Review by Frank Plowright

While now long associated with the band or the soft drink, an oasis is historically a term for the form of respite such as a pool in the desert. Goujing rapidly disabuses us of any such cheery notions by opening with remnants of a battered, windswept town with a signpost reading “Oasis” still just about standing. Two children are walking through a storm toward the town, and the realities of their grim existence are soon established. They’re braving the chance of sandstorms to collect water from a still functioning pump somehow still protruding from the sand.

Guojing brings this depressing world to life via evocative art pencilled in dark shades of grey. Didi and JieJie are instantly sympathetic, drawn as two ordinary young children experiencing brief moments of happiness in a terrible environment. This is developed by the constantly dark clouds and dull landscape in which sand predominates.

The children live alone, but can contact their mother by phone, with phone booths also somehow emerging from the sand. She works in Oasis city, seen in a picture as a glass dome, and we learn halfway through that she’s attempting to have the children join her in the city. Reflecting the plight of a refugee parent separated from her children, it’s one of several parallels drawn with the real world likely to escape the notice of the younger readers at whom Oasis is aimed. It also reflects the terrible lives of children abandoned in warzones, near slave labour in factories, and those from impoverished communities endangering their health by having to scrabble for items in landfill tips. Didi and JieJie discover something life changing while doing so. Can the being seen on the cover be a replacement mother?

While there’s much misery and hardship chronicled for a fair while, it’s to enable Goujing to contrast the wonder and joy when it does arrive. The parallels to reality never overwhelm the primary message of hope, and neither does Oasis being heartbreaking at times. Only in a couple of places does the melancholy depart entirely, but the title has a secondary meaning, and the story is designed with emotional prompts. This won’t be for every child, but the message is thoughtful and well presented.