Li Wei, forty-five, is a mid-level manager at an internet company. The hair on his head and the stock options in his account are both growing thinner by the day. At work, his post-2000s subordinates leave him speechless in meetings. At home, he has to face the “No entry for outsiders” sign his teenage daughter has put on her door. His wife, He Jia, is forty-three. Once the belle of her university, she is now a discipline director at a private middle school. She rules the parents’ chat group with an iron hand, but can’t do anything about the pack of cigarettes her son hides under his bed. Like two bitter gourds growing on the same vine, they have each wilted in the shadow of life, until He Jia finds a lipstick in her husband’s car that isn’t hers, and Li Wei sees a late-night message on her phone: “Teacher He, thank you for tonight.” Middle-aged people don’t fall apart on rainy days. It happens on some sunny afternoon when you realize you can’t even find a good reason to argue. One gets drunk watching livestreams, the other cries at the gym. They live under the same roof, yet have become the most familiar strangers to each other. In this long battle that began with adolescence and ends with menopause, who will be the first to bow down and admit defeat, or will they simply flip the whole board over?
Very beautiful