The Locust Tree

The old pagoda tree blossoms year after year and sheds snow every winter. It can keep watch over a mountain village through season after season, but it cannot protect ordinary people from lives cut short and scattered. This is a fated tragedy rooted in the countryside of a bygone era. There are no villains, only poverty, prejudice, fate, and helplessness. Every tender encounter is ultimately crushed by reality; every love born of sincerity ends with the pagoda blossoms fallen and a lifetime spent waiting in vain. The tree says nothing, keeping half a life’s worth of grievances and half a life’s worth of regrets to itself.