Dual heroines
Seventeen-year-old Lin Wei barges into the Su residence in a pair of high heels that don't fit, like a wild stalk of grain that has wandered into a courtyard, carrying the awkwardness of a nouveau riche family and an unpolished, vibrant freshness. Shen Zhiyi, twenty-five, is a painter staying there as a guest. Her moon-white qipao wraps her in the cool elegance of someone just returned from studying abroad, while the scent of turpentine hints at her distance from worldly conventions. They first meet in the evening breeze on the terrace. A handkerchief scented with cedar becomes the first glimmer of light to cross the divide between them.
Using art lessons as an excuse to get closer, Lin Wei watches Shen Zhiyi chase light and shadow across her canvases and listens to her talk about artists on the streets of Paris. Beneath the dim yellow lights of an old bookstore, they feel the warmth of one another. Shen Zhiyi, too, finds a long-lost purity in Lin Wei. The faint tingling of their fingertips touching as she teaches Lin Wei to hold a brush, and the hot milk she brings her on a rainy night, all weave together with the scents of turpentine and everyday life, quietly sending ripples through their hidden feelings.
But the barriers between their social classes never disappear. Lin Wei doesn't understand Shen Zhiyi's insistence on maintaining her dignity, and Shen Zhiyi cannot fully grasp the anxiety Lin Wei faces just to get by. The Su family's disdain, the Zhao family's covetousness, and the Lin family's tottering business form an invisible web that ensnares their tentative steps toward each other. The strokes in the studio grow steadier, while the distance between their hearts shifts, now closer, now farther away. The feelings they never voice are hidden in the corners of sketchbooks and among daisy petals, trembling softly in the winds of reality.
