Literary critics such as C. T. Hsia called Pai Hsienyung a "e;rare talent"e; who according to another critic, "e;has absorbed the diverse techniques of contemporary Western literature to temper and modernize his writing; however, the characters he writes about remain Chinese people and the stories he tells remain Chinese tales."e; Widely acclaimed as a classic of contemporary fiction, Taipei People has been frequently compared to James Joyce's Dubliners. Henry Miller considers Pai Hsienyung "e;a master of portraiture."e; The collection of fourteen stories from this reprint edition has already been translated to great acclaim into French, German, Italian, Dutch, Hebrew, Japanese, and Korean.