Perhaps an Actor Has Come

"Could It Be the Actor Has Come?"

On the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month in the tenth year of Chongzhen's reign, snow fell heavily over the capital.

Shen Buyi, eldest legitimate son of Shen Heting, Left Vice Censor-in-Chief of the Censorate, met someone at a gathering in the residence of a grand secretary: Xie Ling, the leading dan actor of the He family troupe. Through a hall full of fine clothes and half a pond frozen over, he saw the actor warming his hands backstage. His fingers were blue and purple with cold, and only makeup could hide it.

He left his gilt hand warmer behind a pillar in the corridor and walked away. It was the tenth year of Chongzhen's reign. He was nineteen. He had no idea that taking that step would shape the rest of his life.

Xie Ling had been sold to a troupe at the age of five. He had endured beatings, hunger, and cold, standing in the mud for more than a decade. His backbone was stronger than anyone's. He would not kneel, curry favor, or accept his fate. He only sang onstage. He thought his life would always be this way, until a man in a dark blue robe walked into the dilapidated courtyard in Huai Tree Alley, placed an old play script in his hands, and said, "Your hands are still cold."

From that moment on, everything began to change.

In the Shen family ancestral hall, the wooden rod of family punishment broke his leg. Shen Heting asked if he would change his mind. Kneeling before the ancestral tablets, he said, "Your son has failed you, but he has no regrets." They threw him into the snow. With a broken leg and no family, he had nothing left but his life. Xie Ling carried him back from the snow and said nothing, simply placing a bowl of hot porridge in his hands.

Together, they survived the locust plague of the thirteenth year of Chongzhen's reign, the cannon fire that brought down the city and the dynasty, and the thousands of miles of flight after the Qing army entered the pass. Shen Buyi dragged his lame leg along, while Xie Ling guarded a voice that could no longer sing. In a world torn by war, they depended on each other to survive.

Later, the Qing court purged the former dynasty's officials, and the Shen family faced imminent ruin. Xie Ling put on the same costume he had worn when he first met Shen Buyi and said, "I've performed my whole life. Let me play you one more time. Wait for me at home."

Shen Buyi waited three days. On the fourth, someone brought him a set of stage clothes, neatly folded.

For the rest of his life, he dragged his lame leg from the capital to Jiangnan, asking everyone he met, "Have you seen a dan actor? His name is Xie Ling."

People said he was mad. He simply didn't want to wake up.

Theme: In a world torn by war, two people at the very bottom became each other's salvation.