Old Melodies Tied to the Past

While tidying up the old house, Lin Wanqiu found a rust-covered transistor radio. It was the one Chen Yu had bought for her in 1987, using the pocket money he’d saved for half a year.

Her fingertips brushed over its chipped casing. She pressed the long-broken switch, and in a daze, the cicadas in the old alley, the ring of bicycle bells, and Chen Yu humming “The Story of Time” beneath the locust tree all came back to her, clear as day.

That summer, they had queued together at the grain station to trade for ration coupons, watched “Romance on Lushan Mountain” at the state-run cinema, and written the feelings they couldn’t bring themselves to confess in their diaries. But an unexpected move had cut off all contact, leaving only the radio as her one keepsake from the past.

Now in middle age, Lin Wanqiu carries the radio from one old familiar place to another, hoping to find the lost years again. Can the affection hidden in those old recordings bring them back to the past they once shared?