A Book Dedicated to Our Youth - Tong Hua

Chapter 2: Confused Feelings

Goodbye darkness, hello sunshine! Luo Qi Qi is finally opening herself up and living the happy, carefree life that children her age should be living.

Sometimes, when you feel like you've become isolated and have sunken into darkness, your friends will be there pulling you out. It's at these points when you realize how much they impact you and how important friends really are.

**I'll be on semi hiatus until the end of November so this might be the last post until then!

1. Fate Is Reversed

Within time, you, me, perhaps our appearances will have long changed. Each of us within the limits of the sky, the corners of the sea.
Beyond time, you, me, our prospects still remain glittering, as we sit side by side on the peach blossom covered classroom steps.

Chen Jin and I were originally two parallel lines with no chance of intersecting, but because he chose me as a seating partner, our fates crossed.

Although our reasons were different, we both didn't listen in class. However, he was a good student and could only stare off into space expressionlessly whereas I, the bad student, could choose between staring off into space, sleep and read novels. At the time, I was currently lost without hope in the worlds inside books. Chen Jin would occasionally glance over with the corner of his eye, probably bewildered by my concentration and diligence. Afterwards, when we became a bit closer, he would ask me what exactly I was reading. When he heard the titles 'Xue Rengui's Campaign to the East', 'Xue Ding Shan's Campaign to the West', 'Folk Literature'...etc., he looked like he was going to collapse because he had never heard of them before, it really had a bad impact on his 'child prodigy' name. When he heard 'Dream of the Red Chamber', his expression turned slightly back to normal before returning to a face of awe to say " 'the young don't watch Red Chamber, the old don't read Three Kingdoms', your dad allows you to watch 'Dreams of the Red Chamber'?"

It was my first time hearing such a saying so I dazedly said "I don't know, my dad doesn't care about me reading, basically as long as the book is on the book shelf, I'll read it."

He thought for a moment before discussing with me "lend me your copy of 'Dreams of the Red Chamber' and I'll lend a set of books to you."

I brought 'Dreams of the Red Chamber' to him, the 1979 version with a set of four books. He gave me 'Classic of Poetry' [also known as Book of Songs/Odes, the oldest existing collection of Chinese poetry]. He finished 'Dreams of the Red Chamber' really quickly and returned it to me with a soso expression. He then flipped through 'Xue Ren Gui's Campaign to the East' and gave it back to me without finishing it. Thereafter, it was always me borrowing his books, he had completely no interest in my books.

The 'Classic of Poetry' he lent me had no vernacular* or explanatory notes so it was very laborious reading. There were many parts that I didn't understand but he would never explain. only telling me that poetry didn't need explanations for every word, you only needed to remember it and one day, one moment, under a certain situation, it will naturally come to you. I didn't know if his father told him this or if it was his excuse for not wanting to bother explaining.

Because reading it was very hard work and boring, I didn't want to read it. But Chen Jin, in his boring prodigy life, found a new hobby which was to test me. He would often randomly say a line and wanted me to say the next line; or he would recite one half and I would say the next half. If I got it correct, he would have an uncaring, taken for granted expression. However, if I couldn't say it, he would shake his head disdainfully at me. Children all have ambitions, especially to beat prodigies so under the incentive of this game, I gradually memorized the entire of 'Classic of Poetry'.