How did hiring someone to press a pig image during Chinese New Year become a top trend?

He removed the digital input port from the projector and replaced it with a modified film transporter. His movements were very skilled, but it was clear that he had soldered the part himself. The solder joints were not very finely polished, but the fit was good.

Xu An helped him thread the film through the gears of the conveyor belt.

The image on the screen has changed.

The lighting was unstable and the colors were yellowish, a characteristic of old-fashioned film. The slight shaking in the image indicates that the photographer's hand was also shaking.

The first section is a dirt road.

Cornfields lined both sides of the road, and in the distance stood a few mud-brick houses and a large banyan tree. Several people, men and women, were walking along the road carrying loads on shoulder poles with bamboo baskets and woven bags hanging from both ends.

The second paragraph is a panoramic view of the village.

There were many more houses than there are now, and smoke rose from several rooftops. Children were running around by the roadside, dogs were chasing after them, and old ladies were drying grain in their yards.

The old man in the front row, who was using a cane, suddenly leaned forward.

"This is our dam site, this is the dam site from twenty-three years ago."

His voice was completely different from before. Before, it was the slow, leisurely tone typical of an old man, but now it was a hoarse, rapid one.

"Isn't that Aunt Zhang drying grain? She passed away in 2019, and you can see her hair was still black back then."

Two elderly women also came over, one of them pointing to a corner of the screen.

"The man pushing the bicycle is my husband. Look at his white shirt, I sewed the collar on it for him."

The voice started to tremble.

The live stream chat messages scrolled by one by one at a very slow pace, at the lowest possible speed.

"They saw their deceased relatives on the screen."

"The footage is from 23 years ago. Some of those people are no longer here, and some have left and never returned."

"The footage that the projectionist casually shot back then became the last video record of the entire village, something he probably never expected."

The scene is moving.

The third, fourth, and fifth paragraphs all depict similar scenes of daily life in the countryside: crowds going to the market, craftsmen repairing houses, and women washing clothes by the river.

Then comes the sixth paragraph.

The scene begins with a narrower mountain road paved with gravel, with tall shrubs on both sides that almost completely obscure the road.

The camera is shaky, and the person being filmed appears to be casually shot while walking, resulting in significantly lower image quality compared to the previous clips.

After walking for about ten seconds, the camera suddenly shifted to the left, panning over a small open space by the roadside.

A person was standing in the open space.

The image only lasted for less than two seconds before flashing by, but Xu An's body froze completely during those two seconds.

The person had their back to the camera, was wearing a dark coat, and had a bag slung across their shoulder.

Green canvas bag.

Type 65 copper buckle.

The scene has passed, and the screen now shows the next scene: two old men smoking pipes on a field ridge.

Xu An stared at the screen.

His hand rested on the edge of the projector, his knuckles tightened briefly, and then slowly relaxed.

"Uncle, can we rewind that part?"

The projectionist glanced at him.

Which part do you want to watch?

"The section of the mountain road ahead where there's a person carrying a bag."

The projectionist rewound the film, and the image flashed backward across the ridges of fields, open spaces, and mountain roads.

Then that figure reappeared.

This time, Xu An leaned closer to the screen to watch.

Although the image is blurry, the outline is clear: the person's height, posture, shoulder width, the water bottle hanging from their waist, and the angle of their left hand hanging at their side.

The bag is the clearest thing.

The bag has a side pocket with a brass snap fastener on the flap, positioned exactly like the brass snap fastener on the bag he's wearing.

The live stream chat paused for two seconds before flooding in with comments.

"That silhouette."

"Look at that bag."

"Wait, in the 2003 footage, a person carrying a Type 65 canvas bag appeared near this village. Isn't that the GS research team?"

"No, look closely at the position of that person's left hand. It looks like he's holding something, like a notebook."

Xu An remained silent.

He looked at it for about ten seconds and then gently looked away from the screen.

"Uncle, has anyone else come to see this roll of film?"

The projectionist thought for a moment.

"Yes, three years ago someone came to me specifically to see the materials from 2003. He read them all, one by one. After he finished, he borrowed one of the rolls and said he wanted to make a copy, but he returned it exactly as it was."

"What did that person look like?"

"He looked to be in his fifties, not tall, thin, carrying an old bag and wearing a pair of canvas shoes. He didn't talk much but was very polite. When he came back, he had left a note in the box."

"What did the note say?"

The projectionist peeled a small, folded piece of paper from the inside of the round box lid and handed it to Xu An.

There was only one line of text on the piece of paper.

"Thank you for saving face for them."

No signature.

However, there is a very subtle pause at the corner of the horizontal stroke with a hook, and the tip of the brush deviates half a millimeter to the left when turning before turning back.

Xu An folded the note and put it back.

