A Road Trip Through Love Letters

Completed in full on April 18, 2026. The complete text costs only 4 RMB to unlock. Writing isn't easy, so please support the official version. Thank you.

My next book will be a Chongqing road-trip story, "Citrus Hot Pot." The blurb is below. Please add it to your reading list!

Road trip | Healing and redemption | Older woman-younger man romance | Kazakh culture

A bleak life needs a passionate, untamed little wolf of a younger man to heal it 🐺

૮ • ﻌ - ა

Zhong Qing had spent years chasing her dreams in Beijing, but had never seen a truly vast, free sunset. A medical report showing cancer made her give up her monotonous, gray life and decide to go somewhere far away to decay with grace.

She dug out the travel plans she'd made long ago for Xinjiang and bought a ticket for the next train. She curled up by the window and drifted into a deep, hazy sleep.

When she woke, she met him. His beautiful blue eyes fixed on her, his gaze frank and fervent.

He took a photograph of her life and gave it to her. "Sister, welcome to Xinjiang."

After that, she became the heroine of his "Across Xinjiang" photo series. She traveled with him around the great loop through northern and southern Xinjiang, crossed the autumn, and found the spring of her own life waiting for her.

They danced around a bonfire in the old city of Kashgar at sunset, kissed after getting drunk, and sat on the roof of a car at Emerald Lake, waiting for the water to turn amber after sunrise.

He took her to see the felt yurts of Kazakh herders. They made naan and baursak by hand, then gathered around the stove to wait for a pot of piping-hot salty milk tea. He picked up the dombra in the corner and sang an old folk song with his Ata.

Under the starry sky on the Nalati Grassland, they entwined. Lost in passion, she looked into his beautiful, deep blue eyes, like the last tear of the Atlantic Ocean. In her gray world, they brought a pool of color.

One day, she passed out from pain. At last, he couldn't hold back his tears as he begged her, "A Qing, get treatment. Live well. I can't be without you."

A Bu was like an eagle soaring over the grasslands: young, passionate, free, and full of strength.

In the peace of his vast, sky-like presence, she felt a freedom she had never known.

Bonus scene: already included in the story

When Zhong Qing woke from her drunken sleep, it was still dark. She jolted in surprise, only to discover that Burkute had somehow entered her room. She was about to back away when he grabbed her by the ankle.

"Why are you hiding?" His voice was low and hoarse, his breath brushing the hollow of her knee. "Why did you have to be with him...?"

"What?" Zhong Qing hadn't understood when he pulled her closer. Burkute looked down at her, dangerous emotions surging in his eyes.

"Don't you know he's no good?" He sounded almost pleading. "I'm cleaner than he is. You can choose me."

"But I'm no good either." Zhong Qing looked away. "Being good to me won't change anything."

"I'm already twenty-three, Zhong Qing. Don't think of me as just your little brother." His words came slower and slower, as if he were holding himself back. "You like me too, don't you?"

Her hand was still pressed against his chest. Through the thin fabric, she could feel his heart beating fast.

She looked at him and said seriously, "There can be no future for us. I don't want to hold you back. Do you understand?"

There's a Kazakh saying:

"If heaven and earth allow it, we will meet again in peace."

[Reading Guide]

Broken-winged black swan 🦢 x free eagle of the grasslands 🦅

1. A healing and redemptive story, not an angst-heavy one. A road trip with some group dynamics early on, a slow-burn writing style, beautiful scenery and food, and an everyday-life feel.

2. One-on-one romance. The male lead is sexually inexperienced. Readers who require both leads to be sexually inexperienced, please do not read.

3. The male lead is 188 cm tall and an Aries; the female lead is 168 cm tall and a Libra. They are six and a half years apart, with a noticeable height difference.

The male lead is of mixed Kazakh and Han Chinese heritage, and has blue eyes.

Blurb screenshot from August 31, 2025

My next book will be a Chongqing road-trip story, "Citrus Hot Pot." Please add it to your reading list!

A Chongqing road-trip story | Love at first sight between strangers

Energetic, sweet-and-spicy girl x reserved Japanese-style guy

Cheng Ye was going home for the summer. The fare was so expensive that she decided to sign up for a senior citizens' tour group instead. It was dirt cheap.

The young man beside her had a wolf cut, earphones on, eyes shut tight, and lips pressed into a line. He looked like one of those slightly gloomy, reserved Japanese-style guys.

Cheng Ye's stomach growled. She glanced at him and saw a freshly opened pack of Oreos in his slender, knobby hands.

"Can I have some?"

The guy struggled to open one eye and gave a weak, "Mm."

When he opened his eyes again, Cheng Ye had finished them all.

"Oh, I thought you were winking at me just now."

The guy: "..."

Cheng Ye: "I'm kidding. I'll give you an orange in exchange."

*

Yuan Suiyu felt like an idiot for believing that charlatan who'd promised everything would turn around if he went to Chongqing.

Instead, he ended up on a senior citizens' tour, in the rain, stuck in traffic, with a terrible driver and a tour guide who loved telling bad jokes.

He was sitting in the very last row, trying not to throw up.

A pretty, clean hand reached out, holding an orange. Somehow, it cured his motion sickness.

*

From Hongya Cave to Jiefangbei, from the Yangtze River Cableway to Liziba, from the stone-paved lanes of Ciqikou to the viewing platform at Nanshan Yikeshu, Cheng Ye rode her old scooter with him on the back and took him through every winding lane in Chongqing's fantastical, three-dimensional mountain city.

They squeezed side by side on Qiansimen Bridge to watch the two rivers converge, sheltered from a sudden shower of sunshine in the stairwell of Baixiangju, and took a photo together in front of a mottled, crumbling wall at Eling Factory Two.

Cheng Ye smiled brightly and boldly. Yuan Suiyu's smile was faint, his wolf cut tossed into carefree disarray by the river breeze.

She dragged him into a bomb shelter to eat hot pot, mixed his dipping sauce, and taught him how to swish tripe in and out of the broth seven or eight times. His eyes went red from the spice, but he stubbornly insisted, "Mm, this is fantastic."

Cheng Ye was like a summer day scented with citrus, a lively orange-colored presence bursting into his gray world.

Female athlete x male dancer

Blurb screenshot from May 4, 2026

Theme: Life goes on as long as we live.