North of Erhai, the Heart's Lamp Still Burns

Chen An was once a well-known documentary photographer. After a devastating storm destroyed his career and the person he loved, he fled with wounds that cut to the bone and guilt he couldn't put into words, like a rusted-out cog, to Fengcheng, a place young artists regarded as "poetry and faraway horizons." On the edge of the damp little city surrounded by Cangshan Mountain and Erhai Lake, he rented an old house called "Old Times," steeped in the smell of mildew and photographic developer. He survived by taking tourist photos and selling the precious photography books he had left. His expensive Leica camera had become a searing badge of shame, while Fengcheng's endless rain was like the swamp in his heart that would never dry up.

Struggling to make ends meet and unable to create, he had only a three-legged stray dog named Tudou for company. The gentle owner of the vintage shop next door, Sister Lin, brought him ginger tea. The landlord, an old woman, had a lonely look as she wiped down the body of her dead cat. Every so often, such moments stirred the strings of his lifeless heart. A whispered thought that "even things that sink can ferment into a luster" seemed to bring a glimmer of light. But just as he tried to claw his way out of the mud of despair, the shadows of his past returned with an online storm and tore him apart once more. Exposure, old debts, and old wounds completely overturned the meager hiding place he'd made for himself.

This novel and its characters are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental. Do not imitate.