This story is called Wild Grass Thicket, but not because it was inspired by Lu Xun...
Wild grass is approachable and resilient. It refuses to bend its head, attracts no attention, and seems plain and unremarkable. But if you spend enough time around it, you discover its beauty. And once seemingly harmless grass grows as tall as a person and forms a thicket, you may experience the way it shifts between stillness and motion, with and without the wind, constantly tormenting your nerves. Its blade-like edges will keep slicing at you, too. Getting lost in a thicket is like standing on the edge of death, enduring the torments of hell, and reaching the heart of a breakdown. That is their life.
I think the relationships between the characters are much the same. Everyone is as resilient as wild grass, growing in harsh conditions and seeming plain and unremarkable. The web of relationships they form is like a thicket, where they torment and depend on one another.
From childhood bickering, to checking in on each other as young adults, to scheming against one another in adulthood, and finally keeping each other company while trading barbs in middle age, they take a long and winding road. In the end, the ones still by their side are the friends they had all along. Looking back on their childhood ignorance, they can only marvel at how utterly childish they were. They cannot help feeling sad about the unfairness of the world and helpless in the face of life’s hardships. What keeps them going is simply being alive, because they believe that living is a great thing in itself. No matter how accomplished they may seem to others, deep inside each of them is a child who never stops crying.
Theme: The journey from childishness to maturity
