Reborn in a Qiong Yao Story: Shattering the Purple Shell

Purple Seashell was the second Qiong Yao novel I read as a little girl, when I was in third grade.

The Window was the first novel I ever read in the true sense of the word. Those little picture books like Red Peony and White Lotus don’t count.

After reading The Window, I thought it was strange that a young girl would fall in love with an older man. But Grandma’s writing was so good, full of Tang and Song poetry as well as agonizing twists and turns, that I went to great lengths to get my hands on a second book.

I still remember that it was a day when Mom was away on a business trip and Dad was working the night shift. I read and read alone at home, and finished the book in tears sometime after eleven. Then I fell asleep with tears still on my cheeks...

Who was I crying for?

I thought about it for a long time. Probably Peiqing, for that “little water chestnut flower”...

Ah, the melodrama of my little-girl days...

And now I feel so awkward.

Now I’ve become a middle-aged woman like Meichan, with just a little more than her: what Yishu calls the pride of a career woman.

This story is dedicated to my little-girl days.

I won’t deliberately turn the story upside down. Why should women make things hard for women? What matters most is for women to be dignified and self-reliant. Why waste your life on that kind of love, on that kind of man?

The theme is: A marriage that needs defending isn’t worth defending. Those who love themselves will find someone who loves them.

Note: The heroine of this story has not read Purple Seashell.

Purple Seashell is one of Qiong Yao’s early full-length novels, written in 1966.

Synopsis: Peiqing, who is ill at ease at social gatherings, meets the considerate Xia Mengxuan at a banquet, and the two hit it off immediately and fall in love. Peiqing is subjected to every kind of torment by her husband, Fan Bonan. After barely surviving, she sets up a home with Xia Mengxuan. But Xia Mengxuan’s legal wife, egged on by her sister, brother-in-law, and Fan Bonan, does everything she can to blackmail the lovers, who have no sense of morality. Caught between love and responsibility, Xia Mengxuan is at a loss. Kind and vulnerable but shameless, Peiqing cannot withstand fate’s repeated twists, and the two lovers eventually go their separate ways...