Thorns of Banxia
Synopsis
In 1994, Xu Banxia, a talented literature student, handed a tissue to Lin Wu, a poor student in the foreign languages department.
She thought she was helping someone, never realizing she was letting a venomous snake into her garden.
In 1998, she stood by her husband, Shen Zhiya, through paralysis from the neck down, neuromyelitis optica, and the loss of their entire fortune.
But seven months after he recovered, she heard him hold Lin Wu and call her "Darling."
A 28-yuan ice cream cone became the most poisonous bait in their marriage.
Fifty-eight carbamazepine pills, eight syringes of diazepam, and bathwater with the bitter-almond scent
were her divorce gift to a failed marriage.
Eleven days of acupuncture, no expense, and a cup of chrysanthemum and mulberry leaf tea
were how she pulled herself back from the brink of death.
From weighing 82 jin to becoming a ruthless businesswoman, from a half-meter night-market stall to the "Denim Family Bucket,"
she carried her four-year-old son, trigeminal neuralgia, and a carload of typhoon supplies,
through the sea breeze and neon lights of the 1990s,
and turned the words "stay alive"
into "live beautifully."
And yet, with both parents dead, her son taken in by his grandfather, and her beloved Wang Jun waiting for ten years,
every heart-wrenching farewell asked her the same question:
"If you can conquer the world, can you win back a home?"
Thorns of Banxia is a coming-of-age story about a woman of her era, where pain and light go hand in hand.
It is also a sweeping portrait of the hustle and bustle of a small town in the 1990s, the ups and downs of business, and the warmth and coldness of human relationships.
It tells you:
Bitter almonds may taste bitter, and milk stains may taste sweet.
As long as you dare to treat your wounds as seeds,
you can make a sea of flowers bloom amid the ruins.
