"Flower-Plucking Records": Remembering the Forgotten Li Xiaomei-Immortal Road as I Saw It

"Remembering the Forgotten Li Xiaomei-Immortal Road as I Saw It"

Green Plums, Warm Wine, a Touch of Chinese, January 8, 2007

Ping Chao's note: This review was written by a writer friend whose work was titled Yin Yang You. It contained quite a bit of excessive praise that left me thoroughly embarrassed when I read it. Whatever the case, such an enthusiastic, positive review was one source of motivation for my writing and a tremendous encouragement to me. Thank you!

Until I read Immortal Road, I never knew what a classic was.

I had always thought Jade Dynasty stood at the pinnacle of immortal fantasy. Then I encountered another kind of novel, Dust Along the Immortal Road, with its understated style, and somehow fell in love with it.

I had always liked scenes that soared into the heavens and plunged into the earth, scenes that made the heart pound. Everything else got little more than a cursory glance. If nothing caught my interest, I tossed it aside, and sometimes, out of boredom, even left a reply: "Boring. Terrible."

Later, perhaps I had seen too many of those scenes, or they had repeated themselves too often. Anyone would eventually grow tired of them. But after that, I could no longer find anything I could lose myself in. To put it plainly, I had run out of things to read.

Finally, by chance, I took my first look at Dust Along the Immortal Road. I only read the first volume then, and had just one thought: This author doesn't know how to hook readers, but his command of prose is remarkable. I did not think I had ever seen an author whose prose surpassed Immortal Road, though its handling of the plot seemed somewhat weaker. That was what I thought at