Fireworks Alley is the oldest alley in the south of the city. The bluestone road has been polished by the years and the walls are covered with ivy. Every summer, the sweet smell of the sugar painting stalls, the aroma of tea from the old teahouse and the sound of children playing will fill the entire alley with the chirping of cicadas. For Lin Wanxing, the thirteenth summer here should have been the same as the past twelve years: helping his grandfather light a fire to boil sugar at dawn, hiding behind a sugar painting stall at noon to watch the passers-by, and listening to the old people in the alley telling stories about the past in the evening. It wasn't until Shen Tingbai appeared at the alleyway with a camera on her back, pointing the lens at the newly formed dragon-shaped sugar painting in her hand, and asked, "Can I take a photo of this?" That the peaceful summer finally became disturbed.
That summer, Shen Tingbai followed Lin Wanxing to every corner of Fireworks Alley: watching her grandfather play chess with his friends in an old teahouse, watching the proprietress comb her braids at a rouge shop, and listening to her singing nursery rhymes taught by her grandfather under the big locust tree at the end of the alley. The Fireworks Alley in his lens has the amber halo of melted sugar paintings, the mottled gray-blue texture of the old wall, and Lin Wanxing's focused profile as he lowers his head to boil sugar. Lin Wanxing also followed Shen Tingbai and learned to see familiar alleys from a new perspective - it turned out that the weeds in the cracks in the walls would bloom lavender flowers, it turned out that the bluestone slabs after the rain could reflect the shadow of the locust trees, and it turned out that the old sugar painting stall at the entrance of the alley hid so many surprises in the eyes of strangers.
