Distant Sample

In the mountains of Pingtang, Guizhou, people go there every autumn to "listen to the birds." Middle school teacher Lin Yuanshan has been listening to it for forty years. Lao He, a mountain man, knew that he was recording sounds, but never asked about it - until Lin Yuanshan passed away, he entrusted a letter with "Lin Xiaoshou" to this mountain friend who had been with him for thirty years. In 2030, her daughter Lin Xiao followed the tapes and notebooks left by her father and returned to the lowland surrounded by mountains. The recordings in the cave become more dense every year, and the backup copies of the notes are sealed in plastic bags and hung on nails in the cave. There is a slow rhythm hidden in the voice, like the breathing of the earth, and like the gaze of a distant existence, light-years away. At the same time, the FAST Sky Eye captures the electromagnetic ripples of the universe in the valley, and the international scientific research team is divided between data, beliefs and national interests; an anthropologist has spent forty years recording the wisdom of Yunnan tribes, reminding us: the so-called "advanced" and "primitive" are just different positions where the observer stands. This is a novel about listening and inheritance. It is not eager to reveal the answer, but allows two generations to slowly identify the true coordinates of human beings in the universe between the mountain wind, signals and silence - we may never be the only observers, and we are just a sample quietly collected in a more distant gaze.