The Song of Everlasting Sorrow

The Song of Everlasting Sorrow is a novel by the Chinese-American writer Lu Chiao (real name Wu Ne-sun), conceived around 1942 while the author was studying at National Southwestern Associated University and completed in 1945. Set against the backdrop of the National Southwestern Associated University, relocated to Kunming during the War of Resistance, and the streets and scenery of Kunming, it tells of the campus life of a group of young students—Wu Pao-sheng, Yu Meng-ch'in, Lin Yen-mei, T'ung Hsiao-hsien, and others. Amid wartime, they become close friends and also candid critics of one another on a relatively sheltered campus: they study, take outings, put on plays, and talk together, and they also go through misunderstandings, quarrels, secret crushes, and private worries. The book centers on these young people's friendships, loves, and campus days, while also sketching portraits of their teachers and classmates, expressing the author's reflections on how young people's character approaches completeness and how life's ideals find their place; the prose is lucid and graceful, carrying a strong idealistic and poetic flavor. After its publication by Taiwan's Commercial Press in 1967, the book became popular on overseas Chinese campuses and is listed among the "Top 100 Chinese Novels of the 20th Century"; Huang Shu-chun wrote a song of the same title inspired by it. The 2008 edition from Huangshan Publishing House was the first mainland edition formally authorized by the author. The main thread is leisurely and does not rely on plot strength, reading more like a "novel of mood" written from memories of youth.