Song Wenxi, a clerk at the Tangxian Cultural Center, the 73rd generation descendant of the Song family, and the youngest intangible cultural heritage acoustic archivist in the county. Carrying equipment on his back, he traveled from village to house, recording the last singing voice of an old artist, and carving the word "inheritance" into his bones and blood. However, he recorded 372 other people's voices, but his own voice remained mute for twenty years.
Until he was recording tower shadow wind chimes in Futu Square when he bumped into a faceless man.
The man squatted under the tower to scan the murals, his gray coat rustling in the wind. Song Wenxi walked over and said, "Comrade, stalls are not allowed here."
Yu Jingye raised his head, his eyes too dark: "I don't sell it. What I drew was a tower, and you happened to be standing in the shadow."
Later, Song Wenxi realized that the shadow was him, the tower shadow was him, and the people without faces were all him. Yu Jingye painted a whole book, from autumn to summer, from face to faceless.
.
Yu Jingye, a visiting researcher at the Digital Archeology Laboratory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, developed an AI model that can predict when the murals will peel off, but cannot predict when Song Wenxi will disappear. He took the initiative to go to the Cultural Preservation Institute of Shentang County. On the surface, it was for "grassroots training," but in fact, he wanted to escape the exclusion of Beijing's academic circles. Two people who use technology to preserve disappearing things fell in love under the pomegranate tree in Tang County - he repaired murals and he recorded operas, thinking that if they were preserved well enough, they would not be lost.
However, Tang County is too small. It's as small as a gossip that can go around three times, or it's as small as two men not being able to walk side by side. As small as Song Wenxi's perfection—a clerk, a descendant of the Song family, and a descendant of the seventy-third generation—there was no room for Yu Jingye who was all wrong. He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts, was in debt, and suffered from depression. He fled back to the county town from Linchuan.
The father spread the family tree on the table: "You are twenty-five years old and you are still not sensible?"
Mother was lying on the hospital bed: "Bo Ning, why are your eyes so red?"
The pomegranate tree bore seventeen fruits every year, but he would not eat any of them and let them rot on the tree. Just like he let Yu Jingye rot in his memories.
.
Three years later, Yu Jingye returned to Tangxian County as a consultant for the "National Digital Mural Protection Project." In the conference room, he stretched out his hand: "Gong Song, I am Yu Jingye."
Song Wenxi held that hand—Song Gong, no one had ever called him that. He is now the local contact person for the project, and his job title has been changed from section clerk to engineer, but his eyes are emptyer than three years ago.
"Have we... Met?"
Yu Jing smiled wildly, the tiger fangs were still there, but the green and black eyes were now lighter: "I haven't seen it before. But I have painted you."
——At the age of twenty-five, before he learned how to stop drinking, he first learned how to get heartbroken.
He builds walls and chases people. There are some cracks that cannot be detected by spectrum scanning or recorded by voiceprints, but people can repair them bit by bit.
Concept: Cracks are not incomplete, they are shapes through which light enters.
