Old Letter

Lin Xingyu, a 19-year-old college student, always feels confused in the noisy campus, has no interest in her major, and has no direction for the future. Only the old city where she returned home during the summer vacation hides her most stable concern - the old house filled with memories of her grandmother's life. This summer vacation, she returned to her old house to clean up as usual. On the bottom of the camphor wood box, she unexpectedly dug out a stack of old, yellowed and brittle letterheads. The envelope had no recipient or sending address, and the handwriting was blurry and mottled. Part of the content had been deliberately altered. There were scattered names of strange places, obscure names of people, and a few strings of numbers with unknown meanings. It was like a puzzle that had been hidden for many years, piqued her curiosity. She tried to find clues in the fragmentary pages of her grandma's diary, and only caught glimpses of fragmentary words such as "Things that were left unsaid when I was young" and "Regrets but no regrets." When she asked her grandfather and parents, the elders would either avoid her in silence or just advise "it's all in the past, no need to delve into it." This deliberate silence made her more determined to unlock the secrets of time hidden behind the old letters. Relying on the memory of the details of her grandma's life, she used the house number of the old house and her grandma's birthday as keys to decipher the digital code in the letter. The first key clue pointed to an old town in a neighboring city that retained the style of the old days. Without telling her family, she embarked on a journey to trace the past alone with old letters and old black-and-white photos of her grandma. The bluestone roads in the old town, the fireworks of century-old teahouses, and the old site of the supply and marketing cooperative all contain traces of grandma's youth. In the hesitant narration of the teahouse owner, and in the warm memories of his elderly colleagues, a young man named "A Yuan" gradually came into view. Back then, my grandmother worked in the old town supply and marketing cooperative, and she and the hard-working and cheerful A Yuan had a tacit understanding and helped each other. However, in the end, they could not withstand the family resistance and the distance between reality, and they were forced to separate. For many years after that, the two kept communicating in a cryptic way, hiding their concerns between the lines, but never saw each other again. These old letters were the thoughts that grandma had hidden all her life. Following the clues of the newly found old bookmarks, Lin Xingyu found the notebook left by A Yuan, which was full of longing for her grandma and an unfinished agreement: "If we have the chance, we will go see the stars on the beach together." After returning, grandpa finally confessed that he had known about this past for a long time. The tolerance and mutual support he and grandma had after their marriage hid their respect for each other's past. Lin Xingyu, who understood the whole picture of the old letter, felt sorry for the regrets of his ancestors, and also understood the deep meaning of his grandmother's hidden letter - not to let go of the past, but to retain the purity and tenderness of time, and to remind future generations to cherish the present. The story of grandma and Ayuan also lit up her confused life and reminded her of her love for words. She decided to adjust her major to study the Chinese language and record the years and warmth in words. Later, she followed the clues and found the seaside city where Ayuan settled in his later years. Standing on the star-studded coast, she fulfilled the agreement half a century late for her ancestors and reconciled with the regrets of the past. In the days that followed, she sorted out old letters, notebooks and old photos, and wrote down this time-spanning concern into words. She not only completed the inheritance of her ancestors' stories, but also found her own life direction. Those old letterheads covered with stars hide the growth and redemption of two generations. Time will pass and regrets may be inevitable, but the warmth of family affection and the power of love will eventually illuminate every step forward like starlight. Purpose: Use old letters to unlock the concerns of our ancestors over time, and use warm stories to convey the power of accepting regrets, cherishing the present, and moving forward with love.