its own development model, dubbed the "Zhejiang model", which is based on prioritizing and encouraging entrepreneurship, an emphasis on small businesses responsive to the whims of the market, large public investments into infrastructure, and the production of low-cost goods in bulk for both domestic consumption and export. As a result, Zhejiang has made itself one of the richest provinces and the "Zhejiang spirit" has become something of a legend within China. However, some economists now worry that this model is not sustainable, in that it is inefficient and places unreasonable demands on raw materials and public utilities, and also a dead end, in that the myriad small businesses in Zhejiang producing cheap goods in bulk are unable to move to more sophisticated or technologically more advanced industries. The economic heart of Zhejiang is moving from North Zhejiang, centered on Hangzhou, southeastward to the region centered on Wenzhou and Taizhou. The per capita disposable income of urbanites in Zhejiang reached 55,574 yuan (US$8,398) in 2018, an annual real growth of 8.4%. The per capita disposable income of rural residents stood at 27,302 yuan (US$4,126), a real growth of 9.4%.
Zhejiang was the first province to pilot a common prosperity pilot program.166
Traditionally, the province is known as the "Land of Fish and Rice." True to its name, rice is the main crop, followed by wheat; north Zhejiang is also a center of aquaculture in China, and the Zhoushan fishery is the largest fishery in the country. The main cash crops include jute and cotton and the province also leads the provinces of China in tea production. (The renowned Longjing tea is a product of Hangzhou.) Zhejiang's towns have been known for handicraft production of goods such as silk, for which it is ranked second among the provinces. Its many market towns connect the cities with the countryside.
In 1832, the province was exporting silk, paper, fans, pencils, wine, dates, tea and "golden-flowered" hams.
Zhejiang has been leading the digital economy development in China, in recent years, the provincial economy has been boosted by the economic surge brought by internet corporations such as Alibaba and NetEase.
Ningbo, Wenzhou, Taizhou and Zhoushan are important commercial ports. The Hangzhou Bay Bridge between Haiyan County and Cixi, is the longest bridge over a continuous body of sea water in the world.
Economic and technological development concerns.
Waste disposal.
On Thursday, September 15, 2011, more than 500 people from Hongxiao Village protested over the large-scale death of fish in a nearby river. Angry protesters stormed the Zhejiang Jinko Solar Company factory compound, overturned eight company vehicles, and destroyed the offices before police came to disperse the crowd. Protests continued on the two following nights with reports of scuffles, officials said. Chen Hongming, a deputy head of Haining's environmental protection bureau, said the factory's waste disposal had failed pollution tests since April. The environmental watchdog had warned the factory, but it had not effectively controlled the pollution, Chen added.
Demographics.
Han Chinese make up the vast majority of the population and the largest Han subgroup are the speakers of Wu varieties of Chinese. There are also 400,000 members of ethnic minorities, including approximately 200,000 She people and approximately 20,000 Hui Chinese. Jingning She Autonomous County in Lishui is the only She autonomous county in China.
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Religion.
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The predominant religions in Zhejiang are Chinese folk religions, Taoist traditions and Chinese Buddhism. According to surveys conducted in 2007 and 2009, 23.02% of the population believes and is involved in ancestor veneration, while 2.62% of the population identifies as Christian, decreasing from 3.92% in 2004. The reports did not give figures for other types of religion; 74.36% of the population may be either irreligious or involved in worship of nature deities, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, folk religious sects. As of the mid-2010s, Zhejiang has 34,880 registered folk religious temples greater than 20 sqm and 10,000 registered places of worship of the five doctrines (Buddhism, Taoism, Catholicism, Protestantism, Islam).
In mid-2015 the government of Zhejiang recognised folk religion as "civil religion" beginning the formal registration of the province's folk religious temples under the aegis of the provincial Bureau of Folk Faith. Buddhism has an important presence since its arrival in Zhejiang 1,800 years ago.
Catholicism arrived 400 years ago in the province and Protestantism 150 years ago. Zhejiang is one of the provinces of China with the largest concentrations of Protestants, especially notable in the city of Wenzhou. In 1999, Zhejiang's Protestant population comprised 2.8% of the provincial population, a small percentage but higher than the national average.
The rapid development of religions in Zhejiang has driven the local committee of ethnic and religious affairs to enact policies to rationalise them in 2014, variously named "Three Remodelings and One Demolition" operations or "Special Treatment Work on Illegally Constructed Sites of Religious and Folk Religion Activities" according to the locality. These regulations have led to cases of demolition of churches and folk religion temples or the removal of crosses from churches' roofs and spires. An exemplary case was that of the Sanjiang Church. Despite English-language media focused on Christian churches, only 2.3% of the buildings affected by the regulations were Christian churches; most of them were folk religious temples.
Islam arrived 1,400 years ago in Zhejiang. Today Islam is practiced by a small number of people including virtually all the Hui Chinese living in Zhejiang. In 2020, there are 117,000 Muslims in Zhejiang. Another religion present in the province is She shamanism (practiced by She ethnic minority).
Media.
The Zhejiang Radio & Television Group, Hangzhou Radio & Television Group, Ningbo Radio & Television Group are the local broadcasters in Zhejiang Province.
Culture.
Languages.
