Writing his own reality

In 2017, he got married and became a father. He did not resume writing until 2019, when Chen Lingyun, editor-in-chief of Form got in touch.

Earlier this year, Peng's third book Jijing Lianmian De Shanmai (The Silent Mountain Ranges) was published. Featuring eight short stories, including six new ones written in the past two years to "record his ordinariness and insignificance and prevent himself from vanishing from the world", as he says in the preface of the book. They are mostly about the people that erratic salesmen encounter in their work and life, about their confusion, struggles, expectations, failures and sad love stories.

"I don't think I have an unparalleled talent in writing, but I have written confidently because I've found a new area in which to express my special feelings," he said in a previous interview.

Although the new book has won him more attention from the media, Peng personally dislikes it, because, compared with the previous two books, the stories in the third one appear more realistic.

"For me, writing is not to let readers empathize with the stories, but let them discover a new world, even if at first they feel familiar with it," he says.

"There must be something creative in your writing, in the artistic form or content. Otherwise, what you write will be too cliche. And that's one of my standards for a good story, and what will give me goose bumps in my own reading experience.

"It's not because being realistic is not good, but because I want to lead readers to a reality along a byroad that no one has ever tread before," he says.