The author's preface is usually a date, to determine those fleeting places in the long memory, to date with the narrative that once appeared, or to date with his own past.This preface is no exception, so it first becomes a date of time, a date between 1998 and 1991; then, it is also a date between the author of this book and the characters in the book.We see that it is difficult to distinguish reality from fiction in language, and the distance of time is as short as eyesight. Seven years are like sitting across the table. In this way, I reunited with a family, reunited with what they saw and heard, and reunited with their joy and pain.I feel that I am gradually joining their lives, and sometimes I am lucky enough to hear their inner voices, their sighs and cries, their cries and their smiles.Next, I will gain the right to re-understand their fate, to understand how the weak mother has completed the life she endured, and her only outburst of anger is at the dying moment; How did his father named Sun Guangcai proudly train himself to be an outright rascal? He treated his father and his son like stumbling blocks to him, and he was ready to kick them away at any time. He had already lived with another woman, but after his wife died, when death was approaching him, he was constantly being led by the night to the grave of his dead wife, crying constantly.Sun Guangcai's father, Sun Youyuan, had a life so long that he couldn't bear it, but his humor was always greater than his sadness.There are also Sun Guangping, Sun Guanglin, and Sun Guangming. The paths of the three brothers overlapped briefly, and then forked in their respective directions.Sun Guangping grew up in the most mediocre way, and he made his father Sun Guangcai terrified; and Sun Guanglin, as the departure and returner of the story, has more experiences, so his eyes also record more destiny; Light was the first to die, the youngest member of the family who was the first to fulfill his terrestrial mission, was submerged by the river, and when he struggled to surface for the last time, he stared wide-eyed at the dazzling sun.I wrote this seven years ago. At the beginning, I firmly believed that he could look directly at the sun, because this was his last gaze; I still believe so firmly, because the price he paid was death.

I wrote them seven years ago, and they kept appearing in front of my eyes in the past seven years. I remember them, just like remembering my friends in my life. As time goes by, their faces have not faded, but become more clear in the accumulation of time , but also more realistic and believable.Now I can not only see them in memory, but I can often hear their real footsteps as they come towards me, climb the stairs, and knock on my door.This gradually became the beginning of my uneasiness. When my fictional characters became more and more real, I couldn't help wondering whether my real reality was being fictionalized.

Yu Hua Beijing October 11, 1998