The novel Traces of the Stars follows the lives of Liu Junping and Deng Linxi, weaving together three decades in which the fates of three generations intertwine. The early death of Dong, Liu Junping's childhood friend, left the first crack in his heart. The playmate who once ran through fields of wheat eventually became a lone grave in the fields, forcing the boy to confront the uncertainty of life and death for the first time. The fall of his close friend Liu Wanglong tore that wound wide open. This gifted young man, burdened with the hope that he would "make his parents proud," succumbed to depression and fell from the eighteenth floor of a hospital, plunging Liu Junping, then in his thirties, into an abyss.
The cruelty of fate forged an unusual resilience in him. During college, he founded the "Heart Support Initiative" to help disadvantaged children and supported his dream of doing charity work with a recycling depot, yet love left him battered and bruised. From rural schoolteacher to police officer, from rising political star to recluse in the mountains, he never stopped seeking the meaning of life. At forty-five, he cast aside worldly trappings and returned to teaching. In the clear eyes of children, he rediscovered his literary calling.
The joys and sorrows, partings and deaths of three generations ebb and flow through the river of time: repeat students trapped in the prison of the college entrance exam, a desperate young woman who slashes her wrists, graduates struggling to make ends meet... Each soul is a shooting star that flashes briefly across the night sky. When Liu Junping sits in his wicker chair at dusk and opens the yellowed class directory, the young faces frozen in time finally become stars guiding the way ahead. With measured prose, this epic of ordinary people turns the anguish of an era into an eternal question that transcends life and death, writing it chapter by chapter into the story of life.
