Finding Li Feng

An old umbrella trapped me in ten years of youth.

When I was in middle school, I caught a fleeting glimpse of Li Feng in our little courtyard. She became the only light in my bleak youth. Borrowing her umbrella that rainy day was the closest I ever came to her, and the beginning of an obsession that would last my whole life.

When she quietly disappeared during graduation season, all the color drained from my life. Then I heard she was in Dongguan.

I gave up everything and threw myself into that furnace known as the "world's factory." The assembly line numbed my hands, and the urban villages were full of filth. The only thing keeping me going was one faint hope: to find her!

Ten years of searching drained me of blood and sweat. Leads came and went; hope flared up again and again, only to die out. I saw profiles in nightclubs that looked just like hers, heard rumors that she might have "fallen," and even nearly lost my life for her...

When I finally stood before her, my breath caught

Had the once-pure girl become a weathered woman with a cold gaze?

Did a crude tombstone silently tell the story of the tragedy I had missed?

Or... had she long since forgotten that umbrella, and the timid boy who borrowed it?

I wagered my entire youth on a reunion. Was what I won redemption, or an even deeper despair?