[Complete]
"Ever since Wang Bo of the early Tang, a prodigy whose brush brought scholars and poets flocking here to climb the pavilion, compose poems, and leave their words behind, the Tengwang Pavilion has long been more than a castle in the sky. It is an inkstone bearing the spirit of scholars and the lofty ambitions of those who came before..."
"I dressed her in a long-sleeved robe of indigo and pinned a plum-blossom jade hairpin in her hair. Carrying her on my back, I climbed the pavilion step by step. We came upon a great feast, a feast for scholars. Like a dream, she lost herself in it and forgot her pain. Her slender body was upheld by an unyielding spirit, her eyes alight with fervor.
She smiled and raised a cup of wine to me, its fragrance rich and heady.
It was the clearest, most pristine scene I had ever witnessed: pure affection, pure poetry, pure-hearted scholars."
It was the third year of Dazhong in the Tang dynasty. To fulfill the wish of my dear friend Quan Zhi, Yan Cheng and I took a small boat to Nanchang County, Hongzhou, in Jiangnan, to attend the banquet celebrating the restoration of Tengwang Pavilion.
"Miss, recite one of my poems!"
*A short story about amnesia, with two female leads, but no romance between them.
Theme: Paying tribute to the lofty pavilion and its scholars
