Paper bracelet

Author: A Wen
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-12-01
Features: This is the story of a once-prosperous family that began to decline in the late 20th century. The Lu family left behind a string of beads, each made of paper and containing a story. The original beads were passed down from ancestors who were officials during the Qing Dynasty, and the secrets hidden within them were a treasure acquired through the people's hard-earned wealth. However, the descendants, out of reverence and superstition for their ancestors, never revealed the secrets within the beads. They merely continued the tradition—whenever a man who represented a generation was about to leave this world, they wrote down the secrets of his life on a small piece of paper, then had a skilled artisan roll it into a bead and coat it with glue. The Lu family's genealogy was filled with names, but the true lives of each generation were only contained within those beads. Eventually, the Lu family lost all male descendants, leaving behind only a girl. The bracelet on her wrist held only the last true treasure bead. She believed in her ancestors' prophecy: the Lu family could only last for five generations, and out of those five generations, only 15 people would leave behind paper beads. She was not qualified to trade her life's secrets for the last treasure bead. She had to open all the paper "beads" to uncover a century-old secret. A heavy history of a hundred years and a fresh, innocent girl—over the century, the different beliefs and helplessness toward life of each generation of the Lu family, the unchangeable time and journey, and the choices of mindset and ideals. The novel objectively portrays the ethics of the past hundred years through the psychology and mindset of modern people, and interprets the accumulated history through the consciousness and thinking of contemporary youth. With limited space, the novel covers historical and modern backgrounds, offering a vast amount of information and profound themes.