[1] The Seat on the Verandah is a written in a non-linear fashion and takes place in a fictional town called Water Mill (水磨), which lies on the twenty-third parallel.
[2] The mention of a river that runs from Water Mill to Vietnam suggests the story takes place in southern China.
[2] At that time, the young woman was travelling right after her college graduation and happened to pass by the town of Water Mill in 1982 on a sightseeing trip in the southwest.
[2] Upon finding a mansion, she climbs the stairs until she reaches the third floor, where she meets an elderly woman named Qiye (七叶) or Seven Leaves.
[2] At one point during their conversation, Qiye mentions that the narrator shares the same eyes as Zhu Liang, which makes the young woman feel nauseous.
[2] Fearing to be struck by "gu" if she stays any longer, she boards a cargo train the next morning and leaves Water Mill.
[2] The first two years of her studies, she could not even bathe herself with other women in the bathhouse due to her fear of the naked female body[2]:"I hugged my shoulders tightly and looked in her direction.
[1] Thus, when Qiye recounts her experiences bathing Zhu Liang, the narrator cannot help but wonder how she was so comfortable exposing her naked body in front of other women "having come from [her] hometown and lived some forty years ago",[2] she assumes that "she must have had to fight against something deep inside herself—fear perhaps—and, in that way, experienced stimulation and pleasure".
There's notably the opposition of "nüxing" (女性, female) and "nanxing" (男性, male), painting one as beautiful and the other, as ugly.
[1] Not only does Lin Bai associate beauty and ugliness to "nüxing" (女性) and "nanxing" (男性), she also expresses appreciation for the former and disgust for the latter.
[4] This contrasts with the description of "ruddy faced" Zhang Meng Da or Chen Nong: "the lower half of his body felt chilled, stale and constipated".
[2] The owner of that photograph, Qiye, explains that the frame of the picture doesn't belong to her with a voice "filled with deep nostalgia, like that of a doddering man remembering an undying love from his youth so beautiful and tragic he has never been able to forget it".
[2] Lin Bai opens up a discussion with The Seat on the Verandah in the emerging discourse of female homoeroticism post-Mao era in the 1990s where views on same sex love were slowly shifting.
[1] Lin Bai in her book Fatal Flight Zhìmìng de fēixiáng (致命的飞翔),[6] admits that The Seat on the Verandah, has been her favorite work of hers among those that she wrote these past few years.
[6] She says that among her friends that are poets or those who like poetry in general share her opinion on the short-story, stating that it is better than Water in the Vase (Píng zhōng zhī shuǐ, 瓶中之水), although editors and readers seems to prefer the latter.
[6] Chinese scholar Chen Sihe responded to Lin Bai's writings in The Seat on the Verandah, arguing that "Lin's subject matter is admittedly 'profane' (weixie) and 'puzzling' (kunhuo)",[7] she added nuance to her argument by stating that her subject matter was "'purified (jinghua) and redeemed by the beauty of her language and also by the radical awakening of 'female consciousness' (nü xing yi shi) represented in the text".
To this question, Lin Bai replied that this short novel had nothing to do with her personal experience; during one of her travels to Yunnan, she passed by a mansion which she heard used to be owned by a big landlord.
Zhìmìng de fēixiáng 致命的飞翔, Wu Han武汉, Changjiang Literature and Art Publishing House 长江文艺出版社, 349.
Jiědú lín bái de "huíláng zhī yǐ" 解读林白的《回廊之椅》[Interpretation of Lin Bai's "The Seat on the Verandah"].