Standing in love

Author: Suggest seeing a doctor
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-05-01
Features: The protagonist, Chen Bei, is an ordinary man struggling with desires, a Don Quixote-like love knight of the 21st century. He has many flaws and has made many mistakes, with betrayal and being betrayed being a significant part of his life. However, he is not a very bad man. But his noisy physical body and lonely soul make him an undeniably tragic figure. He chases after his so-called ideals—love and life—with all his might. He has a special kind of obsession, and for this obsession, he is willing to harm himself and those around him, causing severe hurt and destruction. Xiao Dao is imagined by Chen Bei as a savior goddess online. In reality, she is no different from the women in Chen Bei's past—clever, realistic, and always wavering between desire and reason, unable to resist indulgence—but Chen Bei stubbornly refuses to acknowledge this. Among the female characters, Xiao Dao being unlikable is normal, because the greater the hope, the greater the disappointment. Chen Bei's harsh expectations of her ultimately kill off her likable qualities in the eyes of the readers. It's unclear whether this is the cruelty of life or the cruelty of the novel itself. She is both Chen Bei's ideal and his Pandora's box. In Chen Bei's drifting soul, she is like the forbidden fruit in Eden—beautiful, tempting, but always a trap, an alluring trap and a deadly challenge to the realities of human greed. Once ensnared, disasters, illnesses, panic, and disappointments come crashing down like cholera. Xiao Dao is merely a distant, elusive woman of beauty, a fleeting firework in a dream. But the Chen Bei portrayed in the writing is utterly hopeless.