Classic 2: The Bitter Girls by Ju Decong

Author: Zhu Deyong
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-01-01
Features: There are 4 girls living in an apartment. One wants love but not marriage, another wants work but not love; one wants to marry any kind of man, and another doesn’t understand what kind of man she wants. Four tart girls, one single apartment, four trendy vibes, a! Four women, a revolution. The primary reason is "modernity" that pushes them from the background to the forefront: women in the past, under the demands of men, were as soft as silk and as beautiful as crystal. Today’s women, under the demands of society, must still be as soft as silk but also as hard as metal; still as transparent as crystal but cannot be as fragile and easily broken as glass. Thus, being a woman is even harder, and so they—the four tart girls—walk in step at the forefront of the "revolution"! A very popular saying today is: Love belongs to yesterday, and marriage belongs to tomorrow. The four stylish and unconventional girls have chosen the adventure of being single and no longer single, circling in wrong marriages and dancing by the side of free single life. This is no longer a passionate rock CD, and urban women are beginning to focus only on the tart taste on their own bodies. Love experiments and marriage adventures are gradually landing on everyone’s information platform. Distant onlookers cannot eliminate the helpless sorrow of the audience. Rain of love is falling from the sky—you can choose not to carry an umbrella, but no one can avoid the lingering thoughts of spring rain. If a beautiful encounter cannot move you to believe in the "revolution," then choose to be a narcissist in solitude. The Tart Girls series of books depicts some cold and witty situations that occur in the minds or lives of four single women living together in an apartment. Why draw the Tart Girls? To me, it’s a very strange sensation. In recent years, in our studio, there’s been a group of people, mainly women with a few men, forming an increasing population ratio. These singletons not only expand rapidly but also, more importantly, have developed their own unique ideas and lifestyles. This deeply attracts me, and suddenly I had the idea of turning them into comics. In this book, I divide the single girls into four types: one who wants love but not marriage, one who wants work but not love, one who is always thinking about getting married, and one who doesn’t understand love or marriage. Of course, no group can be truly categorized, and these four types are more symbolic. In my mind, the true Tart Girls are like this: they all have strong self and attitudes toward life but are often fluctuating; they appear to be very individualistic and are often labeled with stereotypical tags, but inwardly, they are so uncertain of themselves. They are not a group of people who break free from constraints and defy traditional norms; in reality, they don’t truly know what they want. Their presence, mixed in this dazzling era, has a particularly special tart flavor.