A Century of Friendship

Who is Littlebeanseeds?
Littlebeanseeds (LBS) is a Certified Public Accountant who lives in Hong Kong. She has known herself to be a bookworm ever since she was a primary-school student. While most of the other children were running and jumping in the playground during break time, she would go to the library and stick her face in a book until the bell rang. She loves many different kinds of books ̶ self-help, detective, romance, finance, health ̶ and more.

In her eyes, books are one of the best channels for communicating messages. LBS thinks a writer’s role is like that of a farmer planting seeds. What she wants is for her readers to understand the book’s message and be helped in some way: have their mood changed, be pleased and entertained, or even encouraged to build a better self. The seeding job takes time, and it is better to start the seed earlier than later. That is why she chose to start with writing children’s stories, and also where the pen name “Littlebeanseeds” came from.

Writing is also about stepping out of one’s comfort zone. That is actually much easier to say than to do, especially when no one in your social network is doing the same thing, claiming it’s too difficult. But most of the time, the difficulty comes from yourself more than those around you.

Why I wrote this story?
One day while tidying up my bookshelf, I came across a short story I had written during my teenage years. It was set as homework for a class of non-native English students, so you can imagine how “easy” it was for me to write.
As I flipped through the pages, grammatical mistakes were everywhere, word usage was inaccurate, and the plot was a bit loose. Reading from paragraph to paragraph, however, I could still remember the effort I put in to finishing the book.
Yes, the teenage years are filled with trial and error. During that period, you may make a lot of mistakes and have ideas flashing through your head that adults call “unrealistic”, “impractical”, or “nothing to do with building a career”. These wild thoughts might hit you every week, or even every second. And I was no exception!
I was not aiming to be a writer, because I did not think I was good at putting my imagination into words. However, flipping through the self-written storybook was like talking to the teenage “me”. So I decided to rewrite the story and dedicate it to the teenage me and let her know that it’s who she was in the past that has formed the person she is in the present.
If you are a dad or mum now, share this book with your children and let them have the courage to make friends and learn how to maintain those friendships.
If you are a teenager right now, I hope this book gives you a chance to think about your relationships with friends.
For those adults reading this, enjoy the story and reminiscing about some of your own wild teenage experiences with your friends.