Quote by Zhang Ailing: “To live a life of joy and happiness, you must be a little bit mad.”

This quote suggests that true happiness often requires stepping outside conventional thinking. Being "a little bit mad" means having the courage to be unconventional, to break rules, and embrace joy in an unexpected way.

Set in Hong Kong during the Japanese occupation, the novel explores characters seeking love and meaning amidst a collapsing world, often requiring unconventional choices.

Chinese writer and novelist of the mid-twentieth century, considered one of the greatest writers in modern Chinese literature. Born in Shanghai in 1920 to a once-wealthy family in decline, her fiction captured the texture of urban Chinese life under colonial and wartime conditions with psychological precision. Her novella Love in a Fallen City and the novel The Rice-Sprout Song are among her most celebrated works.