An emotional novel that spans thirty years, it tells the story of a profound but unfulfilling encounter between Zhou Ming, a doctoral student in the Department of Physics, and Lin Wei, an undergraduate student in the Department of Chinese Studies, while studying abroad in Paris in 1994. Zhou Ming has a wife and daughter and has family responsibilities; Lin Wei is young and passionate and longs to be understood. The two warmed each other in the wind and rain in a foreign country, but they drifted apart between reality and morality. The novel uses delicate brushstrokes to describe the traces they left under the plane trees in Paris, along the Seine River, and on the Montmartre heights, as well as the regrets and concerns that still linger in their hearts many years later. This is not only a story about love and restraint, but also an elegy about time, memory and unfinished promises.
Purpose: The novel explores the struggle and choice between responsibility and desire, reason and emotion through the unspoken emotions between Zhou Ming and Lin Wei. It does not aim to judge right or wrong, but uses a tolerant and affectionate tone to show those "unfinished equations" in life - those misses, regrets and restraints, which constitute the most real and complex part of human nature. In the end, the story tells us: Some love does not need to be possessed, but only remembered; some farewells do not need to be perfect, as long as the residual warmth is left, it will not be lived up to.