I thought it was just a dream.
In the dream, there were monstrous floods, endless rain, and a man named Boyu. Wearing short brown linen clothes and barefoot, he wielded a stone shovel in waist-deep floods like a tireless cow. He was cruel to me and drove me away, saying that this was not a place for women. But his eyes would be red after drinking the soup I cooked; his hands were shaking when he put half a piece of jade into my hand.
He said: "I, Boyu, will recognize you in this lifetime."
I thought it was a dream. But I brought back mud from my dream—yellow-brown mud with an ancient fishy smell, which dried in the palm of my hand like an indelible mark.
After waking up from the dream, I became an ancient book restorer and looked for his name in the pile of old papers. History books say that Yu married the Tushan clan and was ordered to control floods four days after the marriage. After passing through the house three times without entering, the Tushan clan turned into a watchman's stone and waited for four thousand years.
But the history books didn't tell me what Tushan's name was.
It didn't tell me whether the woman who was waiting to be turned into stone was waiting for a reunion or a farewell.
Until I unearthed the jade Huang at the Tushan site - blue-white, half-moon shape, exactly the same as the half in my dream. Carbon 14 dating shows it is 4,100 years old.
The inner wall of the jade huang is engraved with two small characters: Chaoyun.
That's my name.
It turns out I wasn't dreaming. It turns out that I am Tushan. It turns out that I have been waiting for him for four thousand years, not for him to come back, but for me to wake up.
This is a watch that spans four thousand years, a story about waiting, about choices, and about "whether it's worth it." The floods will recede, the dynasties will perish, and the stones will weather, but there are some things that time cannot do anything about.
Purpose: This is a story about "Is it worth waiting?"
A Yuan, a girl from Chongqing, met Bo Yu, the man who controlled floods four thousand years ago, in one dream after another. He walks against the current, carrying the fate of all people in the world on his shoulders. She thought it was just a dream, until Yuhuang came to her pillow from ancient times, until she discovered that she was the Tushan clan who had been waiting to become the Wangfu Stone.
It has been recorded in history books for hundreds of years and has been sung by folk for four thousand years. Everyone is asking: Is the Tushan family waiting for a heartless person or a hero? But no one ever asked another question - what if she waited voluntarily?
What this article wants to discuss is not the result of "waiting or not", but the choice of "willing to wait or not". In addition to the iron-blooded narrative of "three times without entering the house", perhaps the most touching thing in the story is the one who is willing to stay at the starting point and support all the waiters. Persistence itself is the deepest response to love. Time can be an enemy or a witness; it can erase everything or make a choice become eternal.
"I have been waiting for you for four thousand years in Tushan" - this is not a complaint, it is an answer.