"Give yourself over to my protection. Give me the weight of your dreams. Give me everything. Take my hand and follow me. Together, no wind can blow us from our course. I'll take you to watch meteor showers fall to the earth. Let your tears fall on my shoulder; believe that my love can only make you strong. We will find happiness; clouds and rain will gradually dispel, dissolved in warmth. I want to share your glittering tears."In this world, who would watch meteor showers with me? Whose tears fell on my shoulder? And whose glittering tears could I share?

　　Since 1994, when my grandmother passed away, there had been no one to lead me by the hand. The one person ever willing to be at my side had gone to another world and left me on my own. My dear grandmother, could she be looking down from heaven on me? If she could see me rushing along the Shanghai-Nanjing motorway, would she feel disappointed?

　　My grandfather died when he was 54, of a rare disease whose complications result in fibrosis of the liver. My grandmother watched him waste away, bit by bit leaving her, going off to a different world. When my oldest brother was 26, he also lost his life to the same disease. Grandmother wasn't there to see it happen, but she most certainly had worried over the possibility. Perhaps ever since Grandpa died she had lived in apprehension of our falling ill. Now my other brother was starting to show early symptoms of fibrosis. In the depths of their bodies, all the men of the Zhu Ge clan carry this tendency towards fibrosis of the liver, silently awaiting its day to spring forth and develop. As a result, my father, my remaining older brother, and I all live in the shadow of tomorrow's illness. On his death bed, my grandfather told Father, "The Zhu Ge men never live past 54, that's our fate. I've lived my life as best I could, but I won't live past 54, and that's the truth! My own father died at 50, his father at 31, and my great-great grandfather? 54."

　　Suddenly reminded of all this, who wouldn't feel sad? Whether you want it to or not, time, just like illness, flies along, transforming you from infancy into youth, from youth to adulthood, and then, as if in the space of one night, you enter into old age. Human life is just like that, mercilessly taking all you hold dear: your faith, your hope, your fervour, and at the last, your life. In the end it deprives you of the things around you, the people beside you, and leaves you to that final solitude, redoubling your feeling of sorrow and emptiness.