"Water Mangcao" is a story in the film, not a well-known story such as Xiaoqian, Huapi, Zhizhi, and Taoist Laoshan. It is not in the TV series in the 1980s, and it is not in most of the selected vernacular versions. During the SARS period in 2003, I passed the recommendation test and got the admission notice early.There is always the smell of 84 disinfectant in the house, and the outside is also tense.From May to the end of August, it was the most leisure time in my life. I had nothing to do every day, my mood went up and down, and I was myself besides myself in my life.It was in that state that I read "Water Mangcao" for the first time. After reading it, I finally knew what I was—a ghost living in the water mangcao.I am between the Yin and Yang realms, I cannot transcend life, I can only quietly wait for the next person who accidentally eats this poisonous weed to replace me.

When I was in high school, I ate water mangcao by mistake and was stuck in the middle, neither heads nor tails. It was a period of days when I was soaked in the water, and the sun had to go around a few bends to reach it. I squinted my eyes and looked at the shore, not knowing when I would be able to go up. During those days, after I moved to Beijing, it gradually turned into a dry water mangosteen, just like the one in Chen Yan’s diary in the novel.The cells in the human body are always dying and giving birth to new ones. It is said that the human body undergoes a major blood change every five years. Are we still ourselves?After going ashore, the damp feeling is getting farther and farther away from me. I no longer have to get up at 5:30 every day, no longer have to take the bus of such and such a road every day, no longer have to hide earphones in my sleeves, and no longer have to buy Hot dry noodles in a plastic bag for breakfast, no longer having to sit by the flower bed for dinner... I began to happily adapt to my new life and meet new friends. My atmosphere used to be water, but now it’s just light air .

Even if it goes into the water again, it's not the same water... So I picked up the pen and tried to record that underwater life.Back and forth, years and years of change, the story survived.In the text you are about to read, the lives of countless people are ambushed. We have all been entrenched underwater, and we are more or less similar. Tahara March 2007