Shattered Shadows of Glazed Light

In 1866, sixteen-year-old Lin Yaomei, a daughter of Wuyi, bravely set off for Nanyang to search for her missing brother-in-law.

When she finally reached the Ipoh mines after many hardships, she discovered that her brother-in-law, like so many other gold mountain migrants, had started a family on both sides of the sea.

To spare her sister the heartbreak, and so that her sister could keep receiving the remittance letters her brother-in-law sent home, Lin Yaomei made a pact with him to conceal the truth. She kept the secret for nine whole years.

During those nine years, she worked at the mines as a tin washer, wading through water to pan for tin. Life was bitter and hard. She swallowed her tears and shared only happy moments with her sister back in their hometown through her letters.

Her sister, too, wrote only of good things.

The sisters stayed in touch through slow but precious letters. As the younger sister faced the risk of mining disasters and the complexities of cultural integration in Nanyang, her elder sister struggled against the constraints of feudal propriety and the turmoil of war back home.

The twin flowers were also two sides of a mirror.

The remittance letters her younger sister sent helped their little family weather the storms. Her elder sister's steadfastness and patience were the younger sister's greatest source of strength.

The tin-washing basin in the Gold Mountain and the embroidery frame back home bore witness to the sisters' lives, shimmering and shifting like fragments of light.