Echoes of a Long Summer

Chen Xu had always thought his youth would be like that old 28-inch bicycle that clanked everywhere except for its silent bell: ordinary and aimless, its end in sight amid the heat and dust of County No. 1 High School. Then, in the racket of cicadas at the start of summer, three unexpected accidents turned his life upside down. An awkward discovery outside school made him the only “secret ally” of Su Qingying, a recent graduate who seemed cool and composed, but was secretly buckling under the weight of life. A love letter delivered to the wrong person made him take the blame and become the target of the whole school’s scorn. But it also revealed the poverty, loneliness, and tenderness hidden beneath the haughty exterior of his deskmate, Lu Wanning, the school’s top student and an ice-cold academic genius. A chance encounter over a computer seat in the corner of an internet café brought him face-to-face with a brash rich girl who chewed mint gum and brazenly climbed onto the back of his bicycle. She turned out to be the “dream girl” from the school radio station whom he daydreamed about every noon in an empty classroom, Xu Zhixia... From a frantic cover-up at the billiards hall to searching through a stormy night for the lifesaving money his deskmate needed; From solution formulas slipped under his scratch paper to riding on the back of a bicycle into the evening breeze beneath a sky ablaze with sunset along Binjiang Road. As rumors and malice swept through the school, the boy who had only wanted to keep to himself finally clenched his fists. In this long summer called youth, there would be no backing down, only standing together and finding redemption. “The summer beneath the old pagoda tree will never end. The heartbeats hidden in radio waves and desk drawers will one day make it through the long summer, becoming the light that lets a boy break free of his cocoon and take flight.”