Twenty-four-year-old Shen Wangshu arrived at the Xingxi County Observatory in Yuncheng in the autumn. The observatory on the hillside of this small town guards a lamp, an old telescope, and a blue cloth-covered diary. The diary was left by the old station director to the "newcomer". The title page reads: The stars here are the same as elsewhere. But the person who looks up is different.
The diary records the people of a city: a lovelorn girl, a child chasing shooting stars, and a man coming during the winter solstice. Shen Wangshu originally planned to leave after half a year to save enough travel expenses, but he stayed year after year. She taught the children at the foot of the mountain how to recognize stars. She met the lampkeeper Lao Zhou who was given a cup of hot water by the old director when he was sixteen years old. She watched his son Deng Deng go up the mountain for his father and was admitted to the astronomy department. She also watched the young man Cheng Yuan who came to ask "Where is Jupiter" many years ago walk from the mountain to the plateau and come back every year.
The old station director waited for someone all his life, but never learned to look for him; grandma spent her whole life lighting lamps at the foot of the mountain, but never found him. None of them waited for the other, but neither of the lights went out. Shen Wangshu said that he was not in love, but just a spectator, watching the comings and goings on the mountain. But this mountain waits for those who leave one by one to come back, and catches those who come back one by one. She looked at it and suddenly understood - what she was guarding was never an empty platform, but a mountain where everyone who walked could recognize the way back.
This is a story about waiting, about leaving, and about coming back. The long river gradually falls, but the morning star has not yet sunk. When the lights are on, people going home can see the way.
