Those Major Milestones in Life

This is an urban ensemble novel of about 120,000 Chinese characters, told in the first person by four alternating narrators.

The story takes place in a group chat called [Qingdao Internet Industry Talent Chat]. There are 214 people in the group, but no more than ten actually speak. Four young people aged twenty-six to twenty-eight, Huzhi, a backend developer drifting in Beijing; Hehe, a Qingdao native working in frontend development; and Ma Ge, a product manager working as a bank contractor, have known each other through the group for nearly two years. They talk about buying homes, changing jobs, and all sorts of other things, but really, they're talking about the same question: Do you know what you want?

This book has no plot twists, no thrilling payoffs, and no one rises from the bottom. Huzhi eventually buys a home in Qingdao, but his job in Beijing remains; Hehe changes jobs, but changing jobs can't resolve the first time in his twenty-seven years that he's asked himself, "What do you want?" Ma Ge and Miaomiao sign a contract, their names side by side in the buyer's section. It's the most significant detail in the whole book, and it's still just one detail.

I imagine its readers are young people aged twenty-five to thirty-five who work in first-tier or coastal cities. They have a decent education and income, but the pressures of buying a home, starting a family, and choosing a city all weigh on them at once. Each issue by itself isn't too much, but together they can make it hard to breathe. They don't need someone to tell them, "Everything will be fine." They need a book to sit beside them and say, I know. It's like this. And yet, you're still moving forward.