During the Yonghe era of the Great Jing, Shen Zhaohua, daughter of a Jiangnan embroidery workshop owner, happened upon a fragment of a letter inscribed with the words, “The flowers bloom along the road. You may return at your leisure.” Moved by the sentiment in the handwriting, she recreated it on silk with her embroidery needle and sent it to the capital with a merchant caravan in search of its owner. This brought her into the orbit of Gu Yanshen, son of the Censor-in-Chief.
Shen Zhaohua saved three years’ worth of earnings from her embroidery work, planning to travel to the capital on Gu Yanshen’s birthday with a “Hundred Blessings Brocade” she had embroidered by hand and confess the feelings hidden in her silk letter. But before she could set off, she received one last embroidered letter from Gu Yanshen, delivered by a merchant caravan. The handwriting was hurried, the ink tinged dark red, and it contained only eight words: “From now on, mountains and rivers will lie between us. Think of me no more.” The unfinished orchid stitches at the corner of the silk snapped abruptly.
She did not know that Gu Yanshen had been demoted for impeaching powerful nobles and was gravely wounded when he wrote those final words. Nor did Gu Yanshen know that Shen Zhaohua had held the unfinished silk by the embroidery workshop window for ten years, stitching all the seasons of Jiangnan into letters she never sent. Later, someone came from Yazhou with
