Eighteen Springs is a tragic romance set in 1930s Shanghai. The author is Eileen Chang.

It was eighteen years since he got to know Manzhen. The realization startled Shijun, who immediately felt he was getting old. His romance with her had only lasted a couple of years, but they seemed to have gone through all the sorrows and joys that life can hold.

Shijun met Manzhen through Shuhui, his pal at the engineering college. Shuhui had graduated earlier than Shijun and started working at a factory in Shanghai. Manzhen was Shuhui's colleague. Shijun joined Shuhui at the factory after his own graduation and the three often ate their meals together.

Shijun gradually started to realize he often blushed before he saw Manzhen and he felt annoyed when Shuhui hinted Manzhen had a dark secret, a skeleton in her cupboard.

She did in fact have a secret and she revealed it later to Shijun.

Her older sister worked as a high-class escort. Her family were deeply ashamed of her job but desperately needed the income it generated. Manzhen's father had passed away early, leaving his wife with six little kids and an aged mother to look after, a burden too heavy for a domesticated housewife. So the load shifted onto the tender shoulders of Manlu, the oldest child in the family. She quit school, stopped her engagement with her fiancee and became a nightclub girl at the age of 16. She was as fresh and pretty as a blooming flower. Her fame as a high-class escort grew quickly.

But as she grew older and her beauty dimmed, she had less and less suitors. In the end, a man named Zhu Hongcai became her last straw.

Manlu finally married him, even though her brother described him as like a cat when he was laughing and like a mouse when he was serious.

Meanwhile Shijun was falling head over heels in love with the pretty, upright and industrious Manzhen, who tried to support her family with all her might after her sister moved out. She even took two extra jobs and kept working after dinner.

Manzhen was also falling in love with the honest and easy to approach Shijun. When she went to work as a tutor in the evening, Shijun waited for her at a nearby coffee shop, so he could escort her home after work. They never seemed to have enough time to spend together because Manzhen was always too busy trying to earn a living. But the minutes they grabbed between the hours of waiting were the happiest moments of their lives.

One day, Manlu fell ill and Manzhen went to visit her. Zhu Hongcai didn't even try to hide his lust for Manzhen. He asked Manlu to try to persuade her sister to marry him and become his third wife, as he already had a second wife in his home village.