In the late autumn of 2021, sunlight streamed through the old wooden windows of a jade-carving studio on Xiangwang Road in Suzhou, casting mottled shadows across a workbench strewn with jade dust. I held a well-worn carving knife, its handle gleaming, and ran my fingertips over an unfinished Hetian jade pebble. Half the outline of a lotus had just been carved into it, and the curve of each petal still needed careful polishing. My phone screen was lit, paused at the end of Chapter 100 of A Jade Moth’s Dream. The words “a perfect ending” between the lines felt like a wisp of warm smoke gently curling around my heart.
Suddenly, I remembered an afternoon in the rainy season of 2019. Back then, the studio roof still leaked. I was crouched on the floor, gathering jade-carving sketches soaked by the rain, my fingertips smeared with jade powder mixed with water, sticky and cold. Outside, rain pattered steadily against the tin eaves. A thought suddenly came to me: Why not write a story about jade carving?
