As I restore a Ming dynasty cosmetics box in the Forbidden City, I discover its inner walls are covered with carved marks of varying depths.
At first I think they were made by insects, but when I lean closer, I realize they are densely packed with the word “hate.”
Through the memories left behind in the relic, I see a palace lady kneeling before her dressing table.
She grips a gold hairpin and furiously carves into the wood, oblivious as her nails crack and bleed.
On the night the old emperor dies, she receives a military dispatch announcing that her lover, stationed at the border, has fallen in battle.
Hidden in the deepest part of the box is a line of tiny writing: “She swallowed gold and died; her soul never returned to the Forbidden City.”
And the gold hairpin she used to carve those words now lies quietly on my workbench.
A dark red spot at its tip glimmers faintly in the lamplight.
