When he was nine years old, Zhou Ping'an met Chen Anrong by the stream in Houshan, who had just been brought back to the village by his father. This child, who was as thin as a bamboo pole, squatted by the stream and looked at his own reflection. His eyes were so bright that he didn't look like an orphan who had just lost his mother. The two teenagers started fishing and built a secret base under the big camphor tree. They agreed to go to the other side of the mountain together.
In the following more than ten years, they moved from the countryside to the county town and then to the provincial capital, from childhood to adolescence and then to youth. An Rong is taciturn, while Zhou Pingan is cheerful; An Rong knows how to play the harmonica song "River Flows Back" that he composed, and Zhou Pingan is his only loyal listener. Chen Laosan was paralyzed, while An Rong worked and went to school. The two shared an old house and were close to each other on countless ordinary nights - until Zhou Pingan finally understood that his love for An Rong was not the love of a brother.
They are together. He is plain and down-to-earth, and like all ordinary people, he plans to change his house, raise a cat, and put two wicker chairs in the yard to grow old. But An Rong passed away in an accident and there was no time to say goodbye. Zhou Pingan lived alone in the small courtyard they planned with his old harmonica and half a piece of peach cake put on the stove every day. He planted flowers, raised cats, sat by an empty wicker chair and watched the stars, waiting day after day for someone who would never come back.
This is a novel about "remembering". No sensationalism, no shouting, just the simplest language to write about how a person uses his daily life to fight against impermanence after losing another person. There are still mountains on the other side of the mountain, but there is you on the other side of the mountain. That's enough.
Intention: Mountains and rivers will not change, but old friends will remain forever. The ultimate form of love is when one person carries the mark of another person and walks alone for the rest of his life.