# Beijing's Elite Heir × Hutong Photographer | A Photographer's Journey × Cool, Refined Young Gentleman | Artistic Slow Burn | Mutual Devotion | Hutong × Beijing's Elite |
The Beijing heir waited ten years for her: It's fine if you take a while to reply. I'll wait.
He was the quietest person I'd ever met.
His profile picture was completely black. Every day, he'd post one photo with a caption of no more than three words. When I took a long time to reply, he never rushed me. The next day, he'd post again as usual.
One day, I asked him, “What are you waiting for?”
He said, “For your reply.”
Only later did I find out who he was: the only son of the Shen family, famous in Beijing's elite circles for his aloofness.
And yet this man sent me a photo every single day, rain or shine, for three years.
On the day Beijing saw its first snow, he took me to Beihai Park.
He wrapped his scarf around my neck. “From now on, let's come here every year it snows.”
Later, he took me to a stretch of ruins.
There used to be a crabapple tree there. As a boy, he'd climbed it to pick fruit. He took a faded photograph from his pocket: an old courtyard, a crabapple tree, and his grandmother holding a child.
“Then they tore it down. Nothing was left.”
In that moment, I suddenly understood why he could understand my photographs.
In a wheat field in Arles, he said, “Let's get married.”
The wind swept past, and I began to cry.
He said, “Go ahead and cry. I'm here.”
This year marks our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary.
It snowed in Beijing again. He held my hand as we walked through the snow at Beihai Park.
Halfway there, he suddenly said, “Let's come back in our next lives, too.”
Fifty years.
He spent a lifetime waiting for me to reply.
I spent a lifetime telling him: I got your message.
