Iāll never get over that it took just one strangers small moment of kindness to change Xie Lians path. All of the suffering he went through, all of the despair, the disillusionment, all not forgotten or even forgiven, but reconciled. All because one person, not Hua Cheng, not family, not his ex friends, not his people, reached back to him when heād been starting to lower his own hand in defeat. Itās possibly my favorite and most meaningful part of TGCF for me, because for me it stops being about these two guys who were meant for each other and were impossibly lucky enough to have found each other, and becomes a story about a person who had lost his way in his world so thoroughly that he lost himself, only to be found and put back on his feet by that same world that he mourned so terribly. His world stops being a concept of scale of numbers, black and white, good and bad, and becomes about the individual. What he can do to help individuals, the connections he can make with them. Their histories, their names, their faces. Inside each person is itās own world. Heād been knocked off his pedestal, and the fall hurt to the point of breaking. But now that heās risen to his feet, heās able to look all these people in the eye, and theyāre so much taller than heād seen before.
