Gou’er Drifting from a Boat is a novel about growth. In the small neighborhood with the name “The Yard of Phoenix Tree”, a group of children whose parents are middle school teachers and quite an ordinary girl become good friends and they try all the games under the sun. The reader may join the group, among which there is the clever Xiao’ai, the learned Fang Mingliang, the noble Bunny, the naughty Xiao Shan and Xiao Shui, the fairy-like Little Sister and the hero Gou’er, the very ordinary girl who has high aspiration but bad fortune. With this group the reader may go scooping for fish with a net, catching cicadas with something sticky, secretly taking books out of school libraries, reading the comic strips A Dream of Red Mansions without parents’ permission, writing letters directly to the Great Leader Mao Zedong, looking small before a beautiful coryphée, feeling nervous at the bodily changes at teenage, tasting the vague love between teenagers and lots of other things. Reading the novel is like viewing an ancient film, offering the reader not only great fun and joy but also melancholy.