Su Dongpo Is Writing to Me

Thirteen-year-old Lin Xiaofan was trapped. The slipping grades, the cold war between his parents, the inexplicable distance between friends - everything was like the river fog that rolled up in Chongqing in October, making him breathless. He didn't know how to live, and he didn't know who to ask. Until he found an inkstone that could generate heat on its own in the used bookstore "Mohentang" on Baixiang Street. Eight words are engraved on the bottom of the inkstone: Using ink as a medium, time and space are connected. He dubiously wrote the first sentence in ink: "Mr. Su Dongpo, how did you survive being demoted so many times in your life?" The writing disappeared. Early the next morning, before the whistle on the Yangtze River sounded, a neat line of running script emerged from the inkstone. Nine hundred years ago, Su Shi, who was demoted to Huangzhou and was at the lowest point in his life, received this letter from the future. He wrote his reply with tears in the leaky Lingao Pavilion—— "You asked me how to survive. There is no secret, just..." From then on, pieces of letter paper passed through the small inkstone, going back and forth between the two times and spaces. The literary giant of the Northern Song Dynasty and the young man from the mountain city exchanged their own confusions, tears and answers across a thousand years and 1,200 kilometers. Su Shi taught Lin Xiaofan to stand firm on the edge of collapse, and every time Lin Xiaofan gritted his teeth and wrote "I still want to try", he also supported the lonely soul who wrote "Picking up all the cold branches and refusing to live on them" in the deepest night. This is not a one-way rescue, but two completely broken hearts re-creating each other's light in an ancient inkstone. Su Dongpo is writing a letter. The recipient of the letter is Lin Xiaofan. A Chongqing boy who doesn't know that he is worthy of being loved. I am Lin Xiaofan.