Wildspeak

One late night, Li Xingye, a thirty-seven-year-old architectural designer in Beijing, stared at his takeout container and suddenly wondered: who was his great-great-grandfather?

He returned to his family's old home in Lingqiu, Shanxi. In the south room, crammed with odds and ends, he pried open a hidden compartment in an ancestral Tang-era chest and found a silver box engraved with a peacock, along with a silver key whose purpose was unknown. His father said, "These belonged to your grandfather. I saw them once, but never opened the box." His fourth uncle pulled a blue cloth bundle from beneath the medicine cabinet. Inside was that very key. He had kept it as an acupuncture needle and never had the heart to use it.

The silver box opened to reveal a three-tiered encrypted Luban puzzle box. His grandfather had drawn an assembly diagram on plain silk, and on the final layer had written just one line: "It won't open while your heart is unsettled. The solution is inside the box."

Li Xingye posted photos on a woodworking forum to ask for help. Three days later, someone broke into the house. The door latch had been slipped, the south room turned upside down, and the black dog had been injected with a tranquilizer. Nothing was missing, but beneath the peach and plum trees, the intruder left a jujube-wood plaque carved with the character "Yang." On the forum, the last reply from "Old Duan the Carpenter," who had offered to buy the box, was posted two days before the break-in.

His grandfather had split one thing in two: the key went to his fourth uncle, and the box was hidden in the secret compartment, so no one knew the whole story. Now Li Xingye must piece everything back together, bit by bit, and pry out what his family has kept hidden for decades from the gaps between the mortise and tenon joints left by an old carpenter who never left himself a way out.

This is a novel about craftsmanship, silence, and keeping secrets, a story of tracing one's roots. The mountain does not move, and neither do people, but some things will sink out of sight if they are not brought back up soon.