三朵玫瑰，半城风月

英语释🇬🇧

Gu Manzhen and Shen Shijun in "Half Life Fate" are the threads torn apart by fate. Their love started so cleanly, the hot water bottle handed over by Manzhen, the gloves left by Shijun in the drawer, and the delicate sweetness growing in the alleys of Shanghai, like tender sprouts in early spring, with timid expectations for the future. The hidden reefs of life always surface unintentionally, with the calculations of sister Manlu and the heavy pressure of the family like an invisible net, trapping the two in the ending of 'we can never go back'. After many years of reunion, Shijun looked at the fine lines around Manzhen's eyes and realized that some of the missed opportunities were not due to lack of love, but because "we were too young at that time and didn't know that the future would be so difficult. This love is like a rusty pin that once held onto the hem of youth's clothes, but later oxidized in time, leaving deep and shallow marks, reminding the truth that 'good things in the world are not firm, and colorful clouds are easy to scatter and glass is brittle'.

Gloves in the drawer. The rainy season in Shanghai is always damp and sticky. When Gu Manzhen stuffed the warm water bottle into Shen Shijun's hand, his fingertips were getting cold from holding the briefcase for too long. The iron guys in the factory are too cold, "her voice was as light as raindrops," pour some hot water and let it go

That was a alley in the 1930s, with pigeon cage like houses filled with smoke and fire, blue clothes dripping from the clothesline, and the fragrance of food wafting from the coal stove. Shijun works in a foreign firm, and Man Zhen works as a clerk in a factory. When they meet a new bud of a wutong at the entrance of an alley, they timidly come out with a naive expectation of a clear sky. He would wait for her on her way home from work, the bicycle bell ringing loudly; She would quietly put the gloves he left in the office into the drawer, with a small piece of floral cloth sewn on the lining - which she had cut from her old cheongsam.

The drawer became their secret. When Shijun discovered the gloves, he rubbed his fingertips against the soft floral cloth and suddenly felt a gentle bump in a corner of his heart. He gave her a collection of Tagore's poems in return, and on the page of 'The Farthest Distance in the World', he placed a small portrait he had drawn himself, with a clumsy and childish pen tip, but he drew the pear vortex at the corner of her mouth clearly when she smiled. Manzhen hid her poetry collection under her pillow, flipping through it at night under dim yellow lights, with sweet words and lines, like freshly boiled rock sugar water.

At that time, they always thought that life would be like a stone road in the alley, solidly paved towards the distance. Shijun planned to save another six months' salary and propose marriage to Manzhen; Manzhen secretly embroidered a pair of pillowcases, with the stitches depicting the future. The hidden reefs that can be lived on are never marked on the navigation chart - Manlu's illness, the family's debt, like the sudden tide of water, overflowing their carefully drawn blueprint.

The day Manlu knelt in front of Manzhen, it rained heavily. Sister, please, "the once dazzling dancer is now withered." Only you can save this family. She wanted to go find Shijun, but her sister locked the door and the rain curtain outside the window made the inside a blurry white, like someone had erased all the way with an eraser.

Shi Jun's letters were sent one by one to the Gu family, but they were all suppressed by Man Lu. He repeatedly touched the empty corner in the drawer, as if the residual warmth of his gloves was still there, but he could no longer wait for the owner to come and retrieve them. He went to Manzhen's house to look for her, but the door was tightly closed. The neighbor said, 'Miss Gu has moved away.'. At that time, he didn't understand. Some goodbyes never said "goodbye", only on an ordinary afternoon, like dandelions blown away by the wind, never falling back to their original place.

Twelve years later in a department store, Shijun ran into Gu Manzhen in front of a glass cabinet. She was wearing a dusty cotton jacket with fine lines at the corners of her eyes. When she saw him, the ball of yarn in her hand rolled "gurgling" on the ground. Time is like a blunt knife, carving out the vicissitudes of life for the girl who once had bright eyes, but it hasn't worn away her eyes that suddenly turned red when she saw him.

Shijun, "she called his name, her voice tinged with dust.

Manzhen, "the words he wanted to say were stuck in his throat and ultimately only turned into these two words.

They sat in the corner of the caf é, while the tram jingled past outside the window. Manzhen stirred the cold coffee, talking about the ups and downs of these years, about her sister's death, and about the stolen child. Shijun listened and unconsciously rubbed the edge of the teacup with his fingers. Suddenly, he remembered the gloves in the drawer and the poetry collection with the little statue in it. We can never go back, "Manzhen said as if she had unloaded a heavy burden, and the light in her eyes completely dimmed.

Shijun walked out of the caf é, and the streetlights lit up repeatedly, casting a long shadow on him. He finally understood that some missed opportunities were never due to lack of love, but because young people always thought that there were infinite possibilities in the future, but could not see the hidden reefs laid by fate - the accidents hidden in the "wait a moment", the changes hidden behind the "it doesn't matter", and the regrets that were thought to be "the future is long" but ultimately "an indefinite future".

Like that rusty pin that once held onto the hem of youth, but slowly oxidized in the moisture of time. It's not that it's not strong enough, it's that there is no eternal sharpness in the world. All "good things" have a fragile nature: buds in early spring will be frostbitten by the cold of spring, freshly embroidered pillowcases will be worn away by life, and even the cleanest love may be washed away by the undercurrent of fate.

Many years later, Shijun found the Tagore poetry collection in the old box, and the floral cloth slipped from the pages. He pinched the soft cloth and suddenly remembered what the teacher had said in philosophy class about "existence and time" - all existence flows in time, and nothing can stay in place. Love is not an eternal solid, it is a flowing river, sometimes gentle, sometimes turbulent, sometimes split by rocks, rushing towards different oceans.

The wutong tree in the lane is still there, but its branches are thicker, which can block the stronger wind and rain. Shijun stood under the tree, watching the fallen leaves swirl and fall. Suddenly, he realized that "not being able to go back" was not the end, but the norm of life. The threads that were torn apart by fate may still be connected in some unseen dimension, like the sweetness that Manzhen left in his life, like a rust free mark, reminding him that once there was such a clean love, it was already a gift of time.

The good things in the world are not always firm, but it is precisely because of this that those brief encounters, delicate sweetness, and timid expectations are more like stars in the dark night. Although they may sink to the west, they have already engraved eternal light in memory.