Thirty-three-year-old Xu Mobai was sitting at home looking out the window at the bustling city night scene. Inside the window was a seemingly stable life. However, a divorce agreement, a seven-year-old son who needed to be raised, and a tepid career dilemma all made him ask himself late at night: Am I accomplishing nothing?
Childhood memories always knock on the door of my heart inadvertently - it's the stone house in Danzhuang Village, Chengqian Town, Zoucheng City, the biting cold wind in the twelfth lunar month, and the anticipation of my father coming back from collecting rags on a 28-bar bike, with the sound of car bells ringing from far to near. There is also the ham sausage that is always in his father's arms and brought to him, and that package of instant noodles that symbolizes reward and pampering.
He thought of the eldest sister who had been sensible early on, and the second sister who was close at hand but had a special status. Under the veil of family warmth, the helplessness and pain left by the times were hidden.
Suddenly, he decided to write this "loser" memoir for himself. Starting from that cold morning on the 17th day of the twelfth lunar month in 1992, we trace the journey of these thirty-three years.
He wrote about his father's hard work and silent fatherly love, his mother's tenacity and hidden secrets; he wrote about the wandering and struggle from a stone house to a reinforced concrete city; he wrote about the gains and losses of studying, starting a business, starting a family, and divorce; he wrote about the confusion and responsibility of being a son, a husband, and a father.
This is an ordinary man's thorough examination and affectionate look back at the first half of his life. In writing, he gradually peeled off the lost shell of "achieving nothing" and touched the roughest and warmest texture of life.
