White Moonlight, Days Gone By

Beiping, 1937. Medical student Chen Zhibai and Lin Wan, a young lady from a prominent family, pledge themselves to each other beneath a ginkgo tree in Beihai Park. When war breaks out, he is forced to head south, promising to return when the ginkgo leaves turn yellow.

Lin Wan waits for six long years, only to receive false news that Zhibai has been killed in action. Forced to marry a merchant, she has no idea that when Zhibai returns after narrowly surviving death, he witnesses her bridal sedan disappearing at the end of the long street.

For the next sixty-six years, Chen Zhibai writes a letter every autumn when the ginkgo leaves turn yellow, mailing them to an address that no longer exists.

In 2023, his granddaughter Chen Nian discovers an iron box full of unopened letters in the attic of the old family home. Following the yellowed postmarks, she sets out to find their recipient and, to her astonishment, finds the elderly Lin Wan in a nursing home in Jiangnan.

The old woman’s memory has long since faded, yet she hums the song she loved as a young woman when she sees a dried ginkgo leaf.

Trembling, Chen Nian reads her grandfather’s final letter aloud: “Wanwan, the ginkgo leaves have turned yellow again, but I can never catch up with the moon over Beihai.”