I started writing this book in April 2024. As I mentioned in my note when it went premium, I had just had two books flop in a row and two more openings rejected. I dashed off this third opening and submitted it without much thought, never expecting it to be accepted.
I certainly never expected so many readers to like it once it was published. The numbers were good, and it received most of Qidian's promotional placements (of course, that was nothing compared with the big-name authors; it never got things like app launch-screen ads). That was a wonderful surprise.
It was even adapted into quite a few Manju productions, another unexpected delight.
This was my first novel to reach over seven million Chinese characters. That went beyond what you imagined, and beyond my own original expectations too.
Originally, I only wanted to turn some of our childhood memories of Southern and Northern Xinjiang in the 1980s into a written record through fiction. I never expected it to turn into a "chronicle-style" novel as it unfolded.
Twenty years passed in the novel, while two years and two months passed in real life: 792 days and 7.26 million Chinese characters. Although I didn't quite average ten thousand characters a day, I wasn't far off, and I was quite happy with that pace.
Quite a few people said the later parts were padded. In fact, I also wanted to cover it all in one leap, but I had grown so used to writing in this "chronicle" style that leaving some of each year's events inadequately covered made it feel as though something was missing.
Perhaps my writing skills weren't quite there, and that, along with some other reasons, was why it didn't turn out the way everyone wanted.
Here, I would like