Zhejiang is mountainous and has therefore fostered the development of many distinct local cultures. Linguistically speaking, Zhejiang is extremely diverse. Most inhabitants of Zhejiang speak varieties of Wu, but those Wu dialects are very diverse, especially in the south, where one valley may speak a dialect completely unintelligible to the next valley a few kilometers away. Other varieties of Chinese are spoken as well, mostly along the borders; Mandarin and Huizhou dialects are spoken on the border with Anhui, while Min dialects are spoken on the border with Fujian. (See Hangzhou dialect, Shaoxing dialect, Ningbo dialect, Wenzhou dialect, Taizhou dialect, Jinhua dialect and Quzhou dialect for more information)
Throughout history there have been a series of "lingua francas" in the area to allow for better communication. The dialects spoken in Hangzhou, Shaoxing and Ningbo have taken on this role historically. Since the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, Mandarin, which is not mutually intelligible with any of the Wu dialects, has been promoted as the standard language of communication throughout China. As a result, most of the population now can, to some degree, speak and comprehend Mandarin and can code-switch when necessary. A majority of the population educated since 1978 can speak some Mandarin. Urban residents tend to be more fluent in Mandarin than rural people. Nevertheless, a Zhejiang accent is detectable in almost everyone from the area communicating in Mandarin and the home dialect remains an important part of the everyday lives and cultural identities of most Zhejiang residents.
Music.
Zhejiang is the home of Yue opera, one of the most prominent forms of Chinese opera. "Yueju" originated in Shengzhou and is traditionally performed by actresses only, in both male and female roles. Other important opera traditions include Yongju (of Ningbo), Shao opera (of Shaoxing), Ouju (of Wenzhou), Wuju (of Jinhua), Taizhou Luantan (of Taizhou) and Zhuji Luantan (of Zhuji).
Cuisine.
Longjing tea (also called dragon well tea), originating in Hangzhou, is one of the most prestigious, if not "the" most prestigious Chinese tea. Hangzhou is also renowned for its silk umbrellas and hand fans. Zhejiang cuisine (itself subdivided into many traditions, including Hangzhou cuisine) is one of the eight great traditions of Chinese cuisine.
Place names.
Since ancient times, north Zhejiang and neighboring south Jiangsu have been famed for their prosperity and opulence and simply inserting north Zhejiang place names (Hangzhou, Jiaxing, etc.) into poetry gave an effect of dreaminess, a practice followed by many noted poets. In particular, the fame of Hangzhou (as well as Suzhou in neighboring Jiangsu province) has led to the popular saying: "Above there is heaven; below there is Suzhou and Hangzhou" (), a saying that continues to be a source of pride for the people of these two still prosperous cities.
Tourism.
Tourist destinations in Zhejiang include:
Sports.
Professional sports teams based in Zhejiang include:
Education and research.
Zhejiang is one of China's leading provinces in research and education. As of 2024[ [update]], two major cities in Zhejiang ranked in the world's top 200 cities (Hangzhou 13th and Ningbo 123rd) by scientific research output, as tracked by Nature Index.
Notes.
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References.
Citations.
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Sources.
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Tianmu Mountain
Mountain in Zhejiang, China
Tianmu Mountain, Mount Tianmu, or Tianmushan () is a mountain in Lin'an County west of Hangzhou, Zhejiang, in eastern China. It is made up of two peaks: West Tianmu () and East Tianmu (). Twin ponds near the top of the peaks led to the name of the mountain. China's Tianmu Mountain National Nature Reserve lies on the northwest portion of the mountain. It is a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve as part of UNESCO's Man and the Biosphere Programme.
Tianmu is known for giant Japanese cedars, waterfalls, Tianmu tea, peaks surrounded by clouds, bamboo shoots, temples and nunneries, and odd-shaped rocks. More than 2,000 species of plants grow on the mountain, including (on West Tianmu) the last surviving truly wild population of Ginkgo trees. Prominent among the Japanese cedars is the "Giant Tree King", named by the Qianlong Emperor of the Qing. In 2009, it measured in height, in diameter, and in volume. The mountain is also home to hundreds of species of birds and animals, including 39 endangered or protected species. These include the clouded leopard and the black muntjac.
In Chinese, the name Tianmushan can also refer to the adjacent range of mountains, including Mount Mogan.
References.
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Lin'an, Hangzhou
Lin'an District () is a suburban district of Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China. It is located in northwest Zhejiang as a separate urban area of Hangzhou, and borders Anhui province to the west and northwest. Lin'an held a population of 573,100 in 2014, over an area of . The postal code is 311300, and the phone area code 0571.
May 2015, Lin'an was listed as the Top 100 Economic Potential City/County, ranking 73. Lin'an also voted as No. 16 Innovative County. After the promotion of Fuyang District, Lin'an was converted into the 10th district of Hangzhou in August 2017. The Lin'an government is located at 398 Yijin Street.
Lin'an is rich in natural resources, abundant in rainfall, and has a warm climate. All of these factors work together allowing the district to be covered with 71.3% forest. Such an ecological environment breeds more than 4,700 biological species. Mountains, lakes, forest, hot springs, caves, and other ancient remains are everywhere. The district's Daming Mountain and Tianmu Mountain are its well-known attractions.
Geography and climate.
The climate in Lin'an is temperate and humid subtropical monsoon. The annual average temperature is with of precipitation.
Administrative divisions.
Subdistricts:
Towns:
Townships:
Transport.
Lin'an is connected to the main urban area of Hangzhou through Line 16 of the Hangzhou Metro and the G56 Hangzhou–Ruili Expressway.
References.
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Lin'an Prefecture
Capital of the Southern Song dynasty
Lin'an Prefecture (1129–1277) was, after 1138, the capital of the Southern Song dynasty (1127–1279). With over one million people by 1276, it was the most populous city in the world. Lin'an Prefecture was