A White Shirt in the Coal Ash

The wind at Dayuan Coal Mine was black, and only Yan Kai's shirt was white.

Feng Yuying was the most unremarkable "lump of coal" at Dayuan Coal Mine. To feed her younger siblings, she had sold herself into the sunless depths of the mine at an early age. She thought she was doomed to rot among the coal dust, until a substitute teacher in a white shirt came along like a light out of place, forcing his way into her life of cracks and scars.

One was a scholar from high above the clouds, the other a coal miner sunk deep in the mud. In air thick with the smell of sulfur, they crossed the chasm between their social classes and, beneath society's scorn and poverty's crushing weight, used bloodstained chalk and a patched-together Chinese textbook to write a marriage vow that defied death.

As pneumoconiosis steadily devoured her breath and fate bared its most ferocious fangs, this journey that began in the humblest circumstances was destined to end in the most tragic way.

“Teacher Yan, can clouds and mud really be together?”

“They can. As long as flowers bloom in the mud, the clouds will come down.”

Later, the mine entrance was sealed, and the people were gone. Yan Kai stayed beside that broken blackboard, waiting through the long years ahead for a reunion that would never be dismissed from class.