In dreams, how many times does the lemon bloom

Author: Bad Blue Eyes
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-04-01
Features: A love story from a nearly extinct innocent era. When young, the heroine Xu Fei became obsessively in love with a distant and unreachable boy, Zhuo Tong. However, her strong sense of inferiority made her unable to look directly at her love, as if facing the sun. Gradually, she became a self-enclosed person. After entering university, she met Zhao Yingning, a talented boy from the same hometown as her. By then, Xu Fei was no longer the naive girl she once was; her life had changed, but her introverted and reserved personality continued to limit her. She regarded Zhao Yingning as a confidant and grew dependent on him, yet her feelings remained tied to the silent Zhuo Tong in her heart. Finally, she had a chance to get close to Zhuo Tong's world and was shocked to discover that he and she were completely different from the people she had imagined, far removed from the lover she had envisioned. Overwhelmed by immense disappointment, she realized that in her unaware life, she had already shifted her dependence on Zhao Yingning into love. After this realization, she fell into sadness again, for the person she had loved for a decade had drained almost all her emotions. Faced with new feelings, she had no confidence and felt lost. Zhao Yingning, believing she was still immersed in her old love, remained a clear-headed figure in her life. He once jokingly said that if they were both unmarried after five years, they would be together. Some unspoken entanglements between them caused both to suffer silently. Just as Xu Fei finally gathered the courage to tell Zhao the truth, he suddenly announced his intention to leave the city. Xu Fei desperately tried to stop him, but he left anyway. Five years later, Zhao reappeared in the city, and the two finally came together. This novel is a rare commemoration of the pure-hearted era before the rise of the internet, filled with touching details throughout, similar to the romantic plots in Japanese and Korean dramas but distinct in its distance. I believe every person who grew up in the 1970s will be reminded of their own memories of love when reading this novel. Xu Fei's emotions serve as the only thread, guiding us through a possible beauty with a masterful pen, like a pop song urging us to be together. This novel was likely written around 1999, when the internet was just beginning to rise. I have always felt that love was completelyed before and after the internet's popularity. I am grateful for being born in the late 1970s, as I witnessed or experienced firsthand some love that now seems like fossils. For example, unspoken crushes—the kind of unfulfilled regrets that are no longer found after the internet's rise. The internet is a demon. It gave people too many opportunities and spaces for casual relationships, making love no longer the unreachable myth it once was. This is truly a tragedy. I was in college when writing this novel, and it was handwritten—it took me three years to finish. On Valentine's Day in 2001, I finally completed it in pieces. Later, I became obsessed with the internet and started writing online anthologies, eventually moving on to journal literature. When I reread my old works later, I only found them immature in style and simplistic in technique, too painful to read. But this one, "Lemon Lover," is my most cherished piece. It belongs to a commemoration of an era, in which all my understanding of love was poured into it. Now, no matter what, I can no longer write such pure love stories.