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Summary
As graduation nears, college sweethearts Wang Yibo and Xiao Zhan find their paths taking very different turns. Despite best efforts, their relationship ends. Five years later their paths cross again. Past choices are reckoned with, new choices are made.
In Chongqing, there is a saying that in every adult’s memory, there is a huangge tree. For Xiao Zhan there are two. The giant one in the courtyard of the compound apartment he lived in as a child. Hot summer days were spent under its shade drawing chalk figures on the grey slate floor while his yeye sat with the other neighbourhood grandpas drinking tea and playing mah-jong.
And there was another one, tucked away on the side of a rugged mountain road, grown gnarly from the side of a stone wall, aerial roots hanging greedily from its branches, grasping at life. Under this huangge tree, Xiao Zhan had felt the first stirrings of spring in his heart, sensed its bud and felt it bloom, and had, with a small pocket knife, painstakingly carved the numbers 1823 into its trunk.
Bookmarked by Say_seebs
31 Jul 2024