The late 1990s, the northeastern countryside. An extremely ordinary family - Zhou Jianguo, his wife Li Hongmian, and his mother. A few years later, Li Hongmian disappeared. Zhou Jianguo reported the case and said she left on her own. The neighbors in the village also said the same: she ran away with someone. This kind of thing is not unusual. This is already the fifth woman in the village to run away.
This is a story about "being missing". A person may have been killed, or may have escaped, but people around her say she ran away—and once that "ran away" statement comes to light, no one will ask a second question. The police eventually closed the case as a missing person. No body, no murder weapon, no witnesses. There were only two letters sent from Yilan, which were stamped "No such person found" and returned.
The novel uses Zhou Jianguo's first-person narration as the main line and Li Hongmian's diary as the hidden line. The two phases corroborate and contradict each other. What he tells is a version of "the woman is gone" - he is responsible, hard-working, and aggrieved; but the diary she left behind is full of fear, withdrawal, and loss of voice. The two lines run parallel, but diverge somewhere and never meet.
Purpose: I would like to write this document to those housewives who have been exposed as missing, but there is no trace of them.