When I Was Seven, the Young Heir of a General and I Misread the Book of Songs

Childhood Sweethearts + Slow-Burn Romance + Book of Odes References + Growing Up + Healing + Classical Everyday Life

In March of the year Lin Xiao was nine, he climbed over the western wall and stumbled upon Shen Qingyan’s Book of Odes and a crabapple tree in bloom.

He said “Guan Ju” was about dodging debt; she said “Wu Yi” was about fixing a spatula.

He said “Fu Yi” was just making excuses; she said “Han Lu” was a recipe.

A pebble held the breeze from the Qingshui River; a wooden sword held a young boy’s secrets.

She was the precious daughter of the Hanlin Academy, confined by the admonition that “women should be without talent,” yet through his world she caught a glimpse of ordinary life.

He was the heir to a general’s household, raised on the lesson of “being wrapped in a horsehide shroud in death,” yet for her,

he curbed his recklessness when it came to the rules of the inner chambers.

The peach-blossom grove at the spring banquet, the plantain weeds gathered in a game, and the knowing smile exchanged beneath the corridor by their two mothers were all little secrets they kept in spring. In time, the crabapple blossoms fell and bloomed again, and the boy and girl grew into adults. Someone asked how they had managed to come together with such a thick wall of social rank between them.

They looked at each other and smiled.

Lin Xiao said, “I climbed the wall.”

Shen Qingyan said, “I crossed the river.”

A classical tale with no transmigration, comeback, or household face-slapping, about nothing more than the truest kind of “seeing” and “growing.”