Millennials' Talents, Hidden Ailments, and Secret Paths — Huxiu highlights Guo Shuang's 河上歌 as an annual standout

The book and the claim

It has been reported that Huxiu (虎嗅) republished a longform review from the WeChat account 经观书评 by critic Xia Yu (夏榆) that names Guo Shuang’s (郭爽) novel He Shang Ge (河上歌) among five contenders for a 2025 "annual good book" selection. The review frames the novel as a probing portrait of a millennial cohort: gifted youths, private illnesses and the detours—academic dropout, exile, aspiration abroad—that shape their lives. Which version of China does this generation carry with them? The novel, the reviewer argues, answers that question in quiet, unsettling prose.

What readers outside China should know

He Shang Ge follows prodigious characters linked to trajectories familiar to Chinese readers — including the University of Science and Technology of China (中国科学技术大学, USTC) "少年班" mythos — but it transposes those markers into a wider, international drift: Europe, Hong Kong, the United States. The book chronicles epilepsy, depression and addiction alongside mathematical genius and social dislocation; Xia draws literary analogies to Fitzgerald and Dickens to help Western readers situate Guo’s milieux and moral concerns. It has been reported that the reviewer spent the 2026 Spring Festival reading the book and used that immersive experience to compare it with other shortlisted titles spanning motherhood, migrant work and rural life.

Cultural and industry context

The review also locates the novel within a fraught contemporary Chinese literary landscape — one the critic says is squeezed between state power, commercial pressures and rapid technological change. Reportedly, younger writers such as Guo Shuang are seen as a new core of Chinese-language literature precisely because they attempt to keep personal experience and independent inquiry at the centre of narrative work, even as AI-driven information flows and market forces accelerate. For Western readers trying to understand China's millennial moment, Xia's appraisal offers both a close reading and a reminder: generational stories in China now travel across borders, but they are written under distinctive institutional and cultural constraints.