At eighteen, a girl named Lin Wan painted a boat.
Its bow pointed right, toward the sea, with a light in the distance.
She never set sail.
When her father fell ill, she tore up her art-school entrance exam registration and stayed in their small town.
At twenty-four, someone invited her to leave with them. The night before they were supposed to go, her father fell again.
She dropped her ticket into the trash and returned to where she had started.
At thirty, her father passed away.
She opened his wardrobe and found an iron box filled with every drawing she had made, from kindergarten through high school.
At the bottom of the box was a note, written in her father’s unsteady hand: “I’m sorry, sweetheart. I never helped you push your boat into the water.”
At last, she went to Shanghai.
She didn’t become famous, stage a comeback, or stumble upon some miraculous opportunity.
One ordinary morning, she simply opened the window and painted a sunrise.
This is the story of a boat that took twelve years to sail out of the harbor.
It is also the story of a girl who took twelve years to finally place herself in her own sea.
