Swing Woman

Author: Zhou Yanyu
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-06-01
Features: After reading The Swing Woman, I found that the faint melancholy in her previous works had become much more profound. Here, I would like to share some post-publication reflections on this novel. People are accustomed to comparing women to flowers. Flowers are easily withered and cannot withstand being crushed. After a series of life storms, countless fallen petals are scattered and abandoned in the dust. In the novel, there is a passage describing how the protagonist, Qiuqian, summarizes the four men in her life through something as simple as clothing. It is a condensed essence of her decades-long life as a woman: "Li Bolang himself loved children and didn’t need Qiuqian to help; he dressed himself in a flashy and exaggerated manner. Dong Yijian, on the other hand, was fundamentally a folk hero, accustomed to wearing military uniforms. Occasionally, Qiuqian bought him new clothes, but they had to be blue and never wrinkled. He refused to wear them. As for Zhao Shouji, he was always in conflict with his police uniform. As long as he had alcohol, everything else was irrelevant, which left Qiuqian without enthusiasm. Only Sun Shuanшу, no matter how Qiuqian tried to provoke him, he had no objections and was happy to obey, as it didn’t cost him anything." Within this seemingly ordinary narration, there is joy, but more so, there is sorrow. The Qiuqian created by the author is a living specimen. Whether intentionally or not, it objectively serves as a warning to women, telling them that their fate is in their own hands, and both joy and sorrow are choices they can make.