The Chosen Hit Song

[Childhood Friends | Everyday Youth | Updates around midnight]

"A beautiful millennium, shining with a thousand rays."

Years later, when the lines from a hit nostalgic TV series sweep across the country, screenwriter Duan Xiaoyu looks back on the beginning of the century. The happiest memories include meeting Rong Yi.

But when life's camera pans back to the summer of 2005, fourth-grader Duan Xiaoyu clearly doesn't see it that way.

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When nine-year-old Rong Yi first sees Duan Xiaoyu in the advanced class, he thinks she's a genius.

Duan Xiaoyu: I'm just good at general knowledge.

Rong Yi: What's... general knowledge?

Duan Xiaoyu: It's... things everyone knows :)

Rong Yi: ? Then why don't I know them?!

When nine-year-old Duan Xiaoyu first sees Rong Yi in the advanced class, she thinks he's a high-scoring student with no practical sense.

His desk is stuffed with math competition medals, but he can't tell where the Yellow River and Yangtze River begin.

Duan Xiaoyu: It's partly my fault my deskmate is so embarrassing!

Rong Yi: ? Normal kids can't tell them apart either, can they?!

-

At sixteen, Duan Xiaoyu realizes that no matter how much general knowledge she has, she can't get a single extra point in math.

At sixteen, Rong Yi is fretting over whether to accept a recommendation to Tsinghua or Peking University, or take the TOEFL and apply to an Ivy League school.

Duan Xiaoyu walks out of the classroom with her head down, clutching a failed test paper, and sees Rong Yi standing clearly in the light.

Rong Yi: I still want to keep being classmates with a genius.

At eighteen, Duan Xiaoyu somehow gets into one of the country's top two universities.

Rong Yi: It's so nice getting to be classmates with a genius all the way through :)

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At twenty, Duan Xiaoyu discovers that no matter how much general knowledge she has, she still can't find the answer to the world.

Twenty-year-old Rong Yi smiles. "Leave the questions you can't solve to me."

"Songs of the age, their brilliance never fades with time.

The early twenty-first century I spent with you was like a perfectly chosen hit song."

*A bright, gentle young man x an unconventional girl, adorable childhood friends.

*No intimate scenes before adulthood.

>>>> Upcoming sweet story, Morning Mist and Branches, click the author's page to add it to your reading list >>>>

The apartment Lang Wu rents is under the approach path to the city airport. Everyone says she was new to town and got ripped off by the agent, paying for noise.

But Lang Wu couldn't be happier.

From her north-facing balcony, she can clearly see planes arriving from all over the world, their signal lights flashing as they pass through the clouds.

"That one's departing, heading west; this one's arriving. Look, it's coming in from the south and about to land."

When her coworkers come to see Lang Wu's little apartment, she's on the balcony, watching planes in a daze.

"Stop getting carried away with all that fanciful stuff. Let us set you up with someone already. Putting down roots in this city is what matters."

Lang Wu smiles brightly.

"Sure! I want someone over six feet tall, handsome, and preferably a pilot."

Everyone shakes their heads. Young women really do have unrealistic dreams about life and marriage.

-

She gave up studying abroad after graduate school, worked for two years, then left Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou. It seems Lang Wu has given in to reality.

Only the iron-winged free birds flying ten thousand meters above the ground let her briefly hear the voice within.

She doesn't like a life of drudgery and is tired of the prescribed pace of life. She yearns for the view of the horizon from high above the clouds.

She knows she's a naively romantic dreamer, an idealist reaching for the impossible.

But one day,

Lang Wu receives a model airplane and a letter. They are from Zhuo Weiming, ten thousand meters above the ground.

--"You appeared so casually, like an invisible leaf or branch. Suddenly, my heart was filled with fruit and sound."

*Aviation enthusiast x captain

*Probably a realistic fairy tale about a marriage that turns into love, a sweet slice-of-life story. Please add it to your reading list, sob

*The quote is from Neruda

Theme: The millennium shines with a thousand rays