"If I come back, can I marry you?" —— Spend half your life waiting for a lovesickness that will never end.
In 1936, when the parasol trees were flying in Nanjing, female student Lin Shujin and photojournalist Shen Mobai made an agreement due to an unexpected encounter: after the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, he would open a publishing house and she would translate Shakespeare. However, during the eight years of war, he used his camera to look for her in the battlefield, and she guarded the words he wrote "If I come back, I will marry you" while in exile.
We met again in Hong Kong in 1946, but he had married someone else; she went to England, and he stayed on the mainland. In special times, a pack of sycamore leaves has become a code for waiting for half a lifetime. Over the span of fifty years, they missed each other again and again, and heard echoes in the folds of fate again and again - until the gray-haired man once again raised his camera during a lecture at his alma mater to capture the words she said, "I wasted the evening of my life waiting for a reunion that will never happen again."
This is a romantic epic in the flames of war, and it is also an affectionate narrative about regret, perseverance and unfinished promises. The half-life watch of children in troubled times, love is longer than war, and hope is more tenacious than love.
