Old Friends · Hometown · Stories

Author: Yu Feng
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-10-01
Features: The author condenses her memories of the ups and downs of the 20th century, her family, friends, and hometown into this small book, presenting readers with fragments of hardship yet without self-pity or sorrow. Instead, she channels national grievances and family sorrows into her pen, crafting chapters filled with heroism and familial love. The tragic tales of her father Yu Mantuo and brother Yu Dafu dying for their country, her mother carrying bullet fragments from the Japanese invaders, and her grandmother starving to death for refusing to cook for the Japanese—all these heart-wrenching memories transformed into the author's boundless love for her homeland and fueled her courage a hundredfold in joining the anti-Japanese struggle. In the face of imminent danger, the wit, composure, and grace of communists like and left the young, inexperienced author utterly unflustered and fearless. These decades-long mentors and friends—, , , —pursued art and culture relentlessly through thick and thin, carving a group of "sculptures in the storm" in the author's heart. Like dear friends, through seven years of imprisonment, the author never abandoned her unwavering love for life, art, and her homeland. And there was her hometown along the banks of the Fuchun River, every change of which lingered in her thoughts, whether for better or worse. Perhaps it was the nourishment of her homeland's landscape that allowed her to endure the storms without regret.