Sun Li, the protagonist of the novel, is a bestseller writer and his wife Xizi is the head of a university library. Their son Sun Yichi has been rebellious and unruly since childhood, remaining distant from his mother. Afraid of the exhaustion of his creativity, the middle-aged Sun Li begins to question the meaning of his writings. He thus suffers from serious insomnia and anxiety. Just at this time, his wife Xizi begins to have her own amorous secrets. Sun Li also finds himself unable to leave Li Qiao, director of New Evening Paper. These affairs have pushed their seemingly peaceful family life to the verge of collapse. The love calendar refers to the calendar that belongs only to Sun Li and his wife Xizi for their love. But such turbulent life experience has caused them to temporarily betray their love calendar … They eventually begin again the first year of their love calendar. Through the depiction of the love, marriage, and family life of Sun Li and Xizi, the novel becomes a retrospection of the spiritual tendency, emotional development and love pattern of the Chinese over the past 20 to 30 years. It also vividly outlines the changes of social mores in China over the past years in a figurative way. Even amorous entanglements are not devoid of elements of the officialdom, with honest and corrupt officials still on the scene. According to Wang Yuewen, this is an element of reality rather than of officialdom – “after all nobody can live in a vacuum space”.
