Trees are like this

This book is an essay collection by novelist Pai Hsien-yung, dedicated to his close friend Wang Kuo-hsiang. In the first section, which features articles commemorating a dear friend, the author's sincere and moving affection leaps off the page. Among these, the essay "So it is with trees" uses a calm and restrained tone to recount the story of a close friend's illness, medical treatment, and eventual passing, deeply touching readers and earning widespread acclaim.

The second section compiles records of the author's recent lectures and interviews, offering a glimpse into the master's literary views and personal experiences. The third section showcases the author's concern for and attention to the issue of AIDS. The author's lyrical prose is elegant and well-structured, with a rich and enduring charm; his argumentative writing is incisive and substantial, demonstrating an innate mastery that should not be missed.

Author: Pai Hsien-yung, originally from Guilin, Guangxi. He graduated from the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature at National Taiwan University, then went to the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop in the United States to study creative writing, earning a master's degree before teaching at the University of California. He founded the magazine "Modern Literature" and has authored short story collections "Lonely Seventeen" and "Taipei People," the novel "Crystal Boys," and essay collections "Star Coffee Shop," "Suddenly Looking Back," and "The Sixth Finger." Pai Hsien-yung absorbed Western modern literary writing techniques, integrating them into traditional Chinese expressive forms, depicting the stories and lives of people during times of old and new transitions, imbued with a sense of historical rise and fall and the vicissitudes of human existence.