Siheyuan: Zhang Yang's Joyful Life

Past and present lives blur together, and right and wrong are hard to tell apart.

What does a person live for? In the end, it may all be no more than a dream of wealth and glory. When that time comes, how many people will look back without regrets? Should we live as we please, or stick to the rules? Let’s follow our cultivation-taught hero as he finds joy, love, and vengeance in a courtyard house. This story is entirely fictional. Any resemblance is purely coincidental.

Zhang Yang, a young man living in the modern world, thought he was a rising star because he could do a bit of everything. Back home, he had helped an electrician rewire houses, worked the fields planting wheat and corn, and could even grow vegetables. He had also studied traditional Chinese medicine for a while with a local practitioner, but the man was so old that Zhang Yang only learned a few basics. Later, he got into a technical college and studied metalworking. Since he often worked alongside welders and machinists, he picked up a little from them too. After graduating, he found a job at an installation company. He still wasn’t married after ten years, though he had dated a few women. They all left after a while because they thought he was poor. Over those ten years, he had also mastered doing laundry, cooking, and sewing. His one flaw was that he was too much of a flirt, willing to hit on any woman. And now, a married man had caught him in a hotel room. The relentless pounding on the door killed the mood for the two people inside. Zhang Yang searched the room from top to bottom but couldn’t find anywhere to hide, so he had no choice but to climb out the window and stand on the air-conditioning unit. He might have been fine there, but he still wanted to peek through the neighboring window, where moans could be heard. Then his foot slipped...