Savage Devotion

Anything that brings people to tears has to contain the sharp sting of pain and the thrill of obsession. Our protagonist, Wu Tian, is a simple kid from the urban-rural fringe. He leaves his hometown to study and live in a first-tier city, where he glimpses the strange and dazzling lives of different social classes. Will he drift with the current and sail away, or struggle upstream and stubbornly make his own way? In this fast-developing age, pagers have become a thing of the past and 2G networks were forgotten long ago. The lives of every ordinary person are tossed about by this unexpected tide: we move forward, happy and hurting at once. I hope that when night falls and all is quiet, we can look back and reflect together.

Rural communities in most third- and fourth-tier cities can be found across China's more than 2,000 counties. Each of these small towns, with its own distinctive character, marks the end of the countryside and the beginning of the city. They are also where our story begins, though we don't know if they will be where it ends. When young people who grew up there face the future, perhaps they've all tossed a coin in their hearts.

Proof of authorship posted as requested