In the 26th year of the Republic of China, it rained for three full years.
The fragrance of makeup and powder backstage in the theater is always mixed with the smell of gunpowder smoke. Liu Qingshi's eyebrow-drawing hand shook, and her sleeves swept over the yellowed playbills on the stage. She sang "The Drunken Concubine" for half her life, and her sleeves were flipped in the grandeur of the colorful clothes, until that day the pillars of the stage suddenly collapsed - the Japanese artillery shells flew off the cornices of the theater, and also shattered the jade bracelet on her wrist given by Ji Nian.
Ji Nian's military uniform is always stained with dirt and blood. He is an anti-Japanese soldier who crawled out from the dead. The heat in the barrel of his gun is more scorching than the brazier on the stage. Every time he passed by the ruins of the theater, he would always take out his pocket watch. Embedded in the cover was a small portrait of Liu Qingshi in costume, which she had secretly given to him before the war. "When this rain is over," he always wrote in his letters, "I will come back and listen to you finish singing the unfinished "Mu Guiying Takes Command."
The rain was still falling, washing away the broken walls and the distance between them that was getting closer and closer. One plays on the stage to express his ambition and sings about the rise and fall of his family and country; the other defends the country with his blood in front of the battle line, guarding the mountains and rivers. When Liu Qingshi took off her costume and hid the information in the hairpin on her temples; when Ji Nian hummed the opera lyrics she taught in the trenches, there was an immortal soul in the smoke.
When will this rain stop? Maybe we have to wait for the good news to penetrate the clouds, wait for the separated people to return through the mud, wait for the water sleeves on the stage to roll up the wind of rebirth. Before that, they were guarding the same sky waiting for it to clear in their own ways.
Purpose: Feelings of family and country