Stories in poetry

Old Lamps on the Spring River

Ku Wuji · AI Writing · A Novel of Travel and Society in a Historical Setting · Complete · 36 chapters · 6 reads

The spring tide rises to the old ferry landing, and A Zhao still has not sold the boat her father left behind. She packs her sewing things to leave for the city, only to discover an unnamed lantern debt on the ledger’s final page. Following an old lantern along the riverbank, she encounters a daughter who has not returned for sixteen years and a mother who borrows a lantern every year; the departure she has already carefully arranged gradually falls under the spell of opera singing from the opposite shore.

Written with AI assistance, this book expands on Zhang Ruoxu’s “A Moonlit Night on the Spring River” and the original short story “Borrowing a Lamp, Returning a Boat.” The characters, geography, and events are fictional; this is neither a translation or adaptation of the original poem nor a biography of the poet.