Luan Nian had been a menace since he was small. The moment someone crossed him, he turned fiercely aggressive. Other children fought the way children do, a shove here, a shove there, nothing that ever drew blood. Not him. When he fought, he pinned the other kid down and hit him hard, again and again, on the head. In the small city in the south, five and six year old Luan Nian was a name people flinched at. Whenever the elders finished lecturing their own children, they always tacked on the same line: "Stay away from Luan Nian." Or: "Don't provoke Luan Nian." Being a child no one dared provoke, he was usually alone. He didn't mind. Being alone suited him fine, and he had no interest in playing with the other kids anyway. He found it strange how easily they burst into tears over nothing. What he liked best was holed up in his grandfather's room. His grandfather painted, having studied under a well known master in his youth, and seeing that Luan Nian t...
"Luan Nian, I want to start from my first year in Beijing." Shang Zhitao took his hand. "Don't mind me talking so much, all right? I've just wanted so badly to talk to you tonight." I came to Beijing when I was twenty-two. I still remember that day, my first day in the city. It was raining, and I dragged my suitcase out of the train station into a sea of people. Everyone walked fast, and no one so much as glanced at me. I had a map in my hand with a few lines written on it, directions I'd looked up ahead of time, from the station to my rented room. Standing alone in that unfamiliar station in an unfamiliar city, I suddenly felt afraid. I didn't know what was waiting for me. I was a little scared, but I was looking forward to it too. The thing I'm most grateful for is that I got to live in that room, because that's where I met my friends: Sun Yu, Zhang Lei, and Sun Yuanzhu, whose name I still can't bring myself to say. That summer, on m...