Yu Hua

Yi ShuCosmos Books Ltd.1985

Rating 3.2
Chapters
2
Series
Yi Shu Works Series
ISBN
9789622570580

Tags

Featured Fiction Romance FictionWomen's Fiction Urban RomanceLife PhilosophyPersistenceDilemmaNovella CollectionIllustrated GuidePractical GuideNovel CollectionHong Kong Taiwan Literature

Summary

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.

Editor's review

在亦舒数量庞大的作品里，《雨花》不算最被提起的一本，却最能看出她写人物、写世情的本事。全书只有两个中篇：一个写困窘家庭里的女孩怎样在“读书”和“帮家里挣钱”之间挣扎，一个写少年人不敢说出口的爱慕。篇幅都不长，却各自把一个阶段的心事写得清清楚楚。 亦舒写底层少女，不写苦情，也不摆出施恩的姿态。阿绢一边擦着小弟的皮鞋，一边听母亲数落；嘴上不出声，心里却早有自己的主张。那句“一个人总得靠自己，靠别人有什么用”，几乎是她所有独立女性角色的开场白。《我这样的爱她》则难得换成一个十几岁男孩的视角，笨拙、直白，因为有距离，读起来格外可信。 作为旧版港版亦舒作品之一，这本书如今已不容易买到，对喜欢亦舒的读者来说，它是了解其八十年代中期创作风格的一份清楚样本。短句成段，节奏明快，不需要铺陈，人物的脾气、处境和那点不甘，三言两语就能立起来。

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Reading tips

  1. 两个中篇可分开读，先读《雨花》再读《我这样的爱她》，情感落差不小。
  2. 留意阿绢“擦鞋”“读夜校”这些细节，亦舒常借日常小动作交代人物的处境。
  3. 读《我这样的爱她》时留意叙述者的年龄感，十六岁的心口不一正是全篇的趣味所在。
  4. 若想读亦舒的香港旧作，可将其与《开到荼蘼》《玫瑰的故事》等同期作品对照着看。

About the publisher

Cosmos Books Ltd.

Cosmos Books Ltd. is a publisher centered on literary publishing, with 27 titles in the collection covering literature, essays and miscellaneous writings, quality fiction, women's fiction, emotional fiction, and wuxia novels. Judging from its representative titles, its publishing profile balances popular narrative with serious writing: works close to everyday experience such as The Manual and A Diary of a Student in Britain appear alongside novels including Ke Ren Er, Yuhua, Bu Er Xin, and Xiao Ren Er, as well as Liang Yusheng's martial-arts serials The Ice River Sword-Washing Record (four volumes) and The Extraordinary Heroine Emperor (three volumes). In terms of authors, Yi Shu and Liang Yusheng form important creative pillars—the former associated with women's and emotional themes, the latter representing the wuxia tradition. Overall, the press leans toward Chinese-language literary creation, with fiction and essays at its core, while also presenting genre literature. Due to limited public information, its founding background and full publishing scale cannot currently be confirmed.

Contents

  1. Yu Hua
  2. Loving Her as I Do

FAQ

《雨花》是长篇小说还是短篇集？ 都不是。它是亦舒的一部中篇小说合集，共收录《雨花》与《我这样的爱她》两个中篇，天地图书版全书284页，篇幅中短篇之间，适合一次读完。
这本书适合第一次读亦舒的读者吗？ 可以作为入门，但不是首选。它只收两个中篇，题材偏日常，也比较克制；若想先感受亦舒代表作，可先读《玫瑰的故事》《流金岁月》《喜宝》等长篇，再来读这本，更能看出她写短篇的手感。
书中有没有改编成影视？ 据现有资料，《雨花》及其收录的两个中篇未见改编为电影或电视剧的记录。亦舒被改编为影视的多为《玫瑰的故事》《流金岁月》《我的前半生》等长篇，阅读时不必期待与影视情节对应。
大陆能买到这本书吗？ 目前市面上流通的主要是天地图书出版的港版旧书，在大陆多在二手书平台、图书馆或港台书专营店见到，且多为1985年前后的旧版印次。购买时留意版次、品相和是否为影印本。

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About the author

Yi Shu Author

Yi Shu is a widely read author in the Chinese-speaking world, though public information about her remains limited, with no clear record of her nationality or dates of birth and death. The collection includes 108 of her works, spanning quality fiction, women's fiction, literature, classical literature, prose and miscellaneous writings, and fiction for female readers, showing that her writing crosses both narrative fiction and the personal essay. Representative works include When the Grapes Ripen, If Walls Could Talk, Across the Four Seas, A Night Without a Moon, A Fleeting Bloom, Until the Flowers Fade, Till the Seas Run Dry, and Asura. Judging from these titles and categories, she often takes the emotions, lives, and circumstances of urban women as her point of entry, writing in a calm and restrained tone and using everyday detail to reveal her characters' psychological turns, so that her stories, under a light surface, offer a clear-eyed view of life's meetings and partings and have thus long circulated among Chinese-language readers.