The Qingming Festival in Jiangnan is always surrounded by the lingering rain. Cheng Xiang thought that Yuxiang at the age of 22 was just another ordinary journey with his father to visit the grave and repair the old house, until he bumped into Lu Zeyan's lens.
He is a wealthy young man who brings an old camera to look for traces of his mother. She is an ordinary girl struggling in life with debts from her father. The rain wetted the film and made her heart beat: he helped her renovate the old house, and she cooked Qingming rice dumplings passed down by her mother for him. The light and shadow in the secret studio became the tenderness between the two hidden in the cracks of reality.
But fate never gives peace to those who suffer. The father's illness, the family's debt, Lu's father's persecution, deliberate concealment and misunderstandings, like clear rain, wrapped tightly around their hands layer by layer. She accepted the "breakup fee" to save her father, and was later arranged to leave the country.
Lu Zeyan wanted to save her, but there was a car accident on the road.
Five years later, Cheng Xiang saw that old photo of Rain Alley at a small town photography exhibition. In the photo, she was standing next to a loquat tree stump. The words below made her eyes ache: "My white chrysanthemum ended up in someone else's spring."
When she found his apartment, she only saw the unsent letter on the table and the time stopped at the age of 27. Every year after Qingming Festival, the rain would fall on time. Cheng Xiang would bring two bowls of Qingming cakes, sit next to the two tombs, and whisper: "Zeyan, the rain this year is still the same as when we first met."
This is a love crushed by reality, a waiting and missing that spans five years, and a return that can no longer be waited for in the Qingming rain. From the meeting to the farewell, every step hides the sweetness of the heart, but also the heart-breaking pain. Only after reading it to the end do I understand: some love can only stay in memories, clear and bright year after year, and never return.
Purpose: Cherish the people in front of you
