"Chu Sheng's Color Spectrum" is a realistic growth novel by visual designer Lin Chusheng, which connects the 23 years from 2003 to 2026 - starting from the tofu stall in Sangu, a small town in the southwest, to a rental house in other provinces, a clothing store in the county, a training studio in the provincial capital, Central University, and finally taking root in a design studio in the capital of the southwest province.
Chu Sheng's growth is a "breakout" for ordinary women: she "played bad" in her childhood and returned to her hometown to fight against passive arrangements. She chose art as a teenager to break away from the patriarchal discipline. As an adult, she chose not to get married and start a business, rejecting the secular expectation that "women must get married and have children." Her family network is complex but warm: her grandfather's change from prejudice to preference, her aunt's filial piety, her eldest sister's recognition across thousands of miles, and her mother's change from partiality to support. These "imperfect sincerities" are the background of her growth.
She has two fruitless relationships: the ignorant love for Chen Yu during the high school training camp, which is a youthful light pink; the spiritual resonance with the curator Shen Zhixing in the workplace is a mature light blue - she does not need love to define herself, but cherishes the companionship that does not cross the line. In terms of career, her designs always carry the color spectrum of her hometown (gypsum color of tofu stalls, wood color of old teahouses, and southwest embroidery red), giving urban design a "root".
There is no dramatic conflict in the novel. It only uses small pieces of warmth such as the cake from the eldest sister during the training camp and the tissues from Su Min during overtime. It answers the question "How do ordinary women maintain their love and boundaries in a complex world" - such as Chu Sheng's design, which does not require heavy use of ink and color, but clearly draws its own "color spectrum", which is moving enough.
Intent: It is a growth epic about "understanding" and "construction". It attempts to describe, with great patience and sincerity, how an ordinary individual gradually distinguishes the thousands of colors contained in a chaotic, "grayscale"-dominated real life through observation, experience, thinking and selection, and finally uses these colors to actively and creatively draw a rich and tenacious life map that is unique to him or her. It is a tribute to the complexity of life and a profound tribute to the inner strength of the individual.