The Elevator Shaft

Lao Zhou had been in this building for three days.

Eighteen floors, built in the early nineties. The elevator was an old traction model—steel cables frayed, counterweights misaligned. The property management had finally coughed up the money for a major overhaul. Lao Zhou and his apprentice Xiao Li hoisted the car mid-shaft, and Lao Zhou strapped on his harness, climbing down the guide rails to the bottom.

The pit was thick with dust, littered with yellowed cigarette packs, plastic water bottles, a few rust-caked coins. Lao Zhou swept his flashlight around and, in the far corner, tucked beside the base of the car buffer, spotted a tin box.

It was an old biscuit tin, printed with a faded peony pattern. The metal had corroded badly; the lid and body were almost fused together. Lao Zhou pried it open with a screwdriver. Inside, no biscuits—just a plastic bag, knotted tight.

The bag had kept its contents surprisingly dry. A stack of letters. A few black-and-white photographs. A bracelet woven from red string.

The postmark on the top letter read March 1994.

Lao Zhou did not read it right away. He tucked the box into the side pocket of his tool bag and went back to work—calibrating rails, replacing guide shoes, adjusting the door operator. By the time he finished, it was six in the evening. Xiao Li packed up and left. Lao Zhou sat alone in the stairwell on the eleventh floor, lit a cigarette, and pulled out the letters.

Seven letters in total, all on the same pale blue stationery. The handwriting was delicate and feminine, ballpoint pen, pressed so hard in places that the letters rose like braille on the back of the page.

The first was signed "A-Zhen" and addressed to "Jianguo."

A-Zhen wrote that she had arrived in Shenzhen, working at an electronics factory, living in an eight-person dormitory. The cafeteria food was terrible, she said, but better than back home. She had left a message on Jianguo's pager and asked him to call when he could. At the end of the letter, she drew a lopsided smiley face.

Lao Zhou tapped his ash and moved to the second letter. July 1994.

A-Zhen had been promoted to team leader, her pay raised by fifty yuan. She asked if the elevator in Jianguo's building had been fixed yet. "Your building's elevator breaks all the time. Is it tiring, climbing up to the seventh floor?"

Lao Zhou's hand stopped.

The third letter, just before the Spring Festival of 1995. A-Zhen said she wouldn't be going home for the holiday; the factory was offering triple pay for overtime, and she wanted to save as much as she could. She had knitted Jianguo a gray scarf and mailed it. She hoped it fit.

The fourth, May 1995. The paper had several blotches where something—water, maybe—had dried. A-Zhen had been transferred to the quality inspection team. No more night shifts. She wrote that summer came early to Shenzhen. The flame trees outside the factory gate had bloomed, an entire canopy of red. "When you come to Shenzhen, I'll take you to see them."

The fifth, 1996. Jianguo had brought up marriage over the phone. She said yes, but she wanted to save for one more year. She listed the things they would need: a television, a washing machine, a gas stove. Each with an estimated price next to it. The last line read: "Rings: we can skip those for now. We'll get them later."

The sixth, autumn of 1997. A-Zhen had booked a train ticket home for before the Spring Festival: the twenty-sixth of the twelfth lunar month, a slow K-series train, twenty-six hours. She had bought gifts for Jianguo's parents at Dongmen Market. She wasn't sure if they would like them.

Lao Zhou put the sixth letter down and lit another cigarette. He opened the seventh.

The postmark was December 18, 1997.

The factory was swamped with year-end orders, she wrote. She might not be able to leave until the twenty-eighth. She had received the photo Jianguo sent and kept it under her pillow. She looked at it every night.

The last line read: "One more month, and I'll see you."

There was no eighth letter.

Lao Zhou stacked the letters back in order and picked up the photographs. Three of them showed the same young woman alone, wearing one of those padded-shoulder blazers that were fashionable in the nineties, standing in front of a flame tree, her smile a little stiff. One was a photo of two people in front of a building: the woman had her arm through a young man's. He was tall and lean, wearing a gray work jacket.

On the back of the photo, someone had written: "December 24, 1997. Waiting for you."

