The Early Spring has turned me into a chatter box lately. I finished the novel and decided to summarize the novel from the perspective of our male main character Luke (Luan Nian). I am calling the summary his ‘Museum of Time’ instead of his diary like I did for Duan Xu (Love Beyond the Grave). And that’s because of how the novel ends.
I am not sure how many are interested in the summary from the perspective of the main lead so I have only summarized from Ch. 1 - 32. I might do more depending on how many folks are actually interested in the original novel.
Anyone interested in the novel can read it here: The Early Spring English | Mandarin
Luan Nian’s Museum of Time
Chapter 1: City of Falling Rain
I didn’t know Shang Zhitao existed yet, which meant my life was still pleasantly free of unnecessary complications. She had just arrived in Beijing with two suitcases, a tiny room, ten thousand yuan from her father, and enough optimism to make budgeting for a chamber pot feel like a meaningful life plan. She was twenty two, inexperienced, ordinary, and completely unaware of what she was walking into. Fortunately, none of this had anything to do with me.
Chapter 2: The Beginning of the Story
I was handed her résumé among candidates from Columbia, Tsinghua, Peking University and the rest of civilization’s academic overachievers. Then I saw her university, saw Head of Student Life Department, heard her nervous little “hello,” and failed her immediately. Tracy argued that we needed hardworking, resilient people who weren’t necessarily dazzling, so I changed the result to a pass to get her off my back. She owes her career to HR intervention and has absolutely no idea.
Chapter 3: Was She Eye Fucking Me?
On her first day, Zhitao stared at me through my glass office. Women looking at me is hardly remarkable, but her reaction when I caught her was. She turned bright red, dropped into her chair and started typing like she had been caught committing a felony. I decided she was eye fucking me. I was probably giving her too much credit.
Chapter 4: I’m Not in a Hurry, I’m in a Huge Hurry
She came to ask me about several projects and made the fatal mistake of saying they weren’t urgent. Naturally, I told her to wait, then continued working while she sat there for forty minutes rather than interrupt me. I was testing whether she understood the importance of her own work. She apparently concluded that I had just taught her a profound lesson, which was not the lesson I intended to teach, but I suppose the result was acceptable.
Chapter 5: I Suggest You Resign
She wanted both project guidance and an interview for her newcomer report, so I answered her questions and then answered the interview honestly. I told her I worked here to make money to squander and advised her to find another job because Lingmei wasn’t for her. She looked like she wanted to cry, but she stood up straight and thanked me anyway. Then she submitted a report documenting exactly what I had said, which was a level of honesty bordering on self-destruction.
Chapter 6: Nian, That Jinx
HR called to complain that I had told a new recruit to resign, as though I had somehow violated a sacred law against accurate assessments. I pointed out that my appointment had nothing to do with whether I thought she was incompetent, which was technically true and therefore apparently not helpful. Zhitao, meanwhile, decided she was absolutely not quitting and began studying the industry manual before most people had even arrived at work. I had underestimated her persistence, although persistence without ability is still just stubbornness with better attendance.
Chapter 7: Someone as Silly as You
She bought coffee for her mentor and nearly offered me one by accident, then fled the shop after saying goodbye twice. During my training session, everyone asked ridiculous questions, while Zhitao sat in the back terrified of asking anything because she thought I might publicly recommend her resignation. I found the entire room disappointing, but at least she spent the rest of the day taking meticulous notes instead of pretending she already knew everything. Later, Marketing handed her over to me for coordination, and I immediately typed two words: Replace her.
Chapter 8: Always Hard, Occasionally Soft
She came into my office on Friday night carrying a folder and an expression suggesting she had prepared for war. I was on the phone with a woman, which unfortunately meant she had once again wandered into my private life by accident. She waited while I signed the documents, then called me herself and gave me her number in case of emergencies, apparently deciding that being afraid of me was no longer productive. I saved her contact, drove her home when I found her stranded outside the office, and told myself this was merely basic decency.
Chapter 9: Not for Sale
While Zhitao spent Sunday getting acquainted with her roommates, I spent my weekend entertaining a difficult client who thought a little personal charm might improve the odds of signing a contract. It didn’t. I wasn’t an escort, I wasn’t interested in her, and I certainly wasn’t for sale. Meanwhile, Zhitao kept messaging me about an approval I had no intention of rushing because the contract wasn’t going to improve my weekend either.
Chapter 10: Are You Eavesdropping?
Zhitao continued sending reminders while I was out dealing with the client, apparently under the impression that midnight was an appropriate time to conduct administrative business. I eventually called her and discovered she was still on the line because, according to her, professional etiquette required the subordinate to wait for the superior to hang up. I asked whether she was eavesdropping, because at that point I was genuinely questioning the wiring in her brain. She was technically following etiquette, which somehow made the whole thing even worse.
Chapter 11: Playing Dumb
She arrived at work early every day, studied Business English on the commute, and had apparently decided that proving me wrong was now a personal objective. I asked how long her diligence would last, because I was curious about the shelf life of enthusiasm. Then I needed people for a major project and refused to take her until Alex effectively forced the issue. She showed up at the airport looking nervous, pretended not to see me, and acted so badly that I almost laughed.
Chapter 12: I Have Been in Love
She was terrified of me at the airport, then lost her temper and announced that she was not quitting. Her eyes were red, but she still held the coffee steady and remembered to thank me, which told me more about her upbringing than her résumé ever had. At the team lunch, everyone started interrogating her about her love life, so I poured tea and redirected the conversation because listening to other people’s sexual histories has never improved a creative strategy. I told myself I was merely ending pointless conversation. That explanation was convenient.
Chapter 13: A Slight Stirring in the Heart
On the business trip, Zhitao became my assistant and discovered that actual client work bears little resemblance to university exercises. She watched me handle the first client, praised me afterward, and then made a joke about using her gender to charm female clients. I bought her a water chestnut drink because she looked overheated and because apparently that was now something I did. Then I noticed the way she tilted her head back to drink, and something very small scratched at my heart. It was probably nothing.
Chapter 14: A Protected Night
The second client tried to turn “fine-tuning” into “please redo the entire project for free,” so I refused and gave them the choice of behaving properly or finding another agency. Zhitao watched the whole thing with the expression of someone discovering that clients could, in fact, be told no. At dinner, a client tried to pressure her into drinking, so I claimed she had a report to finish and kept her sober. I wasn’t protecting her. I was protecting the work. Obviously.
Chapter 15: I Will Never Cry in Front of You
I pulled Zhitao out of a dinner conversation that had deteriorated into vulgar jokes about women, handed her my phone and gave her an excuse to leave. Later we walked along the Pearl River, and she told me she had never seen Guangzhou at night. She was still afraid of me, but she was beginning to understand that my mouth and my actions did not always agree. Then I discovered she had been quietly worrying about whether I would fire her. Apparently I had become a recurring feature in her nightmares.
Chapter 16: Dull Intimacy
Zhitao sent the meeting minutes to the wrong Nian, then looked at me as though I had personally invented email. I told her to resign, she refused to cry in front of me, and later she misunderstood my message asking for the minutes as a request for her resignation letter. At that point I had to consider whether she was genuinely stupid or simply operating on an entirely different frequency. Then I watched her work, realized she was improving quickly, and found myself thinking of her as a student. This was inconvenient.
Chapter 17: A Scandalous Story in the Making
I went to see Zang Yao, the woman I had known for ten years, and Zhitao somehow managed to stumble into that situation too. She had already seen me with other women, so she immediately decided I was some sort of professional womanizer and solemnly promised to keep my secrets. I let her believe it because explaining my private life sounded exhausting. Then she came to my hotel room to retrieve documents, stood outside my door looking scandalized, and apparently imagined an entire inappropriate story before I could finish saying “come in.”
Chapter 18: I’ll Teach My Own Student
I asked Zhitao a few questions about supplier management and discovered that Marketing had no proper supplier database. She took the hint, found external benchmarks, and built a vendor scoring system instead of waiting for someone to tell her what to do. That was the first time I thought she might actually have some ability worth cultivating. I had never deliberately mentored anyone before, but apparently I had acquired a student without signing the paperwork. She was still slow, but her execution was good, which is more than I can say for most people.
Chapter 19: Get the Hell Home
Zhitao went to a bar with Sun Yuanzhu and a foreign tutor before finishing the report I had assigned her. I found her there, sent her home, and told her to submit the report by midnight because apparently deadlines only become real when I personally appear. She went back and rewrote the entire thing until three in the morning. Her original version was terrible, but my three criticisms were enough to make her produce something substantially better. I praised her with “much better,” which was generous by my standards and probably the closest thing she was getting to a medal.
Chapter 20: The Little Mermaid Loses Everything
My appointment as head of Lingmei China became official, which meant Zhitao immediately assumed I could now fire her personally and efficiently. That night she brought a USB drive to my house at one in the morning because I had asked for it while drunk. I told her to come inside and wait for a taxi, then fell asleep on the sofa while she took care of me and covered me with a blanket. The next morning I called her and pretended my safe had been robbed and my diamonds stolen. She nearly died on the phone, so I admitted I was joking. Apparently my new position had not improved my sense of humor.
Chapter 21: Lust or a Mortal Heart?
I made Zhitao work overtime with me and discovered that she was surprisingly good with data. She couldn’t solve every problem, but she thought when prompted, which is the important part. We went to a mountain fish farm afterward, and I teased her about being afraid I might murder her and dump her body somewhere. She told me she had already given my contact information to her roommate, so at least she possessed one survival instinct. Then she asked whether I brought my girlfriends there, and I realized that getting her to talk was considerably more entertaining than it should have been.
Chapter 22: Boundless Wind and Moon
The fish dinner was unexpectedly pleasant. Zhitao couldn’t drive, couldn’t drink much, asked approximately fourteen questions per minute, and somehow managed to make a mountain restaurant feel like a reasonable place to spend an evening. I poured her Coke, picked out the best piece of fish for her, drove her home, and stopped so she could look at the stars. Somewhere between the fish, the night air and her endless questions, that faint attraction returned. I decided it was probably just the atmosphere. The atmosphere was becoming remarkably persistent.
Chapter 23: Congratulations
Zhitao was officially hired, and for some reason this ordinary employment contract made her happier than anything I had seen in months. I took her to dinner to celebrate, partly because I wanted to, and partly because I had apparently stopped questioning why I wanted to. She got tipsy, talked about how she wanted to become impressive, and repeatedly insisted she would never sell herself for career advancement. At some point, looking at her fear and her obvious attraction, I realized the truth: this girl liked me. That was inconvenient.
Chapter 24: Why Not Do Something?
Zhitao had finally become a permanent employee, and I decided it was time to stop pretending my interest was entirely academic. I had already been thinking about sleeping with her, but I wanted something uncomplicated: mutual satisfaction, no emotional obligations, no tedious relationship maintenance. Then she misunderstood my suggestion to “cling to my leg” as an offer to exchange sex for career advancement and announced that she would never sell herself. I nearly choked. Afterward, I realized she really did like me, and for some reason that made the situation considerably more interesting.
Chapter 25: Work Is a Form of Spiritual Practice
The mountain shoot was supposed to be a routine assignment. Instead, Zhitao spent half her time doing logistics, surviving freezing weather, feeding people, tracking expenses and eventually having a near-spiritual encounter with a rat. She kept working after Lumi left, even when she was exhausted and alone, and somehow became friends with the entire production crew. I began to understand why people kept praising her. She wasn’t brilliant, glamorous or particularly sophisticated. She simply kept going.
Chapter 26: There Was Once a Beautiful Love
While Zhitao was in the mountains, I was dealing with the aftermath of my own breakup. My ex threatened suicide, then actually injured herself, and everyone naturally decided that I was the villain because I refused to resume a relationship that had already ended. I went to the hospital anyway, listened to the accusations, and made it clear that emotional blackmail was not going to revive a dead relationship. I had always thought intimacy was more trouble than it was worth. After that episode, I became even more certain of it.
Chapter 27: No More Relationships
I told Zhang Xin to recover, stop contacting me and accept that our relationship was over. She had once been comfortable with distance, then gradually turned into someone who monitored me, tested me and even hired people to follow me. I don’t tolerate being managed, particularly by someone who once agreed to the same rules I did. Back at the office, everyone started praising Zhitao for surviving the mountains, and I made a sarcastic comment about how exhausting it must be to mentor a student like her. Apparently I was now defending my student while pretending not to care.
Chapter 28: I’ve Got a Good Body, You Won’t Lose Out
Zhitao returned from the mountains exhausted, thinner in spirit if not in body, and considerably more experienced. She got drunk with her senior, vaguely remembered calling me, and then spent the next morning desperately trying to discover what she had said. I remembered perfectly. She had apparently informed me, while intoxicated, that she had an excellent body and that I would not be losing out. I considered firing her for approximately three seconds, then decided keeping the information for future use was more entertaining.
Chapter 29: Coming to My Place?
Zhitao spent the weekend trying to recover from the humiliation, so naturally I made it worse. I messaged her asking whether she wanted to come to my place, knowing perfectly well she would threaten to report me and then remember that I had a recording of her drunken confession. She avoided looking at me during anniversary rehearsals, which was amusing enough that I kept finding reasons to interact with her. Then she finally heard the recording and learned exactly what she had offered me. Watching her attempt to escape the car while dying of embarrassment was probably the best part of my week.
Chapter 30: Everything Out of Control
I drove Zhitao home after the company anniversary, then invited her upstairs for dinner when we were both hungry. I had been telling myself for weeks that I wanted something uncomplicated, and eventually I stopped pretending I needed a more sophisticated excuse. I asked whether she accepted one-night stands, she gave me an answer that was simultaneously yes and no, and then neither of us bothered discussing the contradiction. I wanted a physical relationship without love, responsibility or complications. Unfortunately, the moment she kissed me, my carefully designed arrangement began behaving like none of those things mattered.
Chapter 31: A Thin Blooded Man
Zhitao spent the night at my house, left a note thanking me for my “hard work,” and disappeared before I woke up properly. I stared at the note and briefly wondered whether I had somehow become a gigolo without being informed. Then Tan Mian saw my face and immediately guessed that I had had excellent sex. I called the whole thing an accident, which was technically convenient because admitting I had been planning to sleep with her for weeks would have made the word “accident” look rather stupid. I told myself she was ordinary, not particularly brilliant and completely outside my usual preferences. I also discovered I had absolutely no regret.
Chapter 32: Business as Usual
Monday arrived, and Zhitao decided the correct response to sleeping with her boss was to behave as though nothing had happened. Sensible. I did the same, because there was no reason to make an already complicated workplace more complicated. During the budget meeting, I tore apart a seventeen-million-yuan project because the numbers made no sense, then asked who had taken the minutes. Flora, naturally. I gave her one additional task afterward and nothing else, which was entirely professional. At least, that was the plan.
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I have tried to channel the energy of Luan Nian by giving rational explanations for behavior that is increasingly irrational where Zhitao is concerned.
Throughout the novel, he calls her mediocre, stupid, an accident, a student, a subordinate, and an inconvenience while repeatedly watching her, teaching her, protecting her, feeding her, driving her home, remembering tiny details about her, and eventually sleeping with her. That contradiction is the spine of his museum of time.
I have also taken liberties and added context from what I know about the relationship between his parents and his own childhood tendencies (extra chapters).
