Yan Xunzhou was twenty minutes late to their blind date.
He sat down in a light gray Mandarin-collar shirt and said, “The lion's head meatballs here aren't authentic.”
Jiang Ning looked at him for three seconds and mentally labeled him old-fashioned.
She had no idea that this “old-fashioned” man would, in the days to come:
Get up early every day to make congee, peel her eggs perfectly, and wait four hours for her without rushing her.
When she woke up with menstrual cramps in the middle of the night, run three blocks to buy medicine, then fill a mineral water bottle with hot water, wrap it in a towel, and tuck it under her blanket.
When she was being bullied at work, stay up all night helping her revise her copy, writing in the footer: “They didn't reject your layout. They rejected their own taste.”
The year she went to Paris, send her a photo of his breakfast every day. On the day she came back, get up at five in the morning to make congee and wait at the airport arrivals gate with a thermos in hand.
He was a restorer of ancient books. He had spent seven years working on a Song-dynasty edition, and still couldn't restore it. He said, “A little progress is still progress.”
She was an editor at a fashion magazine. She wore a coat worth twenty-three thousand and moved with ease in high society. But when she couldn't sleep at night, she would scroll through her messages with him. When she gave a speech onstage, she would look toward the third row, where he sat watching her without raising his hand or saying a word.
At first, they married because they were “a good match.”
Later, they stayed together because “you were the one I chose.”
And later still, because “wherever you are, that's where I'll be.”
Reader's guide:
Married first, fell in love later / Slow burn / A love that grows over time
Academic man × fashion woman / Both strong in their own fields / Growing together
Theme: Love isn't finding a perfect person. It's finding someone you can be imperfect with, and who stays after seeing you at your most vulnerable
