"Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress" takes place in Communist China during the 1970s. Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution is in full swing, and part of that movement was the Countryside Movement. Because of the Countryside Movement, the narrator and his friend Luo are sent away from their families and homes in the city to live in a rural village on a mountain known as the Phoenix in the Sky. There they must work the same way the villagers do--on the land and in the coal mine. A little ways out of their village lives a seamstress who has taken a liking to the narrator and Luo, and their feelings are reciprocated. She is pretty well-to-do because her father is an esteemed tailor, which gives her some authority to request that the boys get out of their work and visit her. The boys are willing to make the trek through the muddy forest and mountain paths to see her.
*All images used for setting are from google.com/imghp
