Huaidanshitou
March 31, 2025
The smile of the girl at the front desk reminded me of the first blooming osmanthus flowers at the end of Orange Island. "I've upgraded your room," she said, her eyelashes casting tiny shadows in the warm light. This unexpected gift is like the joy of finding a rare book in a used bookstore. The slight weightlessness of the elevator as it rises makes people feel as if they are flying upwards on the wings of words.
A sudden rainstorm hit in the afternoon, and the autumn chill in Changsha came unexpectedly. The tea room on the second floor was filled with warmth, the golden edges of the waffles were still steaming, and the honey flowed slowly along the grid, like a sweet haiku taking shape. The rain marks on the glass windows dyed the neon lights of Wuyi Avenue into a watercolor painting. We held tea cups and watched the city gradually spread into the ink painting of Wang Zengqi in the rain and fog.
When the morning light penetrated the gauze curtains, the nine-square breakfast had been waiting on the table for a long time. The tender and smooth rice noodles lie in the bone soup, and the orange pickled radish, purple sweet potato buns, and yellow soft-boiled eggs in the nine-square grid are scattered into a quatrain on the tip of the tongue. The breeze brought by the waiter's sleeves when refilling the tea has a faint jasmine scent, which reminds people of the scent between the pages of "Xiangxing Random Notes" on the bedside last night.
When checking out, the doorman handed over an oil-paper umbrella: "Changsha's rain is the best at keeping guests." We walked into the rain with a smile, and our backpacks were filled with postcards of Yuelu Academy given by the hotel. Those warm details have been bound into exclusive memories of this city, and they can be flipped out and relived at any time in every slightly cool season in the future.
Original TextTranslation provided by Google