She smiled and wished me a happy New Year, then disappeared at the intersection.

Leaving me alone, staring blankly at the wooden plaque.

What should I write in such a small space?

In the second edition’s afterword, I went to look at the cards others had written on the shelf, and found that the wishes of Japanese people weren’t much different from ours—hoping for a safe delivery for a wife about to give birth, praying to get into Tokyo University in next year’s college entrance exam, asking the gods for a good job upon graduation...

Most of these are things that can be achieved through one’s own efforts. Writing them on the card is both a prayer and a form of self-encouragement.

Such wishes are just a way to tell the gods: I believe in myself, I only hope that when I work hard enough, you will let fate treat me kindly.

So what about me?

What is something I truly long for, can work hard enough for, but don’t know if fate will be kind to me?

Of these three points, the ones I’m least certain about are actually the first two.

What do I want? Do I really desire it enough to give everything for it?

When fate is kind to me, will I be able to accept it calmly?

December 31, 2008, I was twenty-one.

I was born in the north, studied in Beijing, and went to Tokyo as an exchange student. I attended a good school, and in the future I might become a finance or accounting professional, an office worker, breaking into the adult world on my own without any family wealth, barely earning myself a house and a city residency, carving out a small place to stand, raising children, leaving behind many regrets, but also feeling comforted that I didn’t miss any step of a “normal life.”

This way, even if I can’t become someone rich and powerful, at least my parents can be proud when chatting with others that their daughter has checked off all the main boxes on the life checklist.

“Others” have long drawn the boundaries of life’s exam with worldly eyes, and we work hard to answer within this question bank, because only passing is worthy of our parents.

Thinking this way, there are so many things I could write: parents’ health, friends’ safety, academic progress, finding a good job, marrying someone tall, rich, and handsome, making a fortune, traveling the world...

On the surface, my desires are so ordinary and sincere, just like everyone else’s, covering every base, so crowded that the “ema” can’t hold them all, and I almost want to write “see reverse side.”

But the moment I held the pen, I knew these weren’t what I truly wanted.

Suddenly, I thought of Marianne.

Marianne is not a person, it’s not even a specific reference, but in my heart, these three characters are clearer than anything.

Marianne is a spell.

In fifth grade, our school had a very irresponsible health teacher. She was too lazy to teach, so sometimes she would just sit at the podium and ramble about TV shows and movies she’d watched, mesmerizing the class.

But I thought her stories were terrible.

Until one day, she finally finished her endless TV drama, and with nothing left to say, she suddenly asked if any students had seen an interesting movie or story to share with the class.

I mustered up the courage to raise my hand.

But I didn’t tell any movie or TV show I’d seen. I made up a story on the spot about a pure white bird that foretold death and an old educated youth with a heart attack.

I was eleven then. The term “educated youth” was taught to me by my grandfather, who had died of a heart attack. I didn’t even know exactly what an educated youth was.

That story stunned everyone. As I spoke each sentence, I didn’t know what the next would be, but the act itself has fascinated me ever since.

The most captivating thing in this world is people themselves. Everyone has a story.

Anyone can have a story.

I was the storyteller, yet I didn’t know what kind of story I would tell. Before I amazed others, I amazed myself.

In the second edition’s afterword, when my classmates all looked at me with fascinated eyes, I felt like I was the king of the world.

Then the king of the world stepped down from the podium, returned to reality, and became an unhappy child again. Outwardly obedient and well-behaved, inwardly precocious and rebellious, resisting my environment but unable to escape, not even having a clear idea of running away.

The night I told that story, I went to a dinner with my parents. At the table, the adults kept bragging and chatting, and when they ran out of things to say, they’d compare their children. The restaurant TV was playing “The Lion King 3,” and I was completely absorbed.

Timon and Pumbaa were always searching for their utopian paradise, which they called “Hakuna Matata” (Swahili for “no worries”). I watched a warthog and a meerkat searching for their “Hakuna Matata” on TV, while a group of drunken adults at the round table bragged, gossiped, and compared wealth. Their narrow perspectives and values were the ground beneath my feet, growing into a canopy that blocked the sky, with everyone sitting under its shade, never wanting to look into the distance.

At that moment, I suddenly felt that I needed a spell like that too.

When neighbors gossiped about whose daughter married a bureau chief and bought a BMW, saying “she finally has a good future,”

when relatives said the greatest success in life is to earn a lot, marry well, and rule your own little hill... I had to remember to keep chanting this spell in my heart. It would be my barrier.

I know that having money, a house, and a car can be happiness, and that’s a good life for some people. But I’m afraid that, over time, being constantly exposed to these highly praised “good lives” of others, they’ll become my subconscious template. My wings haven’t grown yet, I can’t fly; but what’s truly frightening is that when my wings do grow, I’ll have forgotten I wanted to fly.

So I need a spell, one that doesn’t have to be complicated, doesn’t need others to understand, but as long as I keep chanting it, I won’t lose myself.

I don’t remember why I chose the three characters “Marianne.” I guess it doesn’t matter. Even if, much later, I no longer like these three characters as my tastes change, they’re still engraved in my mind.

Zoe Young has a little heroine in her heart who never left. And Marianne is the person I want to become inside. At first, it was just a vague shadow, but later it became flesh and blood, and as I grew, the meaning behind these three characters became richer.

Marianne is a little girl who tells stories.

Marianne is the distance, is freedom, is endless surprise, is a future that can never be defined.

I’m actually very shy about describing this “Marianne” that I can’t really explain and that you could easily misunderstand. Looking back at what I just wrote above, I realize my description of the concept of Marianne has completely gone off track.

But there’s nothing I can do, I tried my best.

It was never meant for others to understand. It’s for me to understand myself.

In all the joys and sorrows, persistence and giving up, every choice in my life, I silently chant these three characters in my heart.

It’s the label imprinted on my heart.

So please let me become Marianne.

I want to become Marianne.

…………

I stood in the snow facing the wooden plaque, traveling back from the podium and the dinner table, from the classroom at age eleven, words and emotions colliding in my mind, and my pen wrote without hesitation: “Dear gods: I will become Marianne.”

I will become Marianne.

I don’t ask for your help. I only hope that when I peel away all the layers of desire, you can see my true ambition. You are a small Kṣitigarbha Bodhisattva, always sitting here, having seen skyscrapers rise and fall, having read countless wish cards, watching all kinds of desires pass by on the street, seeing people meet and part, gain and lose.

In the second edition’s afterword, you have witnessed so much, I hope you will witness me.

December 31, 2008 passed just like that.

In December 2009, Hello, Old Times was published for the first time.

From December 2009 to 2012, it went through several reprints and new editions, and I also went through legal disputes because of it.