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Chi Li: Low-key Celebrity

Chi’s rise to fame cannot be separated from her low-key lifestyle. A celebrity now, she says she dreams to “escape and hide”

“I do not want my name to appear frequently in the media. What I long for is a favorable reputation among readers,” Chi says.

One can see that she does not invite celebrity writers to review her stories or write prefaces; or to ask theoreticians to write comments on her works; or attend any literature prize contests; or put forward any requirements or suggestions to publishers. She does not hold seminars on her stories.

One can rarely find Chi at writers’ parties. She prefers to get close to her readers. For years since her becoming a famous writer, she has been trying to hide from those events and just stick to her writing.

Troubled Life

In the documentary-like Troubled Life, Chi uses a long lens to focus on a day in the life of a worker, from the moment he reluctantly gets up from a warm bed to his supper. He cooks milk, queues up for the public restroom, (in the middle 1980s, few households had private washrooms in their apartments) awakens his 4-year-old son, takes a crowded bus, has breakfast in a ferry, begins his work, has lunch, prepares supper… all the trivial things of a worker undergoing the hardships of life.

Apart From Love

Apart From Love is rouses the curiosity of readers. Why is love the frequently studied topic avoided here? The query goes through the novel and leads readers in an exquisitely woven story. A young doctor who is born into a well-educated family falls in love with a bookstore girl. Their romantic love blossoms into marriage despite the many hurdles thrown up by the sharp differences between their two families. However, like any couples, they can’t escape from facing all the trivia in after-marriage life. They squabble as frequently as they have meals, and begin to feel unsatisfied with each other. The unwillingness to compromise leads to a desperate divorce war. Their marriage would have been damaged if not the sudden emergence of an opportunity provided to the doctor to go abroad. But the existence of other candidates for the opportunity in the hospital casts bigger difficulties for the couple. They unite more closely than at any time of their marriage to scrabble for the opportunity. Even the pretentious parents start to show up and offer their long-time-no-see care for the couple. Life takes up a snobbish face in the novel. An ounce of interest will captivate the attention for many. Apart from love, it’s a matter of choice, of compromise and of surrender.

Comings and Goings

Unlike Apart from Love, Comings and Goings constructs a complicated love story. The chief characters get married in the late 1970s, when the Cultural Revolution is put to an end. That special “revolutionary” age stamps its indelible impact deeply on their marriage. However, great changes take place in the years afterwards in 1980s and 1990s in floods throughout China. The husband, a factory worker in Wuhan grows into a big boss in the late 1980s. In his early 40s, the husband, out of his own imagination, finds fresh love from a beautiful girl who is assigned by the parent company in the United States. They fall desperately in love, ignoring the world around them. But when the husband suggests divorce to the wife, what he sees is the threat of her uncommitted suicide. His despairing lover has to choose to leave. When the husband is suffering great sorrow of losing his lover, a modern girl who unbelievably resembles his first love suddenly appears in his life… Love comes and goes. No matter how fresh and sweet it may look, all comes to an end as soft but uncatchable clouds flying past leaving nothing behind. How is life and what is love? No one knows.

（Source: chinaculture.org）