Yu Hua

Yu Hua is a collection of two novellas by the Hong Kong writer Yi Shu, published by Cosmos Books as part of the Cosmos edition of Yi Shu's works. The volume contains two novellas: Yu Hua and Loving Her as I Do. Yu Hua tells the story of A-Juan, a girl growing up in a family of modest means. Her mother is eager for her to start working early and help support the household, but the girl insists on attending night school, preferring to rely on herself rather than marry. Her mother does nothing but complain that the family is always short of money, yet A-Juan persists in her studies. She understands: "A person must always rely on herself—what use is relying on others?" The elders around her warn that many girls marry the wrong man and end up trapped, unable to move forward or back. In the end, she seems to take an ordinary path after all, though her heart is uneasy. She knows what she has given up, and she is reluctant to hand over her youth just like that. Loving Her as I Do is narrated in the first person by a sixteen-year-old boy secretly in love with an older female teacher, Miss Cai. Through small gestures—helping the teacher change a tire, sending anonymous valentines—he reveals his feelings bit by bit. Amid Mary's teasing and the obliviousness of the adults around him, he experiences a brief but sincere infatuation. Both stories are short, yet they capture what Yi Shu always cared about: how ordinary people choose between love, marriage, and reality, and how a young person's feelings arrive suddenly and fade quietly. The author writes in short sentences and a brisk rhythm, using plain, crisp, unsentimental prose to depict the emotional ups and downs and self-respect of urban people.