A summer agreement spanning thirty-one years, a tidal echo about art, memory and inheritance.
In the midsummer of 1994, 18-year-old Shen Yanzhou came to Jingluo Bay to escape family pressure, but was healed by a six-year-old girl's immature "pointing to the sea" gesture - "Look at the sea piece by piece." That summer, the boy was taught how to truly see.
In 2008, Shen Yanzhou, who had become a painter, learned that Xiao Man had died of illness. She left behind a daughter, Lin Xia, and a last wish: "Teach her how to read the sea for me."
In 2025, Shen Yanzhou, who had undergone major heart surgery, returned to Jingluowan and met Lin Xia, who had become a student at the Academy of Fine Arts. With the consciousness of counting down his life, he founded the "Rising Tide Painting Studio" to teach children to paint on the rocks in the intertidal zone - those paintings will be taken away by the tide, but the ability to "see" will remain forever.
Purpose: "Midsummer and the Sea" is a modern fable about "how to coexist with regret". It tells us that the meaning of life is not to prevent the tide from taking away everything, but that after the tide recedes, we are still willing to draw new lines on the beach.