Secretly in Love: A Letter from Nanzhou

Introduction to A Letter from Nanzhou

This is a campus story about a secret crush and two people finding their way to each other, set at Nanzhou University, where the air is filled with the scent of osmanthus.

Qiu Yingying comes to university from a small third-tier city, carrying the stubborn resolve to put down roots and grow. Ordinary yet passionate, she records everyday life while gathering material for news stories, fills an old rattan chair in the library with her thoughts, and, through a chance encounter, steps into the world of Chen Zheyuan, the medical school's most popular guy.

To everyone else, he's a walking photo op: the handsome figure by the second-floor window during morning study, the gentle profile feeding stray cats on rainy days, the double-skin milk pudding that appears in the cafeteria at exactly 7:10. But Qiu Yingying knows that the brown sugar stain on his white shirt betrays his thoughtfulness, the steady hand he shows in anatomy class reveals his empathy, and even his quiet remark, "There's a panda on your pen cap," holds a special attentiveness only she understands.

Their paths first cross by accident: she knocks over his anatomy diagrams, and he picks up her notebook; she has no umbrella in the rain, so he tilts his toward her; she worries about her father's illness, and he quietly brings her glutinous rice cakes; she writes a story about a sugar-painting artist for a club event, and after reading it, he tells her earnestly, "You wrote that beautifully."

Only later does she realize that the tenderness hidden in those little details has always gone both ways. He remembers that she likes her double-skin milk pudding sweetened; she keeps the diary he left behind in the study room. He waits by the old rattan chair when she's working late at her internship, and she sees a picture of herself as a freshman in his photo album.

When the spring cherry blossoms have all fallen, they finally confess everything they've kept inside. Some feelings, it turns out, began taking root in September, when the plane tree leaves fell, and quietly grew with the passing years, waiting for the wind, waiting for an answer.

This is a book about youth