When Carriages Were Slow

I recently finished a film called Dear You(给阿嬷的情书). Afterwards, my heart could not settle for a long while. I kept wanting to write something—for that age when carriages and horses were slow, and for each of those letters. And so this piece came to be.

I. When Carriages and Horses Were Slow

In days of old, the sun grew slow; carriages, horses, and mail were all slow—a lifetime was just enough to love one person.

These are lines from “Slower Days in the Past” by Mu Xin(木心). When I first read them, I thought they were merely poetry; reading them again today, they feel like a sigh from an entire age.

In the era of letters, a letter was sent out once a month; the one waiting had to endure a long, long wait, and by the time the news arrived it was already months old. Yet it was precisely this “slowness” that made every word solemn. To save ink and paper, people wrote in concise, semi-classical Chinese—a few short lines, yet carrying feelings too deep to speak aloud. Take this letter, for example:

Eight years have passed since I parted from my wife. Day and night I think of her, yet the day of return remains far away. I can only turn my longing into striving, and build a livelihood through diligence and thrift. Now I have traded my three-wheeled cart for a cargo boat, and at last I can set sail. Rivers and seas have their shores—reunion can be hoped for.

Your husband, Musheng

A few dozen characters, yet they hold eight years of longing and the hopes of an entire family.

II. When We Stopped Cherishing Every Word

In those days of separation, all one could do was pour longing and daily happenings into a letter. But today, all kinds of instant messengers let us send whatever we want to say, whatever moment we want to share—a photo, a video—and it arrives within a second.

Everything has become convenient, and everything has become fast. So fast that some people keep breaking up and making up, loving many people in a single lifetime, and never again needing to treasure every word.

III. Fragments of the Letter Era

For as long as I can remember, the age of letters had already passed. My whole impression of letters remains in the stories my mother told me when I was little about my uncle sending letters home: yellowed envelopes and colorful stamps. In primary school, the school once organized a letter-writing activity; I have long forgotten whom I wrote to and where I sent it. None of that mattered to me then—I simply wanted to taste the novelty. Back then I felt letters were outdated, relics of a bygone age, without meaning.

IV. After AI Took Over

In 2026, AI is everywhere, and more and more content has been reduced to machine generation: viral short dramas on streaming platforms, product covers, advertising magazines, music, novels… I don’t know when it started, but I began to resent this. I feel it robs creators of their hard work, that it “plagiarizes” the craft and experience of the very best in every field, producing in a few prompts what once took months or even years. No doubt this is progress—but it does not come from the creators themselves. Excellent AI works grow ever more numerous, and ever cheaper.

V. The Warmth of Things Made by Hand

So I began to love things made by hand: handmade crafts, handwritten letters, objects untouched by industrial finishing. A machine can make such a thing in minutes, while a pair of hands may spend hours or even days on it. But what the latter pours in is the maker’s heart and soul—even if it is not so refined, it is steeped in a stretch of the maker’s one, finite life.

I have come to admire those around me who still keep notebooks, who in this age of hyper-information still choose the most primitive way to leave behind their feelings.

VI. Letters, a Kind White Lie

The most moving thing in Dear You is not love itself, but the “deception” hidden behind that qiaopi(侨批)—a remittance letter sent home by an overseas Chinese. The old man had long since died far from home, never to return; for half a lifetime, the letters and money sent home in the name of “Musheng” were written by a woman who owed him a debt of gratitude. In his place she wrote, “My dear wife Shurou, I hope this letter finds you well,” and she kept writing for half a lifetime, even giving up a marriage of her own for it.

One letter kept a woman who had waited most of her life living in the hope that he would “return home in glory.” This was not deceit—it was a kind white lie, guarded with half a lifetime of care.

VII. The Warmth Between the Lines

Writing this, I think of two passages I copied down recently. One is from Lu Xun(鲁迅)’s Letters Between Two:

The letters I send you, I always take to the post office; I don’t like putting them in the green mailboxes on the street, for I always suspect they would arrive a little slower.

Such sincere longing. The other goes:

To you, reading this at some hour of some day, somewhere in time:

Please run your fingers over these words,

for hidden there is the warmth of this very moment of mine.

I am grateful that I have held a few minutes of your life.

I think that if I had lived in that age of carriages, horses, and letters, and received such a letter, I too would probably have been unable to hold back my tears.

Epilogue

In this age, feelings come too quickly and leave too hastily. Infatuation has become cheap, novelty short-lived, and too many people have grown used to beginning easily, giving up easily, and turning away easily. It is precisely because of this that a love spanning a whole lifetime—silent, steadfast, asking for nothing in return, and never minding how it ends—feels so especially healing and especially moving.