Lao Zhou recognized the building. It was the one he was sitting in right now. Twenty-something years ago, before the outer walls started peeling, before the iron gate at the entrance rusted—the same building, just newer then.

He took out the red-string bracelet. It was intricately braided, with a tiny peachwood bead threaded at the clasp, the kind you might get blessed at a temple.

The next day, Lao Zhou did not go straight down the shaft. He went up to the seventh floor and knocked on door 701.

An old woman answered, her surname Liu, her hair pure white but her eyes still sharp. Lao Zhou handed her the photograph and asked if she recognized anyone in it.

Liu put on her reading glasses and stared for a long time. Then she let out a soft gasp.

"Isn't that Jianguo?" She pointed at the young man. "He lived across the hall, in 702. Such a good kid. My legs were bad back then, and he helped me carry groceries every day."

"Where is he now?"

She took off her glasses, wiped them, put them back on—as if doing so might make things clearer.

"Dead. Winter of 1997."

Lao Zhou said nothing.

Liu remembered it vividly, she said. Two days before Christmas, Jianguo was riding his bicycle to the train station to pick someone up. At the intersection on Jianshe Road, a sand truck ran a red light. He was killed instantly.

"Who was he picking up?"

"I don't know. He wasn't married, didn't have a girlfriend—not that any of us knew. We all assumed it was a relative, coming from his hometown."

Lao Zhou tightened his grip on the letters.

He asked if she knew anyone named A-Zhen. Liu thought for a long time and shook her head.

Lao Zhou walked out to the corridor on the seventh floor and stood at the far end, looking east. From this angle, you could just make out a narrow strip of sky and the hazy outline of the distant city. He thought: on the night of December 23, 1997, had Jianguo stood in this exact spot, staring toward the train station?

That night, Lao Zhou searched online for hours. "Shenzhen A-Zhen electronics factory 1998," "Shenzhen missing person 1997"—nothing came up. Twenty-eight years was too long. Long enough for a person's name to sink to the very bottom of the internet.

He tried a different angle: "Shenzhen flame tree electronics factory 1990s." On the third page of results, in a personal blog that had long stopped updating, he found something.

The blog post was from 2008, a middle-aged woman's memoir about working at an electronics factory in Bao'an when she was young. The blog's last update was in 2013. Lao Zhou found an email address the author had left and wrote to the person he suspected might be A-Zhen. He described the contents of the letters and left his phone number.

Three days later, Lao Zhou finished repairing the elevator. The new steel cables glided silently over the traction sheave. The car settled smoothly at every floor—open, close—like an old clock finally fixed.

He was sitting beside his tool bag when his phone rang. A Shenzhen number.

The voice on the other end belonged to a woman, older-sounding, slow and steady. She said she had received his email.

"That box," she said. "I never imagined it was still there."

She told him that on the twenty-eighth of the twelfth lunar month in 1997, she had sat on a train for twenty-six hours and arrived back in this city. She waited three hours at the station exit. No one answered Jianguo's pager. No one picked up the phone at his apartment. She took a bus to the building. The elevator was broken. She climbed all seven floors on foot.

She knocked. No one answered.

She crouched in the seventh-floor corridor and waited an entire afternoon. Neighbors came and went. No one stopped to ask who she was looking for. When it got dark, she dragged her suitcase back down seven flights of stairs, spent the night in a cheap guesthouse nearby, and went back the next day to knock again. Still no answer. On the third day, she returned to Shenzhen.

"And after that?" Lao Zhou asked.

After that, she said, she got married in Shenzhen. Her husband worked at the same factory—a steady, kind man who treated her well. They had a daughter, now a university graduate.

Lao Zhou said, "I'll mail you the box."

A long silence on the line. Then she said, alright.

He went to the post office and sent the box. He insured it for five hundred yuan, even though the contents were worth almost nothing. It just didn't feel right, not putting a number on it.

Afterward, he went back to the building. The new elevator ran smoothly. The floor indicator lit up one after another—paused at the seventh—then continued upward.

Lao Zhou did not go up. He stood at the entrance and smoked a cigarette down to the filter, then crushed it out on the bin. He thought about how some things fall into the cracks, and you think they're gone forever. But they were always there.

It's just that by the time you find them, it's too late.