In 2016, Lin Zhou, a young man from Beijing, had the same dream repeatedly: Jiangnan Rain Alley, bluestone road, a woman in a moon-white cheongsam holding an oil-paper umbrella turned around, and the fragrance of jasmine filled the rain. She said: "Remember me this time." Three consecutive months of dreams drove him south to Suzhou. In his old house at No. 17 Xuanqiao Lane, he found a moon-white cheongsam stained with blood under the armpits, twelve yellowed love letters, a pair of jade bracelets engraved with the word "Mo", and a love story that had been sealed for eighty years - Suzhou Xuanqiao Lane in 1944. 21-Year-old Zhou Mo and her childhood sweetheart Lin Lin made an engagement under the jasmine flowers.
He said: "When I come back from Chongqing, we will get married."
She said: "I'll wait for you, year after year, year after year."
In the spring of 1945, Lin Lin died on his way back to the Soviet Union and the passenger ship sank in the Yangtze River. When the news came, Zhou Mo was embroidering the wedding dress. The needle pricked her finger, and blood dripped on the moon-white cheongsam. She didn't cry or believe, she just waited. From the flames of war to the peaceful age, from black hair to gray hair. Every afternoon, she moved a small stool and sat at the entrance of the alley, embroidering jasmine patterns while looking at the end of the alley. She said: "Waiting becomes a habit. If you don't wait, you don't know how to live." This waiting lasted fifty-three years. From Suzhou to Shanghai, from moon-white cheongsam to hair full of silver threads, from "Sister Zhou's sister" to "Master Gu in the alley". She embroidered countless jasmine and made countless sachets, but she only embroidered one wedding dress for herself - from the age of 21 to 76, she added a few more stitches and embroidered a few flowers every year.
Before she died, she tremblingly wrote in her diary: "Jasmine is about to bloom. I know the end is coming."
