Flowers and Rain Collection, Upper and Lower

Author: Xi Ruo, Editor-in-Chief
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-01-01
Features: She had two loves in her life. I was waiting for the subway, listening to my friend say about a legendary woman in a biography. The subway roared past with a sense of, a repeated love, a decisive attitude. The previous stop, guarding secrets. The next stop, enduring in the world. I boarded the subway, watching my friend turn the thin page and continue to comment. She said, having two loves in a lifetime means there’s nothing to lament or regret. But indeed, to give one’s life’s love to two people is something to lament and regret. After autumn came, I fell in love with biographies of women. About the love stories of these women, as if studying specimens. How boring, I thought, that I could generalize from this. How happy, every character was fragrant, slightly sour and slightly sweet, like pomegranates. Love may be like fruit, indispensable but not essential. How many people eat fruit every day, yet they don’t taste love every day. In the subway, I silently recited this amusing line. Others’ stories seem to be, everyone’s own. In one day, I take the subway twice. Morning to evening, reading the entire story of a lifetime about the women in biographies. Gentle like a lotus just blooming; passionate like a moth flying into a flame; resilient like trees and stones, silently bearing joy and sorrow. All of it is just, like a dream. Their past, my once. Once, all that crying and struggling—it was all just a dream, after all. The next stop on the subway, heading toward love.