A Duckweed Adrift in Troubled Times: Unfinished Love in Shanghai's Misty Rain

He is the youngest professor at Hujiang University, freshly returned from studying abroad. She is the cherished daughter of a wealthy Jiangnan silk merchant.

One fleeting glance in his Chinese literature class, and she knocks his gold-rimmed glasses askew, as well as opening the door to the most scandalous teacher-student romance of the Republican era.

In the foreign concessions, rumors cut like knives. In the family mansion, her father smashes a teacup. “How could a daughter of the Su family marry some poor scholar?”

As the war rages on, he is arrested for his anti-Japanese views. Outside his prison window, she bites her finger and writes a blood letter: “If you go to your death, I will not live on alone.”

As enemy boots trample the land and her family falls into ruin, she sells her last jade earrings for a boat ticket. “Go to Chongqing. He’s waiting for me.”

The night they reunite by the Jialing River, an air-raid siren tears through the sky. Incendiary bombs illuminate the tears in his eyes. “Jingyi, with the land in ruins, there’s no room for a desk for the two of us.”

But amid the rubble, she unfolds their bloodstained marriage certificate. “If there’s no room for a desk, then make room for us in the same grave.”