When Love Meets Lin Daiyu

Lin Daiyu, who died after weeping herself dry in Dream of the Red Chamber, carried one last wish as she lay dying: “May I find a place of peace.” That yearning sends her soul transmigrating to an old neighborhood in Jiangnan in the 21st century. At seventeen, she arrives with memories of the Grand View Garden and her poems, frightened and lost amid the concrete jungle, until Shen Yanzhi, a twenty-year-old student of classical literature, comes to her rescue.

Shen Yanzhi helps his grandfather look after an old bookstore called By the Inkstone. His gentle, sincere nature gives shelter to Lin Daiyu's sensitive and proud heart. Her first encounters with modern civilization lead to one amusing mishap after another: she mistakes electric lights for luminous pearls and refuses to eat instant noodles, thinking them like “leftovers.” Yet her poetic talent and love of plants gradually win people over. She inspires the hanfu designer Su Xiaotang, helps Shen Yanzhi proofread ancient books, and sparks heated discussion with poems published anonymously.

Doubts about her identity, an online storm, and the threat of the bookstore's demolition arrive one after another. Lin Daiyu refuses to profit from being labeled a “transmigrator,” while Shen Yanzhi protects her innocence with the earnestness of youth. As they exchange poems and encounter each other's cultures, affection grows between them. With support from people who rally around their “poetry gathering,” they eventually save the bookstore and find a place to call home in spirit.

From fear and rejection to settling in with peace of mind, Lin Daiyu learns to write about modern life with a brush. Together with Shen Yanzhi, she organizes “A Dialogue Between Past and Present.” No longer trapped in the old dreams of the Red Chamber, she comes to understand amid bamboo shadows and the sound of poetry that true peace means sharing the everyday joys of life with the person by your side.