The images on the screen were still moving, but the five elderly people had stopped watching the movie and were all pointing at the people on the screen, identifying who this person was and who that person was. Their voices rose and fell, and the open space became unusually lively.

The three dogs were woken up. The black dog yawned, and the two yellow dogs pricked up their ears, looked around for a while, and then lay down again.

Xu An sat down next to the projector until the film finished playing.

When helping the projectionist take down the screen, two people each pulled one end of the cloth off the bamboo pole and folded it neatly. The cloth was folded very neatly, and the projectionist had folded it hundreds of times, his technique as skilled as folding a military blanket.

"Uncle, which village are you going to tomorrow?"

"It takes an hour to get there by motorcycle from Walnut Plain."

How many people are there over there?

The projectionist stuffed the screen into a long, rectangular canvas bag, zipped it up, and dusted it off.

"There were three people last time, I wonder how many are left this time."

He spoke as if he were giving a weather forecast, without any deliberate seriousness or feigned ease; it was simply the calm statement of a person who had been running for twenty-three years about the changes in numbers.

Xu An helped him move the projector to an old motorcycle parked on the side of the open space. A metal frame was welded to the back of the motorcycle to secure the equipment box and screen bag. Shock-absorbing foam and rubber bands were wrapped around the metal frame.

The old people dispersed.

The old man with the cane walked up to the projectionist, patted his arm without saying a word, patted him twice, and then walked into his room with his cane.

The two old women walked one after the other, the one behind wiping her eyes with the tip of a palm-leaf fan as she walked.

The elderly couple were the last to leave. The man carried the stool on his shoulder, while the woman walked ahead with two uneaten ears of corn still in her bamboo basket.

As they reached the door, the woman glanced back at the now-darkened screen and said something Xu An couldn't quite make out, but it was something like, "Come again next month."

The projectionist responded from behind.

"Come on, I'll come whenever there's still someone watching me."

There were just over 500 viewers in the live stream, and someone posted a comment that scrolled very slowly.

"He'll come whenever there's still someone watching him. What if one day all five of them are gone?"

"He will still come. When he arrives and finds no one there, he will write in his notebook: Dam Head, 0 people, Sunny."

"Then he came again the second month, 0 people, cloudy. He came again the third month, 0 people, rain."

"Stop talking."

Before leaving, Xu An took out two eggs from his canvas bag and handed them to the projectionist.

"Uncle, this was given to me by someone on the street. I can't finish it, so please save it and cook it for breakfast tomorrow."

The projectionist weighed it in his hand when he took it.

"Are there hardly any people left in the villages you've traveled through on your journey, young man?"

Xu An paused for a moment.

"There's not much left, but there are still people guarding it."

The projectionist put two eggs into his tool bag along with a screwdriver and a wrench, then got on his motorcycle, stepped on the pedal, and the engine roared to life, emitting a plume of black smoke from the exhaust pipe.

"Let's go, there are still three people waiting to watch the movie in Walnut Flat."

The motorcycle's taillights appeared as tiny orange-red dots in the night, growing smaller and smaller until they disappeared around the bend at the intersection.

Xu An stood on the open ground watching the point of light disappear.

My phone vibrated in my pocket.

News about Zhao Nian.

"Brother Xu, I've investigated one more layer. The person who renewed your mother's postage after 2016 didn't just renew it at the post office. He did the same thing at at least six other locations along the way: paying back fees, maintaining storage locations, and replacing waterproof packaging. This person has spent ten years keeping a complete chain of clues for your mother, and the end of this chain isn't at the Mangshi post office."

The second one followed immediately.

"The destination is in the things inside the post office locker. That thing isn't the destination itself, it's a map pointing to another place no one has ever been. Xu An, what your mother left you wasn't a farewell letter, it's a road that's not yet finished."

After dawn, Xu An walked for about forty minutes. The road came out of the mango grove and turned into a downhill slope. The slope was not steep, but after walking for half a day, his legs could still feel his knees sinking down with every step.

The sugarcane groves on both sides of the road have been replaced by low tea bushes in this section, which are neatly trimmed. The tea leaves are bright green in the morning light, and there is a bitter plant smell in the air, which is completely different from the smell of cornfields in my hometown in Henan, but it is the same kind of smell that makes you feel like you have roots under your feet.

He pulled the water bottle out of the side pocket of his canvas bag and took two gulps. The water was still cold; it was spring water he had filled up with yesterday at the projectionist's place, with a slightly astringent taste from the minerals.

He read Zhao Nian's two messages at least five times last night.

What Mom left behind wasn't a farewell letter, but a map.

The map points to a location that no one has ever been to.

In other words, the journey is not yet over.

As he put the bottle back, his fingers brushed against the rolled-up wire ring inside his bag. The wire ring was given to him by Grandpa Zeng, and he had never been able to bear throwing it away. Now it was squeezed together with his father's notes and his mother's compass, each carrying its own story.