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Yi’s attitude to love is contradictory. She does believe that there is something in the world that is love — pure love with no worldly participation. She affirms that the pure love is simply beautiful because no custom, tradition or morality is involved. On the other hand, she knows clearly that pure love has little chance to last in the material world. So love in Yi’s stories is a metropolitan game, adding some ingredients to the busy and ordinary daily life. Lovers are ready at any minute to divert their love to someone else within changing society. Marriage is no longer the fruit of love. It’s a sober choice after careful calculation of the world.

Xibao

Xibao is one the Yi’s best full-length stories. Xibao is a beautiful, intelligent and elegant girl who is 21 and studies in Cambridge University. One of her best friends, Xu Conghui, is born into a rich family. At Xu’s engagement ceremony, both Xu’s father and her brother are fascinated with Xibao. Xibao finally accepts Xu’s father, an old, charming and rich man in order to guarantee her study and a better life in the university. Mr. Xu’s huge wealth facilitates Xibao to be an upper-class lady. But the changes in Xibao’s life are confined to the material. Xibao finds her private space intruded upon to a great extent due to Mr. Xu’s strong possessive desires. She does not have freedom and everything she does will be reported to Mr. Xu by his men.

The unhappy Xibao picks up her long lost feelings of relaxation when she meets a young German professor and soon falls in love with him. Word comes to Mr. Xu and the enraged man shoots the professor. Later on, Xibao in great sorrow is informed her mother has committed suicide just after her second marriage. Xibao gives up her studies and becomes addicted to alcohol. Money at the moment is not able to settle anything for her. Xibao finds to her sadness that wealthy the Xu family is, none of the family members are happy. Her best friend, Mr. Xu’s daughter Conghui, gets married to a man who loves her money instead of her and leaves her husband and the family. Conghui’s cowardly brother is on the edge of collapse because his deep and constrained love to Xibao does not get any feedback from her; and, Conghui’s seemingly happy sister is afflicted with her husband’s affairs with other women. The poor lady is afflicted by cancer and puts her life to an end by herself. Mr. Xu, the millionaire, dies after all the changes to the family.

Xibao inherits Mr. Xu’s money but it doesn’t appear attractive to her anymore. She has lost her youth, the prime time of her life, her love and most important of all, her strength to live.

In Xibao’s eyes, the world is cold and her decision to live with old Mr. Xu is a wise choice. “I won’t complain to society. There’s nothing wrong with the world itself. It’s my own decision,” Xibao says. Her choice shows her despair with men and feelings of horror of facing a lonely and poor life. It’s a means to make living, and has nothing to do with love. “Love is another matter. It’s too luxurious for me to enjoy,” Xibao says.

（Source: chinaculture.org）