The Right Way to Watch a Meteor Shower

Emerging novelist Chung Min-Jui, who began to make a name for himself in literary circles while attending Affiliated Senior High School of National Taiwan Normal University, became the youngest recipient of the Lin Rung-San Short Story Award at the age of twenty-one. In just a few short years, he has received numerous literary accolades. His debut collection compiles the精华 of his past works, attempting to explore gender and self-identity through the romantic challenges of heterosexual and homosexual love.

The book's table of contents is arranged by age, showcasing the gradual changes and growth in the lives of boys, adolescents, and men. The protagonists in the book often dream. The boy in "One Morning at Ten," the opening story, wants to use his blanket as a barrier to end nightmares related to his mother, while the world he "wakes up" to is filled with lost ideals and the sorrow of romance. The seventeen-year-old boy wishes to remain forever in a beautiful fantasy and never awaken. "The Swimming Pool" won the Lin Rung-San Literary Award for Short Stories. The ebb and flow of the water in the pool metaphorically represents the transformations of a nine-year-old boy, an eighteen-year-old adolescent, and a thirty-six-year-old man at different stages, as well as the individual's changing position in society and family. A twenty-three-year-old college graduate declares that "The Correct Way to Watch a Meteor Shower" is when wishes won't come true if you don't make them in time. He constantly reminisces about the beautiful dream of watching a meteor shower with his lover, superimposing the images of wet dreams and meteors because both represent unfulfilled desires and the traces left by dreams. A gay man nearing thirty takes his current lover to Paris to meet his first love, together admiring the sunrise and sunset during the "Magic Hour," no longer feeling sad about the fleeting nature of beautiful things in the world.