The first chapter is written by Qian Zhongshu. Lily Heart is derived from the French word Le coeur d'artichaut. French lily, also known as artichoke, is a vegetable that looks like a budding flower. After removing the inedible old leaves and cabbage cabbage, only a small part is left, and the taste is bland - the Chinese call it the "taste of loneliness" because it is lonely when eaten.
Life is like a lily - most people think they are a flower, but in fact they are just a vegetable; most lives are wasted, and only a small part is meaningful; the process of life towards death is like the leaves of a lily being peeled off layer by layer, and will eventually return to nothingness. Why do you say "return"? Because it does not exist during life and everything becomes empty after death. Whether it is the Buddhist thought of "everything is empty" or the Taoist philosophy of "life comes from nothingness", whether it is the creation theory in the Bible and various legends, or the scientific theory of the "Big Bang", they all believe that the world is originally empty. Qian Zhongshu said: "If you look far away, everything will be sad; if you look close, you should be optimistic in order to cheer up." Therefore, life is about making something out of nothing and enjoying hardship. Life begins with life and ends with death, from nothing to something and then to nothing, going around in a circle to form a closed loop; novels are stories about people, so naturally they should have a circular closed loop like life to "circle" its "story". This book begins with death and ends with new life - new life means a new story (continuation), and the end of one circle becomes the beginning of another, just like the infinity symbol "∞".
Concept: China in the 1930s. The background of the novel is similar but different from history. The world in the novel can be regarded as another world parallel to history. For that world, it is history; for this world, it is fiction. Alexandre Dumas said: "If the novel is a painting, then history is but the nail on which the picture hangs." (History is but the nail on which the picture hangs.) Therefore, the parts of this book that are the same as the history of this world can be regarded as nails on the wall, and the different parts can be regarded as paintings made by the author.
