The Boy Here 《此间的少年》is just a frivolous dance of my youth. Before I forget it, I copied the past with my mood at that time, leaving it for my friends and myself many years later.
Introduction:
“The Youth Here” is an online novel that Jiang Nan started writing in 2001 and officially published in 2002. It is also his debut work. He wrote the novel based on his experience as a student at Peking University.
The novel uses characters from Jin Yong’s novels as pseudonyms and is set in the Jiayou period of the Song Dynasty. It tells a story of a familiar university life. The story takes place in “Bianjing University” which is modeled after Peking University. All the characters in the story are the main characters in Jin Yong’s martial arts novels.
Jiang Nan once said: “All the names used in Here are from Mr. Jin Yong’s fifteen martial arts novels…
However, no matter what the names of the characters in this story are, they are no longer the familiar heroes and heroines of the rivers and lakes. They are closer to the young friends who once appeared around me, and Here is also a brand new story.”
In 2009, The Youth Here was selected as one of the top ten outstanding works in the “Ten Years of Online Literature” event.
Plot Synopsis
The story takes place in a parallel time and space, which is the Bianjing University during the Jiayou period of the Song Dynasty. Six freshmen (Guo Jing, Linghu Chong, Yang Kang, Duan Yu, Ouyang Ke, and Lin Pingzhi) become classmates in the same dormitory. Fate, like an invisible thread, connects them together.
An accidental bicycle accident made Guo Jing meet Huang Rong, a famous beauty on campus. Huang Rong, who was smart and beautiful, was a typical rich lady, and the object of pursuit by countless people.
However, to everyone’s surprise, she actually favored Guo Jing, who had nothing to offer except diligence and honesty. With constant fetching of food and water, self-study, eating buns, and the encouragement of brothers, the most incompatible love in the history of Bian University gradually matured.
Meanwhile, Linghu Chong, who was full of ambition, experienced his first major setback in college life. Hoping to show his talent, he was assigned a trivial and boring position – “class monitor”. As a new official, he encountered various difficulties at the first class dance.
Fortunately, his senior brother Qiao Feng helped him out and solved many problems for him. As his experience in doing things gradually increased, Linghu Chong found that showing his talent was not as easy as he imagined.
Qiao Feng is a senior in the fourth year of college, a basketball expert, and has a good relationship with this dormitory. He met his junior sister Ah Zhu at a dance, and later became her boyfriend.
When he is with these young people, Qiao Feng sometimes gives them some advice from a veteran, and sometimes he is reminded of some past events from his own era.
Yang Kang and Mu Nianci have been classmates since middle school. Mu Nianci has always been in love with Yang Kang, but she dared not say it out loud. She just stayed quietly by Yang Kang’s side, reminding him what he should do.
Yang Kang avoided Mu Nianci, fearing her nagging. At the class reunion, Mu Nianci, who had dressed up carefully at Huang Rong’s suggestion, still failed to attract Yang Kang’s attention, but attracted another suitor. When she finally made up her mind, the diary that recorded everything was lost again.
Time passed, and the boys spent their first year in college. This summer, senior brother Qiao Feng was about to graduate.
On the night of the farewell wine, Qiao Feng smoked his last cigarette and thought of a girl named Kang Min. The wine was finished, the people were gone, and even the last old book had been given away. Qiao Feng’s back disappeared in a taxi.
Linghu Chong stood at the empty school gate and watched Qiao Feng leave, but soon new young men would come from afar.
Version Differences
“The Boy in This Place” has been published four times so far, with five versions including the online serial version. The main differences are between the online serial version, the first edition and the second edition. The third and fourth editions are not much different from the second edition.
Jiang Nan has had the habit of revising his novels while serializing them since the beginning of The Youth Here, and would drastically modify the content for the sake of publishing the physical book, which resulted in a large difference between the serialized version of his novels and the physical book version.
When the online serialization of The Youth Here was not yet completed, Jiang Nan stopped updating and began to prepare for publication, so the online serialized version is actually incomplete.
The difference between the first and second editions is that the second edition deleted the “Duan Yu/Wang Yuyan” part, which was planned to be included in the sequel “The Young Man Here 2”.
“The Young Man Here 2” was also serialized in “Jiuzhou Fantasy” magazine for 12 chapters, but with Jiang Nan leaving “Jiuzhou Fantasy”, the completion of “The Young Man Here 2” is no longer in sight.
This article is quoted from Moegirl Encyclopedia
