The Hourglass

The Hourglass is the sixth installment in Rao Xueman's "Youth Pain" series and the novel she spent the longest time conceiving after Left Ear. The first volume was published by Contemporary World Press in January 2007, followed by The Hourglass II, The Hourglass III, and the companion volume A Light Snow, with cumulative sales reaching one million copies. The protagonist is a middle school girl named Mo Xingxing. She suffers from alternating binge-eating and anorexia: whenever she is emotionally triggered, she consumes astonishing amounts of food in private. Xingxing's mother died when she was young while saving a boy crossing the street, and the broken family has rarely known laughter since; she has also grown up under the heavy label of "the hero's daughter," sensitive and fragile in temperament. After her classmate Mi Sha accidentally learns her secret, the friendship between the two girls deepens rapidly. Xingxing finds unprecedented friendship and comfort in Mi Sha, and through her meets Lu Li, the boy Mi Sha has a crush on. Just as Xingxing decides to start over, she discovers a shocking secret about her mother: her mother, Lu Li, Mi Sha—everyone around her seems bound by subtle connections. The novel employs alternating multiple perspectives, with the main chapters narrated in first person by Mo Xingxing and Mi Sha respectively, later joined by Jiang Lan's thread. The characters are based on a girl with binge-eating disorder whom the author personally knew, and through them Rao Xueman writes about the pain and growth of "problem girls," hoping to show young readers the true meaning of growing up. The work was later adapted into a film of the same name, released in mainland China on June 21, 2024.