Lu Jiawan

Author's Preface

Ordinary people's lives are lives too. Recording them with a simple, honest pen is a way of recording ordinary people's history. They may lack grandeur and earth-shaking events, but they contain what is most universal and true.

In the fictional southwestern Chinese province of Xihua, four city boys born in the 1970s go through different lives and fates amid the progress and changes of their times. Closely following the pulse of the era, the story uses ordinary urban characters to depict the history, hardships, and joys of one generation after another.

The people and events we cannot forget, the ones that can still stir our hearts and move us ten or twenty years later, or even many years after that, reveal the true face of our lives. They are precious and must not be forgotten.

Ordinary people's lives are a living history too. The stories we experience enrich our lives, even if they disappear into the vast, unremarkable river of everyday people and go unnoticed.

Over the past two years, I spent many late nights writing these more than one million words in the quiet of my humble room, shutting out the noise of the city beyond my window. The work is part artistic embellishment and mostly heartfelt expression. If it can make readers of my generation feel understood, and offer even a little insight to the next generation, that is enough!