The Awkward Years (An Upgraded Version of Smiling Words)

This book has been published by China Women's Publishing House and Hanmolin Studio. You might still be able to buy a copy... Do as you please. If you find a pirated copy, do as you please... What is college? The "grass-like years," a mix of wild intensity and listless decline. What are primary and middle school? The carefree "flower-like years," when you have no worries and no guile. And high school? It's that time when you laugh for no reason and feel inexplicably melancholy, when you're moody and anxious for no reason: the bittersweet, sweet-and-sour years of adolescence. The years of adolescence are a preview of college's "grass-like years" and the curtain call on the "flower-like years" of primary and middle school. At Li High, the air in senior year is practically ablaze. Everyone is trapped behind their little desks, heads down, working hard, rehearsing for the college entrance exam over and over. But no one can restrain a teenager's heart. Eighteen-year-old He Tao is lost in a sea of textbooks and mountains of practice questions. Nineteen-year-old You Qingge is preparing to cross that threshold for the second time. Eighteen-year-old Gu Han and eighteen-year-old Song Ying seem like oil and water, at each other's throats and causing chaos; they've been at odds for two and a half years. Beneath the glow of academic excellence, eighteen-year-old Meng Chuanjue has already reached out to pluck love's unripe green apple, though someone else is left heartbroken in his wake. Joyful, sorrowful, stifled, passionate: they are, after all, young. Through three years of youthful days, full of ambiguity and closeness, they head toward the unknown "grass-like years" of college. Laughing and Smiling, published edition Theme: