We live in an age of remarkable material abundance, yet emotional security feels increasingly fragile. Modern relationships are sometimes approached like business arrangements: negotiations over money and property, agreements about premarital assets, careful assessments of financial risk — and, when hardship arrives, a cold reality often sets in: “everyone looks after themselves.” It is little wonder that many people approach marriage with hesitation. We may complain that human relationships have grown increasingly cold and even wonder whether love can truly withstand hardship.

Yet if we look back more than a thousand years, to the flourishing Tang Dynasty and the world portrayed in The Tale of Li Wa, recorded in Taiping Guangji, we encounter a very different understanding of love and marriage. It is a story not of two people asking what they can gain from one another, but of two people who, through hardship and adversity, gradually learn to lift each other up. The story suggests that the ancient ideal of marriage was not merely about sharing prosperity. It was about responsibility, loyalty, dignity, and helping one another rise again when life brings us down.

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