"When will you return? You gave no date. Autumn rain swelled the pools on Mount Ba at night. When shall we trim the candle by the western window together, and speak again of that rainy night on Mount Ba? I really like this poem, 'A Night Rain Sent North.' It's subtle, delicate, and perfect. That faint yet palpable sense of time and space overlapping is intoxicating."
"Mm-hmm, just like when you went to Argentina. I asked when you'd be back, and you said you didn't know. I was just about to tell you that the camellias in Lin'an were blooming beautifully, but you started telling me how the women there were fiery and passionate, dancing with nothing but grass skirts wrapped around them."
"What this poem means is: I miss you from the farthest place on Earth."
"You... you, I wasn't... ah..."
—A note from Ye Chenyu's lesson for Su Mei at the Lin'an tea plantation
It was also spring that year. After Ye Chenyu returned from Argentina, he tenderly cared for the Su Family's eldest daughter after she caught a cold. He also finally talked her out of her plan to open the largest dance hall in the Far East, allowing the potential conflict between the Su Family and the Gu Family, who ran the Paramount, to dissolve without a trace.
That day, Su Mei had a fried steak at a foreign restaurant for lunch. Watching her friend Yi Zhongyu cut into the seemingly tender, juicy beef only for bloody juices to seep out, she scolded Yi Zhongyu for eating raw meat and drinking blood. She herself had little appetite and only ate some borscht and buttered bread.
The other dishes there were expensive, but the butter and bread came with unlimited refills. Su Mei did not