The early edition of Pavel Korchagin was printed in vertical rows. Due to age, the pages have turned yellow. To better protect the book, Gao and his family usually placed it in a plastic bag before storing it on the bookshelf. When recalling this version, Gao said: "I translated Pavel Korchagin for the purpose of learning and I never expected it would be staged. I used many dialects without any literary accomplishment. Actually, it was something of a failure, because others couldn't always understand, and no revision was made." [Photo by Chen Boyuan/China.org.cn]