This book includes Wang Zengqi's two novels — The Love Story of a Young Monk and Special Gift. The Love Story of a Young Monk tells the budding love between a 13-year-old monk, Minghai and a village girl, Ying. Minghai was taken by his uncle to a temple to be a monk because his family was too poor to make a living. Since Ying lived near the temple, the two of them often played together and became close friends. They did knitting, planted rice seedlings, weeded, pumped water, harvested and threshed rice, and watched the rice on the threshing ground together. The love expressed in the story was neither intense nor complicated. Instead, Minghai and Ying developed a love that felt fresh and pure in ordinary life. It is a ballad of a healthy and joyful way of living in accordance with nature. Special Gift was published in 1980 and was based on an old manuscript Wang wrote in 1948. It was considered a comeback and something radically new and fresh for Wang when he had almost stopped writing for over three decades. Written in poetic yet plain language, this story depicts scenes of a small town in northern Jiangsu, and portrays the life of some diligent, thrifty and humble folks. The book is infused with simple harmonious joy, and it also contains the writer's reflections on the meaning of life.
