A Healthy Woman and the Six Paths of Love

You Li considered herself an ordinary, naturally born woman: biologically female, mentally healthy, from a middle-class family, with a spotless record and stable needs on Maslow’s hierarchy.

Knowing desire and admiring the young, her first love was Ling Pingran, the boy next door who studied art. When she discovered that even the most otherworldly artist still saw her as nothing but the vulgar combination of long hair and red lips, she concluded that men, as a species, were all much the same.

So she decided to take things lightly. At university, she met the party-loving Fu Yuan, and somehow they became “friends” of the opposite sex. He looked down on women; she objectified men. They dealt with each other in a half-serious, half-playful way, negotiating as they went.

Fortunately, she found enlightenment just after graduating. She followed the big shot Chen Kechang, a self-made industrialist. Loving him was like reaching into a fire to snatch chestnuts. A good mentor was not necessarily a good friend. In love, she was both humble and proud, and came away defeated. In her career, though, she was ravenous for knowledge, with no end to what she could learn.

She listened to her mother and started a family first. She married Cheng Fu, a virtuous husband and loving father whose birth chart promised prosperity to his wife. They laid their cards on the table, hit it off, and enjoyed a painless, mutually beneficial marriage. Once she had her first pot of gold in hand, she broke her vow and said goodbye to her rich young husband.

After the divorce, she fell for a lawyer, Yan Zhi, a stuffy scholar who was not quite coldhearted to the core. She was swept away for a moment, and their clandestine romance lasted barely ten days, saving her a hundred thousand in legal fees.

Saving money wasn’t easy, either. As the economy slumped and capital froze, she struggled upstream. A few years later, securing investment from Chao Zhihuan, a rich young man still in his ivory tower, was as easy as reaching into a pocket.

You can’t get a lover back, but connections can be recycled.

The stream flows on, with one elegant figure after another.

Theme: Greed, anger, and delusion are unavoidable; letting go and standing strong means never ceasing to strive.