Questions of Water

Questions of Water is Jian Zhen's first book and the work that made her name. It collects more than thirty essays she wrote during her four years at university, which the author calls her own "dynastic history." With the pure heart of a young woman, the book recounts the transformations of life in and around the university campus: the sky seen for the first time looking up from the coconut-palm avenue, the peeling bark of the paperbark tree, a rain that suddenly breaks out between spring and summer, the night road back and forth between library and dormitory, and the meetings, passings, and partings between people. The writing is natural yet rich in creative implication; her grounding in classical literature intertwines with memories of a rural childhood, giving these youthful pieces both a girl's bright lightness and a deep attachment to life and nature. The book is divided into six sections—"Flower Edict," "Water Classic," "Sorrow Rhapsody," "Broken Lyrics," "Broken Words," and "Transformed Sounds"—beginning with "Flower Edict" and ending with "Transformed Sounds." Each section opens with a prefatory passage that sets its keynote, so that the six sections follow one another and form a whole; each piece stands on its own yet is also a link in the book's overall structure. Jian Zhen says she hoped through this design to clearly record the traces of her inner life in times past. The closing piece, "Questions of Water," which shares the book's title, gathers the book's emotions into a drop of water shaped like a question mark: let it rush night and day along the riverbed, rush to where heaven and earth dissolve and sorrow and joy are no more, and let the sea answer for it.