In 1983, on the rocky banks of Zhuxi, the mute Chen Zhusheng takes in a baby girl, Niannian, and weaves her childhood from bamboo strips: a wooden hairpin carved with a bamboo knife, a kite made of bamboo strips, a bamboo bed warmed by the fire, and a bookshelf for when she starts school...
She is his voice, and he is her whole world. He hides every hurt and loves her, making a place for her under the sky.
When she is sixteen, her birth parents come to take her away. He secretly signs the adoption papers and gives her the money he got by selling the bamboo knife passed down in his family for three generations. He watches her leave for a “better life,” then turns back to the drafty bamboo hut and spends his days weaving bamboo goods, carving a tiny “Nian” into the bottom of every basket.
But all he gets in return is her hatred. For ten years, she never comes home once.
Ten years later, Niannian is a white-collar worker in the city. She returns to her hometown to sort through his belongings, and only then discovers the truth hidden inside a bamboo stalk: he wasn't born deaf and mute. Timber thieves damaged his throat when he tried to protect the mountain forest behind them, and human traffickers deafened him when he tried to protect abducted children. He was already in the late stages of brain cancer when he signed the papers. The blood he coughed onto his handkerchief, the bamboo goods he wove with trembling hands, the letters he never sent, it was all love he had no way to express.
She calls “Dad” into the empty bamboo hut, but only the valley echoes back. She learns to weave bamboo strips, but can never weave back the warmth of his palm. Some love, once missed, is lost for a lifetime, and even an apology can never be delivered.
