Plain Life (Revised Edition)

Author: Liu Owen
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-12-01
Features: A warm and moving glow often hides in the simple and modest life, intertwining their extraordinary life marks in the changing ordinary years. A twilight romance of a Harvard professor, a contemporary version of Six Records of a Floating Life. This couple, weathered by the world, searched for each other countless times before suddenly realizing that the person before them was the one in their dreams. To understand the once-turbulent yet romantic feelings of Liu Owen and Li Yu Ying, you must read their Six Records of a Floating Life to feel the sorrow of their love. — Ba Xianyong
Liu Owen and Li Yu Ying co-authored a book titled Living Ordinary Days, intentionally mimicking Shen Sanbai’s Six Records of a Floating Life, which is also divided into six volumes. Liu Owen often mentioned this book in his writings, especially showing fondness for Yunniang, perhaps because among traditional Chinese women, Yunniang in Six Records of a Floating Life is the ideal Liu Owen envisioned. Li Yu Ying’s intelligence, virtue, and understanding of others are similar to Yunniang, so Owen sometimes affectionately called her Yingniang. Liu Owen studied Western literature and was proficient in Western music, with a highly Westernized taste. In his early years, his ideal partner was likely similar to Lu Xiaoman and Lin Huiyin, the new women of the May Fourth Movement. Lu Xiaoman was skilled in social dancing and Kunqu opera, but not at cooking a delicious soup— that would require Yingniang to step in and prepare it. Owen finally realized that in Living Ordinary Days, drinking a bowl of soup personally cooked by Yingniang was the true happiness in life.
The volume "Letters from Two Places" in this book is the love letters between Owen and Yu Ying during their first love, romantic and passionate, rivaling Notes on Love.