How Could the Clouds Not Be Joyful?

Blurb One:

When Ming Xin’s father falls ill, she returns to her hometown to care for him and meets Du Gexing, who has come to stay in the old town.

At their first meeting, Ming Xin suspects she has fallen into a trap he set, so she turns the tables and uses her own charms on him.

Later, he takes a liking to her... family’s courtyard.

To ease her financial strain, she rents him a room piled high with odds and ends.

Her friends worry it’s unsafe, and at first, so does she.

Once they get to know each other, she worries even more: she’s afraid that, faced with a handsome, charming, wealthy man who can cook wonderfully, she won’t be able to resist and will end up sleeping with him.

He narrows his peach-blossom eyes and curls his lips into a smile. “I’d be more than happy to.”

Blurb Two:

A group searching for lost relatives arrives in town. Because of the red cord tying up her hair, Ming Xin is mistaken for Xi’er, the long-lost wife of Ji Jianjun, a centenarian in the group.

He firmly believes his Xi’er is still alive. Every year on the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month, she writes him a letter.

Ming Xin is puzzled. If she can write to him, why doesn’t she show herself and meet him?

At the same time, a decades-old disappearance mystery in the old town resurfaces.

She and Du Gexing are both dragged into the heart of the maelstrom.

It turns out every ending had its foreshadowing laid long ago.

Every hardship was a step on the road to the other shore.

The happiest thing in this life is that you finally appeared before I grew old and died alone.

Also titled Eighty-One Springs

PS: This story began as a suspense short story called Where Is the Joy? in 2019. I have some new ideas now, and after discussing it with my editor, I’ve expanded the original into a full-length novel. It’s being published again in 2026.

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Weibo: @Bai Yimo Ah

Theme: Let the heart see and the steps follow. Where is the joy?