When I turned a page late at night, it was already early morning.
"Youth" is a story about "claiming" - claiming one's own life experience, claiming one's position in the family narrative, and claiming those truths that have been wrapped in silence for too long.
The story takes place in Central China, Yanzhou, a seemingly peaceful century-old prestigious school. When Li Jiafeng, Yin Chuye, and Su Yusheng met on the first day of school, they didn't know that their names had already been written on a secret list.
The core charm of the novel lies in its revealing of the power texture beneath the tender surface of "youthful growth". Li Meiqi weaves a web with materials and arrangements, Yin Xiong fills up the debt with silence and secret arrangements, and Mu Lei uses absence and sudden return to create guilt—the adult world is a web woven by capital, connections, old relationships, and secrets, and the younger generation is the vine that is forced to grow in this web.
It is not only about who loves whom and who hates whom, but also how individuals recognize their own position and choose how to exist in the huge narrative intertwined with capital and emotion. The truth about "fired" military training, the genetic ethics behind the physical enhancement program, the discipline and resistance of the child star industry, the reality of educational stratification and class solidification - all social issues are not inserted bluntly, but emerge naturally as components of the characters' fate, giving the story the thickness and sharpness of the times.
Concept: The tension between "power's discipline of youth" and "youth's unconscious resistance to power"