Beautiful Days – Xiaolan Teng (2013)

This book of contemporary Chinese literature contains two separate novellas, A Riot of Brilliant Purple and Tender Crimson and Beautiful Days. A Riot of Brilliant Purple and Tender Crimson follows the love lives of a father and daughter. Xiang Yijun, a government officer, is strongly influenced by her father, a Peking Opera performer. She enjoys singing this type of opera, but the old-fashioned hobby sets her apart from others, who find it peculiar, and does not help her search for Mr. Right. One day she meets Mao An, who is interested in Peking Opera and wants her to be his teacher. Believing it is destiny, Yijun quietly accepts their developing relationship, even after learning that he had previously asked another girl to be his teacher. Meanwhile, her usually self-contained father, inspired by an online love expert, secretly falls in love with a female neighbour. Beautiful Days tells the simple story of a 70-year-old woman from Shanghai who wants to find a satisfactory daughter-in-law for her bald son. Once infected with polio, he takes pride only in having been born and living in Shanghai. Yao Hong, a widow from Jiangxi Province, becomes the family housekeeper and later the son’s wife. Arguments arise between her and her mother-in-law, but the two women eventually learn to accept each other and recognise that life is full of surprises, and that the unexpected may be good after all. Focusing on everyday subjects in detailed descriptions, the novella reflects extraordinary lives through ordinary people and finds beauty in the movements of daily life.