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Zhao Yanqing was upset. Nothing seems to be going well in the office or at home. Maybe it's menopause, she thought. In three months, she will be 50. 50 Is a scary age and a hurdle. This side is freshness; the other side is aging. When I looked in the mirror, I couldn't help but notice a few more wrinkles on my face, and I was worried about age spots appearing on the back of my hands. Zhao Yanqing really wanted to be more open-minded and take life lightly, but she was not that kind of person. She is timid and afraid of things, and has always worried about gains and losses. She has never really relaxed. Whether it is work or family life, she is always worried that she is not good enough and will be laughed at by others. Qu Chengqiang said that she was naive. Even at 50 years old, her thoughts were still immature. Even the things she often worried about and even the dreams she had stayed at the stage before she was 30 years old.

Backward Boots is the name of an alley in Changsha, Hunan. The author grew up taking off his boots, and there are many memories of him here. With the passage of long years, the misfortunes and fates of various people in the alley often appear in the author's heart, sometimes clearly, sometimes blurry, or even indistinguishable between true and false, and even have a slightly sad intimacy. Therefore, the author has recently written a lot about taking off boots, either directly or indirectly, fictitiously or factually, and selected eighteen of them that best embody the idea of ​​"the shocking changes in the cold and heat, and the touching human feelings in the cold and warm", thus forming a novel and readable book that combines the strengths of both prose and novels. Quietly savor the depth of history and human nature. With memories taking root and sprouting, the author uses his rich experience and careful observation to present to us the bright and dark aspects of human nature, as well as the positive and side aspects of history. The naughtiness of childhood, the love of ignorant times, the family affairs of neighbors, the memories of elders, listening to the old people telling the past... The misfortunes and fate of every little person in the great era, come to mind one by one. The writing style has the strengths of both prose and novels. The people and things described by the author are sometimes clear, sometimes blurry, or even indistinguishable from true to false, but there is always a kind of slightly sad kindness. The eighteen articles contained in this book seem not to be entirely prose, as there are many fictional ones; nor can they be entirely called novels, as there are many documentary facts. But it has the best of both worlds. If readers like it, they probably won't argue with the style.

I wrote this story completely by accident. If there hadn't been that big earthquake in Taiwan that made people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait worried at the same time, my father wouldn't have called me at that time, and I wouldn't have thought of finding a person who had disappeared from my memory to write a story about relatives in Taiwan. But as I thought about it, I always felt that there was an inevitable factor in the accident. There must be an invisible thread that tied us together. Therefore, my father would eventually mention him to me one day, and I was destined to think of him at some point. There are some things in this world that, whether you admit it or not, they cannot be changed. My father called it "blood is thicker than water."

In this city, summer is always an unnervingly hot and rainy season. Life reveals its dazzling and changeable side in summer. Scarlett, who had always considered herself smart, suddenly discovered this summer that her mood was becoming more and more uncertain like the clouds in the sky. It was Sunday. As a government employee, Sijia could finally lie in bed and patiently count the dust floating in the sun. However, the weather was too hot. She felt sticky and clammy all over while lying on the bed, so she might as well just get up. Scarlett sat up. She wondered where the sun had reached. Listening to the cicada screaming at the top of her lungs, she could guess that the sky must be as blue as the endless sea water. After having a nightmare all night, she felt dizzy and her eyelids were heavy. When she looked in the mirror and saw an ugly half-dead creature, she was startled and her mood became worse.

My mother was thirty when I was born, and I was her first child. Our relationship was not close. After I became sensible, I had a vague feeling that she had a natural rejection of me. We are three siblings. My sister Qiaozhi is the child of my father's ex-wife. I also have a younger brother, Tianshu. My mother's love seems to be only for him. Everyone thinks that my mother is patriarchal, but based on my understanding of her, this is not entirely the case. My mother was a beauty when she was young. She had a tall figure, elegant manners, and spoke quickly and confidently. When she graduated from college at the age of twenty-five, she married her father, who was fifteen years older than her and was a leader in M ​​City at the time. She only knew that her father had a wife in her hometown and she later divorced. She did not know that they had a child. When Qiaozhi came from her hometown in Hebei, her mother went crazy. She scolded her father as a liar and clamored for a divorce.