An Old Watch Stopped in Hangzhou Rain, Waiting for Your Return in the Yongjiang Breeze

The true story of a stepfather with no name or claim:

At twenty-five, Lin Zhou has his ID and bank cards taken by his first love. The red marriage certificate from Shangqiu hits him like a slap, shattering every hope he had pinned on Hangzhou. Then he meets Chen Ling and her nine-year-old daughter, Su Xiao. He gets up early every day to make scallion pancakes, peeling off all the crispy edges for Su Xiao, and teaches her how to handle the awkwardness of her period. He thinks he has finally found a “family.”

But the rain in Hangzhou is too cold. Three times, he sees Chen Ling leaving a hotel with her best friend’s husband. Clutching his old watch, which stopped when he once rescued Su Xiao from drowning, he swallows the questions on the tip of his tongue each time, simply because Su Xiao hugs him and says, “Don’t leave me.” Even when Su Xiao holds up her university acceptance letter and cries, “I’ll take the surname Lin. Don’t go back to Nanning,” he still leaves. The old watch hits the ground at Hangzhou Station, its hands stopping for good.

The warm breeze in Nanning makes his days gentler, but cannot blow away his longing. Su Xiao works as a doctor in Shanghai, and the needle marks on the back of her hand are impossible to hide. Inside the lotus root starch Chen Ling sends him is the deed transferring ownership of the Hangzhou house. In the tin box, the note about changing her surname still bears the tears from that year. Will the return he waits for be Su Xiao coming back on the winds of Nanning, or will he finally dare to tell his former self in Hangzhou, “Let it go”?