Time Amber in an Old Wooden Box

The moving truck's tailgate gleamed silver in the midday sun. As Zhong Hua sealed the boxes with wide tape, Ayu's gaze was suddenly drawn to the shadow in the corner of the balcony. The camphor wood chest leaned against the peeling wallpaper, its copper-plated corners worn a warm, honey-colored sheen, like a piece of toffee softened by time. As she knelt down to brush away the accumulated dust, the gold lettering of "Made in Shanghai" on the lid had faded to a few streaks of light brown, but in a certain ray of light, the pattern of peony scrolls from her mother's embroidery frame suddenly emerged—back then, Ayu would always be crouched by the sewing machine watching the silk thread pierce through the fabric, and with each stitch, her father would apply the first coat of varnish to the camphor wood chest.

"This box must be thirty years old." Zhong Hua's fingertips brushed against the crack in the lid of the box, the diagonal line splitting the characters for "Shanghai" in two. The grain of the wood on the upper half even matched the ridgeline of the pebbles they had found at Qinghai Lake. As Ayu pried open the rusty brass lock, a dried jasmine petal suddenly drifted down from the inside of the lid, tucked between the pages of a 1992 calendar. The date "5.12," circled in blue ink, was the anniversary of her mother's death. The scorch marks on the petal reminded her of the same jasmine scent that rose from the ashes when Zhong Hua used a magnifying glass to light a campfire in the Gobi Desert of Dunhuang last year.

Stitch map on faded letter paper

The blue embroidery frame on the top shelf had turned grayish-white. When Ayu lifted it, the half-embroidered peony suddenly revealed a wondrous interplay of light and shadow in the sunlight—the seed stitch along the petals formed fine raised dots, and the shadows cast on the floor formed contour lines of the Yunnan-Tibet Highway. Her fingertips traced the words "Wealth and Longevity," and the cotton thread showing through the worn silk threads was the same light blue as the morning mist over Namtso Lake. When Zhong Hua leaned closer to look, he suddenly noticed that the cracks in the bamboo frame of the embroidery frame were exactly the same as the ice fissures on the cliff face of the Sacred Waterfall in Yubeng Village, and the way the rope was wrapped was exactly the same as the sail knots drawn in his grandfather's logbook.

The letters underneath were folded into an exquisite sailboat shape. When Ayu unfolded them, the penmanship of 1998 was faintly visible through the dampness. When her mother wrote, "The sycamore trees in the yard have grown taller again," the pen nib paused three times at the vertical hook of the character "tall." This rhythm reminded Zhong Hua of the waves he heard on Weizhou Island—water dripping from the crevices of the coral reef at the same frequency every time the tide receded. On the back of the letter, a sketch of a house was drawn in pencil. The shape of the smoke rings from the chimney coincided with the trajectory of the hot air balloon they photographed in Daocheng Yading, and the slope of the eaves was exactly the angle of the cracks in the ice of Namtso Lake.

As the tenth letter slid out, a silver thimble fell out from the interlayer. When Ayu put it on, she noticed that the "囍" (double happiness) character engraved on the inner wall had been worn into a shallow groove, and the cotton wadding accumulated in the groove resembled the aerial outline of Bird Island in Qinghai Lake. Zhong Hua lightly scratched the edge of the thimble with his fingernail, and the humming sound it produced was in sync with the camel bells they had heard in Dunhuang. The vibrations transmitted along Ayu's finger bones were reproducing the resonant frequency of the icefall falling in Yubeng Village.

The rings of the sycamore tree in the family photo

The yellowed family photo had been repeatedly taped back with transparent tape. When Zhong Hua gently peeled it off with tweezers, the back of the photo revealed the words "Autumn 1997" written by his mother in ballpoint pen. In the photo, Ayu, wearing a school uniform, clutched a kite with a broken string, and the curve of the kite's bamboo frame perfectly matched the spiral of the nautilus shell they had found on Weizhou Island. The father's figure, squatting in front of the radio, was cut by the shadow of a sycamore tree, and the tree's annual rings formed strange spots of light on the photo—these spots arranged to resemble the Big Dipper, with the handle pointing to the longitude coordinates of Zhong Hua's old family home.

"Look at this radio." Ayu's fingertips stopped on the parts in her father's hand; the anti-slip texture of the knob was exactly the same as the gear teeth of Zhonghua's grandfather's pocket watch. Even more astonishing was that the angle at which the back cover of the radio was open revealed electronic components arranged in the shape of a satellite map of Qinghai Lake, while the curvature of the antenna resembled the Milky Way arch they had photographed at Namtso Lake. When Zhonghua held the photograph up to the window, sunlight pierced through the thin edges of the photographic paper, and the shadows of the trees cast on the floor suddenly began to move—moving at the same speed as the water flow of the sacred waterfall in Yubeng Village, while the light spots at the top of the shadows flickered in sync with Zhonghua's heartbeat.

A movie ticket stub that fell out of the photo compartment stunned Ayu—it was for the 2005 premiere of *Harry Potter*, and the tear shape on the stub matched the cloud pattern her mother had embroidered on the tablecloth. On the back of the stub, written in pencil, were the words "Waiting for the rain to stop," and the strokes of the characters perfectly matched the pressure points of Zhonghua's father's signature on his medical record. When Zhonghua held the stub up to the light, a very faint jasmine scent suddenly seeped from the paper fibers—the smell of the face cream her mother used to use. The trail of the fragrance seemed to outline a three-dimensional model of the Weizhou Island volcano in the air.

Fluorescent star trails in a tin box

As the metal box rolled out from the bottom of the container, rust from the latch crumbled and piled up into miniature sand dunes on the floor. The moment Ayu pried it open with her Swiss Army knife, the air of 1999 rushed in—a mixture of pencil shavings, eraser scraps, and orange hard candy, reminding her of her elementary school desk drawer. Inside the lid, a distorted smiley face was drawn with correction fluid; the reflection in the eyes was identical in brightness to the North Star they had seen at Namtso Lake, and the upward curve of the lips mirrored the angle of the sunlight at sunrise over Qinghai Lake.

The concert ticket was tucked between three lyric books. The glow sticks from 2008 were sticky, yet they shone with a faded pinkish-purple hue when Zhong Hua waved them. Ayu suddenly remembered her last night at Qinghai Lake, the sunset painting the entire lake the same color, while smoke from the distant herders' tents rose in rhythm with the waving glow sticks. The ticket stubs were arranged in the constellation Orion, with Betelgeuse positioned exactly like her seat number from back then, and the smudged drink stains on the ticket were shaped exactly like the satellite map of the glacial lake in Yubeng Village.

The bottommost cassette tape made both of them hold their breath—the cassette of "Seven Mile Fragrance" was cracked into three pieces, the cracks forming a map of the Yunnan-Tibet Highway. When Zhong Hua put the tape into his Walkman, the static suddenly mingled with the clear chirping of cicadas, reminding A Yu of the summer before her senior year of high school, when she listened to this very tape and finished embroidering her first peony purse. Even more amazingly, the pauses in the cicada chirping matched the rhythm of camel bells in Dunhuang, and the blank spaces between the songs perfectly captured the subtle sounds of Namtso Lake freezing over.

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