Lost You Forever

Why stick with a lackluster drama when there is an amazing book to be read. When a good novel comes along it’s hard to put down, when a great novel comes it’s impossible to not want to share. Last year right around this time I read C-novelist Tong Hua‘s Da Mo Yao (Ballad of the Desert) and fell promptly in love. I had finished her Bu Bu Jing Xin (Startling with Each Step) and wanted to keep on going with her lyrical prose and DMY was just the right type of soaring fun romance novel with a dash of historical flavor. After translating DMY I dived into its sequel Yun Zhong Ge (Song of the Clouds) and found it a much harder read but ended up appreciating it so much more when I decided to translate it as well. After tackling the early Han dynasty and romanticizing certain well-known historical figures during that era, Tong Hua’s next ambitious novel endeavor takes her back to pre-history in Chinese lore. While Greek mythology of the Olympian gods and goddesses are well known in Western literature, Chinese literature also has one of its earliest written texts the Classics of the Mountains and the Seas (山海經 Shan Hai Jing) detailing Chinese mythology of gods, goddesses, demons, and mythical creatures. Tong Hua takes on the events and famous mythological figures in this text as the backdrop for her two novels Once Promised (曾許諾 Cen Shu Nuo) and its sequel Lost You Forever (長相思 Chang Xiang Si).