A Journey of Suffering

I want to explain this book with an example. Suppose there is a woman named Xiaohong who grows up in a family like this: her father drinks, gambles, visits prostitutes, and has a violent temper, while her mother is unreasonable and nagging. Xiaohong surely dislikes this family and wants to escape it. When she grows up, she doesn’t want to marry a man like her father, either. One day, she meets a gentle, considerate young man who doesn’t have any of her father’s bad habits. Xiaohong likes him, and he likes her too. But after they’ve been together for a while, their relationship stops progressing. Their feelings fade, or they gradually lose touch, and the relationship comes to an end. But when Xiaohong meets a young man who is like her father, deep down she truly dislikes him and resists him. Yet her body instinctively knows how to deal with this kind of man, a response shaped by the environment she has lived in for so long. By the time she realizes what is happening, the two are already very close. From then on, she lives the kind of life she hates.

Why is that? The reason is that Xiaohong’s relationship system has no model for being with a good person. Since childhood, she has only dealt with people like her parents, and perhaps she will spend her whole life interacting only with people like them, if she never becomes aware of it. She has never learned how to relate to good people. That is fate. Sometimes the hardships fate brings are not your fault, yet you are the one who has to bear them. Just like Xiaohong: her suffering wasn’t caused by her, but she has to carry it for the rest of her life. How to write your own story amid the hardships fate has dealt you: that is why I began writing this novel, and what this book is meant to express.