Lost Love (photocopy edition)

This is the first work published by Liu Yichang. The story is narrated in the first person: On an autumn evening, a painter walked into a cemetery and was immersed in a dreamlike meditation, faintly hearing his lover calling him. He brought back ninety-nine oil paintings from abroad, and wanted to complete the hundredth painting and hold an exhibition of his work. He stayed at a lakeside hotel. On the fourth night, it rained heavily, and a young girl appeared in his dream. The next night, he completed a portrait in front of the window amid rain, and the girl he painted was surprisingly similar to the one in his dream. He was excited and couldn't sleep all night. He turned on the light and saw a beautiful woman in her thirties sitting on the sofa. She looked like the woman in the painting. The two of them couldn't help but talk, and their conversation was confusing. The painter wandered through the quiet and narrow streets on a rainy night, and accidentally discovered a photo of the girl he met for the first time in the studio -- she was the woman in his dream. After inquiring, he learned that she was the wife of the local richest man. She was the orphaned young girl Qiu Dan whom he met on Christmas Eve more than ten years ago in a small coffee shop. They danced together again on New Year's Eve at a masquerade. The prelude to a human drama has since begun... Is it a comedy? Is it a tragedy? It's not for me to say, please read and decide for yourself. The author once revealed that this book was inspired by an Austrian novel, and was his trial writing in his spare time when he was editing the "Huai Zheng Literature Collection". The first chapter of the book was published in 11th and 12th issues of the magazine "Happiness" in September 1947. It was edited by Wang Bo and printed in two colors by Shanghai Global Publishing House. The illustration is drawn by Guo Jianying (1907-1979), a famous cartoonist in Shanghai and senior of St. John's University. In 1949, his novel was adapted into a film by Cathay Film Studio, with Xu Changlin as the screenwriter, Tang Xiaodan as the director, and Jin Yan and Qin Yi as the leading actors, causing a sensation at the time. The book was first published in October 1948 by the Huai Zheng Cultural Society founded by the author and distributed by the Tongye Bookstore in Shanghai. In December 1951, the Tongye Bookstore in Hong Kong reprinted it and sold it through the World Publishing House. It has been out of print for more than a century. In order to introduce the ground-breaking predecessors to young readers who love writing and let them understand that creation comes from life and there is no easy way, we have reprinted this precious work to commemorate Mr. Liu Yichang, who passed away on June 8, 2018.