Practicing Death

On the last day of 2010, Shi Tiesheng, one of China's most influential writers, died suddenly, leaving behind Chen Ximi, the woman who had shared his life, his struggles, and his deepest thoughts for more than two decades.

Paralyzed at twenty-one and burdened by decades of illness, Shi endured suffering that few could imagine. Yet he never ceased to question the mysteries of existence or to find meaning and beauty in life. Through years of pain, despair, and unexpected joy, Chen remained by his side. They were husband and wife, but also kindred spirits, bound by an extraordinary intimacy of love and thought.

Shi Tiesheng spent his life contemplating death. Only afterlosing him did Chen Ximi begin to understand what death truly means.Practicing Death is a profoundly moving meditation on love and loss, memory and mortality, solitude and eternity. With unsparing honesty and extraordinary tenderness, Chen recounts a love that endured suffering and confronts a question that reaches into the deepest recesses of the human heart: When death takes away the person we love most, in what form can love continue to exist?