Butterfly Lovers on the Sea: Instead of Turning into Flying Butterflies, They Turn into Corals

In the thirty-sixth year of the Jiajing reign of the Ming Dynasty, Chen Shouyi, a porter in Fuzhou, and Lin Aman, a fishmonger, were married for seven days but were forced to flee after being framed by bullies. The night before boarding the ship, the two signed a marriage contract at the Mazu Temple. Aman wrote in tears, "If the boat capsizes, I hope we will still be married in the next life." Three days into the voyage, the ship encountered a storm, the cabin door was locked, and everyone died at the bottom of the sea. At the last moment, they hugged each other tightly, their ribs intertwined like symbiotic coral. Four hundred and sixty-five years later, Pingtan fishermen scooped up half of the coffin board with the inscription "Life together does not count years, death together means sleep". The archaeological team discovered the marriage letter wrapped in oilcloth from the chests of a pair of Ming Dynasty remains embracing each other. In modern Fuzhou, diving instructor Chen Nianhai and museum instructor Lin Qian met at the diving club. Thirty meters underwater, they discovered the sunken ship, and the memories of their past life came flooding back - the suffering at the dock, three years of waiting, the seven-day wedding, and the farewell in the shipwreck. The memory awakens not only love, but also an agreement that spans life and death. From Pingtan to Fuzhou, from the bottom of the sea to the human world, the two held a seaside wedding in the presence of relatives and friends. Chen Dahai used coffin wood to carve wooden fish and gave them to each other: "Fish can't live without water, and they can't live without each other." A year later, they placed a coral reef base at the sunken ship, allowing love to grow forever on the seabed like coral. This is not a legend, but a story adapted from the "shipwreck remains of two people buried together" unearthed in Pingtan, Fujian in 2022. Four hundred and sixty-five years ago, they wrote the longest love letter on the seabed; four hundred years later, the sea returned people to each other.