Looking Far Off at the Sea Breeze

Children who grew up in the countryside in the eighties seem to have loneliness in their bones. Nine out of ten of their parents had little education, and the children were often subjected to stern lectures day after day. When adults spoke of the city, their eyes held only the drab, monotonous color of soil. There was no color or variety. They always felt they were different from the people there: farming was so lowly, while city workers were so respectable!

Zhang Wenbin was one of those children who, surrounded by repression, kept looking out at the world beyond. Comparing the windows of other families with the patch of sky above his own home, he always felt that other people had brighter, more interesting lives. After falling out with Li Daniu, the teacher he respected most, he stopped trusting one teacher after another. After breaking up with his first girlfriend, Cao Fenfen, he could no longer feel the joy of life or the reality of love. And after dealing with the boss, other managers, and ordinary workers at his company, he discovered that fierce struggles and treacherous hearts weren’t confined to the world of officialdom... Of course, there were plenty of kind people too. What he longed for was a refreshing breeze ruffling his hair and brushing his cheeks.