What Is a Cicada?

"Cicada" takes "Huangkan", a mountain village in western Sichuan, as the geographical coordinates, spans three generations and more than forty years, and tells the story of how girls who have been abandoned or exiled by their families find their way back through the cracks of fate. Li Li was abandoned by her biological mother when she was young, and grew up under the scolding of her aunt and the silence of her grandfather; Chen Zhou's parents divorced and he lived with relatives, and he learned early to suppress his worries; Jiang Lisa gave up her studies to reduce the burden on her mother, and suffered a bloody blow in the siege of marriage. Their lives are like cicadas - dormant in the dark, sucking meager nutrients, and they don't know how many days they can sing after being unearthed. The novel approaches the rough texture of daily life with dense details: an art training that failed to take place, a call to borrow money that was hung up, and a sudden reunion at an engagement party. In the seemingly calm narrative, domestic violence, betrayal, and farewell without saying goodbye lurk, as well as the tenderness that refuses to be extinguished in the dark room. When Li Li's grandfather passed away, when Chen Zhou's father was critically ill but no one was willing to take care of her, when Jiang Lisa got on the bus leaving her hometown alone after her divorce - they confirmed again and again: some journeys back are cut off from the starting point. And the chirping of cicadas will still sound every early summer, not for anything else, just because of living.