Love Must Not Be Forgotten By Shanshan Analysis

These two quotes serve to argue that one should marry for happiness and to remember that love must not be forgotten. Zhang makes Shanshan a character who can live life fully without marriage, also a role model who shows that it is better to marry for love than to let a loveless marriage tie a person down, which could lead to a miserable life.
In this story, Zhang reiterates that love must not be forgotten, that without it, a marriage would be mutually unfulfilling and unhappy. Because reciprocated love was only allowed in marriage, Zhong Yu had to hide that she is in love with her coworker, a fact that she attempted to carry to her grave. She claims that she can never experience “that happiness” because she will always regret her decision in marrying the wrong person for the wrong reasons.
Because Zhong Yu cannot be with the man she loves, she turns to her Chekov volumes and pours all her affection into them since her lover gifted them to her. This leads
Everyone around her knew that her husband was long deceased, that none of her relatives had died recently, so who was she mourning for? In Chinese culture, the sash was only worn for the death of relatives and one’s spouse, but Zhong Yu wore it for her secret forbidden lover. Even after his death, she continued to write in her diary as passionately if not more than before. In her last message to him, she tells him to wait for her, that they “need never be parted again or keep at a distance for fear of spoiling someone else's life” (Zhang 185). Shanshan felt happy for her mother, that she found true love and died with no regrets, and she feels strong enough to refuse societal pressures of getting married, to wait until she has found the right person or not marry at all. She thinks back to her mother and her lover and how they have finally reunited in