The Necessity of Old-Fashioned Dating (Second Edition)

Take me out, ask me out the old-fashioned way. After I refuse you twice, I'll say yes the third time.
　　Don't ping me on MSN, don't leave Facebook messages, and absolutely no WhatsApp messages asking if I'm free later.
　　We need to take a walk, a very, very long walk. We only truly talk when we're walking, old-fashioned talk.
　　Tonight, we understand cunning because we are in love, old-fashioned.

　　Bitter hesitation, sweet vexation. Lee Wei-ching's realistic love letters pierce the micro-universe of a young girl's soul.

　　Like a sorceress's summoning, or the whispered secrets of a storyteller in One Thousand and One Nights, it contains the pleasure of a novel's plot, the original meaning and lingering charm of poetry's "heartfelt expression," and the flavor of people's various predicaments in contemporary life, small dream-like inversions, joys and sorrows of passing time.

　　Regarding partial damage, temporary disability, selective defects, and random dream-induced amnesia... a post-adolescent episodic drama about an old female soul hopelessly pursuing and losing love. Precisely because she feigns strength, she must be stronger; because she is endearingly cute, she must be cuter; because she believes in beauty, she must be more beautiful.

　　As if each is a chronicle of foreseen harm (but in fact, it's truly harmless, isn't it? I love myself so cautiously, so I practice self-restraint), tiny novels, tiny poems, tiny people, those stories whose distance from true physical youth is already very far, stories of an ageless, immortal heart of love and hate, despite being intermittent and fleeting, flickering and reviving, always approaching: forming winding bends in the river of the heart, a shaded alley beside a rich and bright main street, and even more so, a wonderful melody that breathes and undulates with every moment of genuine emotion—either light and free or halting and lingering, like a sacrificial movement or a casual ditty, all softly whispered and sung as the personal thoughts of the reader in that moment alone, a nightingale belonging only to the king, once sung, it is forever lost, and even if understood, it is wished to be misunderstood, those both clamorous and silent ventriloquist messages, and the beautiful salvation that breaks hearts all too easily.

Media Recommendations

　　Yang Chao – Foreword
　　Wang Chien-chuang, Chi Wei-jan, Chen Fang-ming, Chen Hui-chiao, Yang Tse, Lo Yi-chun, Liu Ke-hsiang – recommended on their shoulders

　　Wang Chien-chuang: Few writers are so captivating, captivating in a way that is both understood and not understood, indistinguishable between truth and falsehood.
　　Chi Wei-jan: Wei-ching's words are like a soft blade, wielded with fluidity and power, yet capable of inflicting damage.
　　Chen Fang-ming: Fast, fierce, and accurate are Lee Wei-ching's擅長 (mastered) techniques, bringing readers to the scene of immediate action.
　　Chen Hui-chiao: This book contains deep, dense longing, like that timeless classic blues rock song "Black Magic Woman."
　　Yang Chao: In a sense, what Lee Wei-ching writes is precisely "the ultimate elegy for old-fashioned love."
　　Yang Tse: Romantic survivors will carry that mark for a lifetime, saying: if you don't love very, very much, then don't love...
　　Lo Yi-chun: Lee Wei-ching's storytelling magic can simultaneously bestow darkness and brilliance, nostalgia and resentment, warmth and coldness, like "The Fifth Element" that can summon the entire universe.
　　Liu Ke-hsiang: Others travel with companions, she only brings herself.

　　*Includes an elegy by Lee Wei-ching's niece, Lee Shang-yun, titled "Taking up the Pen, Tracing the Outline of Love."

2025-09-01

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