As I began writing this book, the same fine rain that fell during my university days was drifting outside the window. I'm forty-two this year and have long since become a mother, but whenever I dream in the middle of the night, I return to that sun-drenched sports field, to the podium in the advanced math classroom where chalk dust floated in the air, and to the gentle, restrained gaze of the man named Chen Xun. He was my advanced math teacher, the first person who treasured and cherished me, and a man who loved me so deeply that he held back and let me go, then never married for the rest of his life.
We loved each other carefully. We embraced in hidden corners, believing that once we graduated, we could be together openly. But in the end, my parents threatened to kill themselves unless I came home, and he was forced to transfer to another post. From then on, mountains and rivers separated us, and we never met again.
I've kept this love, forbidden by the conventions of society, hidden for more than twenty years. Today, I'm writing it all down: for my youth, for the life he spent yearning for what never came to pass, and for the sorrow of how we never managed to be together.
