Seven years ago, Zhou Yan waited four hours with his suitcase at Shenyang North Railway Station. Lin Wan never came.
Back then, he was a graduating architecture student with an offer from a Beijing firm, and she was a clinical medicine student who had just been accepted into her university's graduate program. Their four-year relationship had felt as long as a lifetime, but in the final month before they were to part, they were crushed by something neither of them ever said aloud. Lin Wan's father had been in a car accident. She hid from Zhou Yan that she had taken a leave of absence, given up her rented apartment, and sent the money they had saved together back home. Between his mother's urging and his own pride, Zhou Yan's suspicions grew until he became convinced that Lin Wan had planned all along to stay in Shenyang and was merely waiting for a tactful way to tell him. In their last argument, neither finished saying what they meant. Then the train pulled away.
Seven years later, Zhou Yan returned to Shenyang with the Tiexi 1937 Factory District urban renewal project. The old factory buildings slated for redevelopment were the very place where Lin Wan's father had worked all his life. While collecting old objects and oral histories, Zhou Yan accessed the former employees' health records through a partnership with a local hospital, and found Lin Wan there as well.
This novel and its characters are entirely fictional. Any resemblance is purely coincidental. Do not imitate.
