A bold Beijing–London quartet of four novellas traces love, desire, motherhood, exile, and selfhood across cultures, generations, and political histories. Moving between China and the UK, these interwoven narratives follow women and men negotiating the legacies of the Cultural Revolution, the pressures of modern urban life, and the search for autonomy in intimate relationships. With lucid, unsentimental prose and a sharp eye for emotional detail, the author probes friendship, marriage, parenthood, and artistic ambition, asking what it means to choose one’s own path—even when that choice feels as radical as becoming a tree. Translated from the Chinese by Callisto Searle, this quartet brings contemporary Chinese literary sensibilities into conversation with European settings, creating a poignant, cosmopolitan portrait of people caught between duty and desire, tradition and reinvention.