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"Eight Notches on the Air Duct" --A family survival epic written with steel bars, pills and unfinished flute sounds In the cold winter of 1997, the membrane of young Chen Yuan's flute burst at the highest note of the art exam. Not only was his musical dream shattered, but the strings of his family's destiny were also shattered. Twenty-seven years later, on the eve of his graduation from technical school, his son Chen Mo touched the broken bamboo flute in a dusty wooden box in the attic of his hometown. The cracks in the flute body were embedded with dried blood scabs and fragments of the flute membrane in the examination room. The year of birth "1979" on the art certificate was circled like a noose by scarlet nail polish. Salvation comes in the form of eight notches on the air duct. My father knocked on the ventilation duct at the construction site, and the metal trembled with the sound of my grandfather's dying phlegm and the sharp sound of my grandmother smashing the medicine jar. Chen Mo discovered that each indentation contained a secret: the depth corresponded to the blood and sweat loans of eight aunts, and the deepest groove contained gold chips with the word "filial piety" cast from her grandmother's funeral. When Chen Mo embedded the broken flute head into the air duct joint, the rusted steel bars finally sang the high note for them twenty-seven years later-- Some voices never disappear, they just learn to breathe inside the steel bars. The sweet curse and debt shackles carried by three generations were finally tempered on cold metal into a thrilling requiem for survival.