Preface

It has really been a long time since I decided to commence on the writing of this series, leaving something that may help retain the most worth cherishing four years of one's life, meanwhile sharing some of my personal experience with others. For or against my attitude is nothing strange. Now I realize one can only release the burden off his or her mind by writing it down. And I come to know the point to start is also necessary to choose carefully. I once held the opinion that starting from the end of the campus life is suitable. Maybe! But it proved impossible to be relaxed at the time under the pressure from all directions, family, job, school bureaucrat, friends, and the agitation from deep side of my heart. However, in such mood, deliver out a complete and objective series can hardly be implemented. So soon after I made the announcement I temporarily cancelled the whole thing. Many who was looking forward to this series became very disappointed and expressed many complains. I do not mean to hurt anybody's feeling, anyway, and I sincerely want to uninstall myself out from all the memory fragments accumulated in my mind. Just as Haruki Murakami mentioned in his masterpiece Norwegian Wood (ノルウェーの森), "It was very long time ago, when I was still young, and my memory was still clear, that for many times I planned to write something about Naoko, but ultimately failed to write down a single line. Although it is clear that once the first line is uncovered, the followings should spring out naturally enough. But no matter how hard I tried, it could only result in unrecoverable failure. Just as a very detailed map, it is only too detailed to fit for use. When everything is as clear as yesterday, I do not know where to begin. But now I have fully recognized that, literary articles, as a kind of incomplete container, can only contain those incomplete memories and incomplete ideas. What's more, the more obscure the memories on Naoko become, the better I can come to understand her." Rethinking is truly essential part of writing something that is planned to be somehow valuable. Only when time flies to this point, when I have departed the life in the campus, together with almost everything sticking to that as well, can I get some more to say. It is interesting indeed. One can only tell the story when he or she is not participating in it. Generally speaking, I am a person of little emotional feelings, but sometimes I act also as a totally emotional character, as I am writing this.

Many personal issues are introduced here. I decide to use real names instead of pseudonyms. This decision is, of course, offending when revealing somebody's privacy. But however, I am writing this mainly for me myself, as mentioned above, to release myself of the memory burdens. So I won't change my mind. To reduce the influence I choose to write the whole series in English, and I understand very well few would like to read articles written in the foreign language carefully, and me myself will not do the translation work from English to Simplified Chinese, never ever. It grants myself with greatest freedom, which is the most I cherish. I want everybody that chooses to have a look of this series to know that, every single word written here is true, is what happened some time ago, far or near.

Being a preface it is a bit long, but you can consider it totally nonsense, it is only a declaration of the start point of another series of mine. And I will care about it continuously. To tell the truth I am now living in a very ideal environment, because I am having much to write. I am happy, I am substantial. The time I am having is less than that when I was in the campus, but what I feel is that I am living longer outside it. All the worship to JEHOVAH! Please help me to satisfy all that is willing to share my words.

Daniel Gao
2004 Oct. 17
In Shanghai