The Chronicle of Ink and Moss

As bulldozers roar over the stone steps of the Jing'an Library, Lu Mingyuan, a rare-books librarian in the late stages of lung cancer, coughs up blood as he strokes the yellowed cover of Li Qingzhao's Collected Lyrics. A dark-gold fountain pen suddenly falls, bleeding four words onto a sheet of plain paper: “Searching, searching, seeking, seeking.” In an instant, space and time split apart, and he plunges into the Rainbow Bridge of Bianjing, as painted in Along the River During the Qingming Festival. The blood-drinking Ink-Soul Pen becomes his vessel for crossing the rifts between civilizations. Beneath the moon at Su Shi’s Red Cliffs, he completes “Gone are the days...” With Du Fu in Chang’an during the An Lushan Rebellion, he writes Spring View; on a snowy night in Lin’an, he knocks on Li Qingzhao’s door. There he discovers, to his shock, that the frail body of the ailing poetess Yi’an harbors the remnant soul of his late wife, Lin Wanqing. The candlelight of their merged souls illuminates the depths of despair. The Plain-Heart Manuscript becomes a shield in the courtroom against false accusations, while the Ink-Soul Pen shines with golden light as it writes Ode to the Emerald River. Together, they brave the rainy nights of Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio to face painted-skin demons, and enter the Land of Illusion to unravel the lovesick dream of Dream of the Red Chamber. But each journey through time tears at Lu Mingyuan’s organs, and the Plain-Heart Manuscript ultimately points to a blood-soaked location in 1966: Lin Wanqing is sealing ancient books inside a wall cavity at a Cultural Revolution struggle session. As the bulldozers roar toward them once more, Lu Mingyuan uses his broken body to make one final blood-written journey through time. Amid the flames, he sees Wanqing turn back, and Li Qingzhao laugh as she tosses her brush at Li Bai in the prosperous Tang dynasty. “A beauty is like a reflection in a flower. Why go looking for the moon in the water?” At last, a young man picks up the Plain-Heart Manuscript from the ruins. On the moss-stained stone steps, fresh ink writes a new line: “Cold and quiet, desolate and forlorn...” This is a vigil for civilization spanning a thousand years. When the great writers of history and the lingering souls of the present resonate through ink, the place where moss creeps over the steps becomes the place where our literary heritage is reborn.