This book is based on Qian Zhongshu's unfinished novel Lily Heart. The title of the book is derived from the French Lecoeurd'artichaut. French lily, also known as artichoke, is a vegetable that looks like a budding flower. After removing the inedible old leaves and cabbage cabbage, only a small part is left, and the taste is bland - the Chinese call it the "taste of loneliness" because it is lonely when eaten.
Life is like a lily - most people think they are a flower, but in fact they are just a vegetable; most of life is wasted, and only a small part is meaningful; the process of life towards death is like the leaves of a lily being peeled off layer by layer, and will eventually return to nothingness. Life begins with life and ends with death, from nothing to something and then to nothing, going around in a circle to form a closed loop; novels are stories about people, so naturally they should have a circular closed loop like life to "circle" its "story". This book begins with death and ends with new life - new life means the continuation of a new story, and the end of one circle becomes the beginning of another, just like the infinity symbol "∞".
This novel and its characters are purely fictitious. Any similarity is purely coincidental and should not be imitated.
