February

February is a representative work by Rou Shi and a classic of modern Chinese literature. Written in 1929, it centers on Xiao Jianqiu, a young man brimming with ambition and passion. Upon arriving in Furong Town, he finds himself entangled in a painful vortex involving two women: Tao Lan and Wen's wife. Reality, like a web of traps and black holes, leaves him unable to move forward, even to stand his ground. He sympathizes with Wen Siao's tragic circumstances and exhausts himself trying to save her family, yet rumors swirl. The death of her child and Wen Siao's subsequent suicide shatter his humanitarian aspirations like a shattered illusion. Though the intelligent and beautiful Tao Lan loves him-an arrangement he might have accepted as fate-the dissolute young master Qian Zhengxing, coveting Tao Lan, clings to him with relentless persistence. Xiao Jianqiu thus descends into a profound and sorrowful confusion.