The Journey Forward: Growing Through Struggles/前行的人生 挣扎的成长

Struggling to Grow, the first installment of Zeng Gaofei's million-word trilogy The Journey Forward, opens with the coming-of-age story of a generation born in the 1970s, sounding an elegy of youth filled with dreams, love, and fate.The story is set in the remote Siming Mountains of southern Hunan. The protagonist, Qi Hong, is naturally gifted but comes from a poor family. He and his childhood sweetheart, Gao Yan, love each other, and their shared dream is to pass the college entrance examination and leave the mountains behind. To support Qi Hong's studies, Gao Yan saves every penny she can. In her second year of high school, she even secretly drops out to work in a factory in the southern boomtowns. After being found and brought back home, and desperate to solve the problem of Qi Hong's upcoming college tuition, a cornered Gao Yan makes a decision that changes everyone's fate-she strikes a deal with her father, agreeing to marry a young man from the same village, Zhang Wei, whom she does not love but who deeply loves her.When the college entrance examination results are announced, Qi Hong is admitted to a key university in the provincial capital. But on that same day, the sound of firecrackers heralds the wedding of Gao Yan and Zhang Wei. With a shattered heart, Qi Hong leaves his hometown and embarks on a new chapter of his life in the provincial capital.With the theme of "struggling," the novel records not only the hardships of individual perseverance-the constraints of poverty on dreams and the unexpected setbacks along the path to higher education-but also the helplessness and choices a generation faces between love and fate. This is a funeral dirge for first love-painful, true, and deeply haunting.¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿20¿¿70¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿--¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿"¿¿"¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿--¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