Ten years, nine summers

Author: Chu Dai
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-08-01
Features: Those years, fleeting. The entire student era. Autumn is the beginning, summer is the farewell. Year after year, they bid each other goodbye quietly. Laughing, playing, crying, shouting. It passed, and that was that. Chu Dai, a touching little girl. Without a fixed home, without a steady job, she walks bravely and optimistically through life, wandering delicately through words. Ten Years, Nine Summers is a pure novel. Chu Dai tells the beautiful stories she "weaves" with her light and gentle words. Ten Years, Nine Summers is a pure novel. About the small sorrows and joys of youth. I love Chu Dai and her stories because of this calmness, the serenity after weathering countless storms, the openness after melting away ice and snow. She is a girl of great wisdom, and so is her novel. — Yan Ge
Chu Dai's language has tension and release. It blooms in tranquility and still comforts readers who are hurt even when her own words are splattered with blood. — Sai Ning
If the sting of words is so painful, then Chu Dai has learned to cover the thorns, allowing the path forward to be endured in peace. — Jiang Feng
Her light and gentle words are like the shadow of a summer's aspen leaves. They brush against the edge of perception, light and undulating. — Zhang Jia Wei
Chu Dai, only she still explores love and life delicately. Only she has such courage. Only her words hold no resentment—this is the result of being eroded by love. This is precisely what I cannot achieve. — Xu Chao
Chapter 1. Du Wei
I saw Chen Guo again. The Chen Guo of sixteen, beautiful beyond belief, sat on the sofa by the fireplace. He had healthy, wheat-colored skin, eyes that curved when he smiled, and teeth that were white and perfectly aligned. His lips were still the pink and soft as when I first saw him. My heart began to beat violently, and my mother, beside me, gently steadied my shoulder. She whispered, "Call your cousin." I turned my head in shock. Was everything starting over again? Was everything repeating itself? If time truly cycled like this, if the story's ending was predetermined from the beginning, then should I call him cousin once more to begin this story? This dream so vividly replayed the story's beginning. Those sorrows quietly diffused in the air until I could no longer breathe. This was bound to be a disrupted dream. I woke up.
The Buddha says, everything is an illusion. I think, perhaps those enduring sorrows and pains, those flying joys and youth, all the stories—were just a good dream. Chen Guo was like a magnificent aria he played, lingering long in my dreams. He had a sharp nose, clean eyes, and lips as soft as a baby's. He entered my life in a gaze that was compassionate and serene. Yet he was my cousin.