Lin Wanqiu closed her tablet and traced her fingertips lightly around its edge. The wind outside had softened. The patter of sand against the glass shifted from dense to intermittent, like someone tapping an empty can in the distance. She stood, walked to the desk, and reconnected the mainframe power. As the screen lit up, a prompt appeared:
Cache data fully backed up. Clear temporary files?
She tapped No, zipped the streaming gear into its shockproof case, and the sound echoed softly in the room.
The pothos still sat in place, leaves tilted south, roots in an old mineral water bottle, the water level half a finger lower than that morning. She crouched and stared for two seconds, then left it as it was. Plants changing direction had happened once before, three years ago, when she streamed salt-field crystallization by Qinghai Lake. A researcher from the Academy of Agricultural Sciences had messaged privately: some plants' geotropism could be disturbed by weak local magnetic fields, especially in geologically active areas like the Gobi. It was not rare.
She stood up, opened a hidden compartment at the top of her bookshelf, and took out a stack of paper materials:
a photocopy of fragments from Yingzao Fashi (Treatise on Architectural Methods),
mortise-and-tenon mechanics reports from the Forbidden City Ancient Architecture Institute,
and several hand-drawn structural sketches, their edges frayed from use.
The wall above her desk was covered in sticky notes, dense with terms and data:
Dovetail joint tensile strength ≥8.6 kN,
Straight tenon shear stress distribution curve,
Corner tenon 3D fitting tolerance…
Her writing was slim and neat, as if afraid an extra word might break some balance.
She sat down, opened her tablet, and kept the document title:
Tomorrow's Stream Script — The Mechanical Wisdom of Mortise-and-Tenon Structures.
The cursor blinked. She typed:
"Today we'll talk about the most basic connection method in ancient Chinese architecture."
She paused for three seconds, deleted the whole sentence, and rewrote:
"Today we're talking about a technique that uses not a single nail, yet holds wood tightly together for thousands of years."
This was more direct. Many of her viewers were high school and vocational students. Last time she talked about bamboo fiber molecular arrangement, she'd gotten a dozen comments asking, "How is this related to fixing bikes?" She later added an analogy:
"It's like a chain catching on a gear — one millimeter off, and it slips."
That episode's completion rate rose by 12%.
She pulled up an animation: a beam connected to a column by three types of tenons, swaying gently under simulated seismic waves but never collapsing. She watched for a moment, then deleted the phrase "truly a miracle" from her script.
Miracle was too heavy; it made people overlook the calculation and trial behind it.
Her father used to say at archaeological sites:
"The ancients weren't gods. They just buried their failures deeper."
Her phone vibrated: a weather alert.
Yellow sandstorm warning for the Northwest in the next 24 hours.
She glanced at it but didn't open it. Out here, wind wasn't predicted — you only knew how harsh it was when it hit your face. She locked her phone, turned on the recorder, and softly read her revised opening. On playback, her speech was still slightly fast, especially around "tolerance controlled within 0.5 millimeters", almost running together.
She paused, took a breath, and tried again.
"The key to this connection is the fit between tenon and mortise. If the error exceeds half a millimeter, the structure loosens. But within this range, it achieves complete self-locking fixation."
She paused afterward — a habit from her streams: leaving time for the audience to absorb.
In her first broadcast three years prior, a hearing-impaired viewer commented:
"You speak too fast; the subtitles can't keep up."
Since then, she deliberately paused two seconds after every key point.
Satisfied, she saved the script, opened editing software, and imported a self-recorded demo. In the frame, she wore the same modified hanfu with bamboo-patterned cuffs, holding a palm-sized wooden model, demonstrating how a dovetail joint locks. The lighting was even, the background a familiar gray-blue cloth with a hand-drawn section of Along the River During the Qingming Festival.
Halfway through, she noticed a crease on her sleeve — from leaning over the pothos. She paused and smoothed it gently, as if afraid to disturb something. No one would care about that detail, but she knew: once on camera, someone would zoom in, screenshot it, and post online:
"Is the host tired?" "Her clothes are messy."
She didn't want attention to drift.
She re-rendered the video, added subtitles and labels, exported it, and dragged it into her stream folder. The whole process took forty-seven minutes, no breaks, no repeated revisions. She liked finishing tasks in one go. She couldn't understand habits like Cheng Ye's — checking, then looking again. Once knowledge began to transmit, it shouldn't be rewound.
Dusk fell. The supply point's power switched to energy-saving mode; the ceiling light faded from white to warm yellow. She pulled open the curtain. The sun was gone, only a gray sky pressing over the Gobi. In the distance, wind turbines stood motionless, their blades folded like dormant insects.
When she was little, her mother always said:
"The calmest wind is the most dangerous. The next breath could be a storm."
She returned to the desk and ran one last test. Camera focus normal, microphone level stable, full network signal. She activated her preset scene: the camera framed her face, then shifted to show the wooden model on the desk.
Everything was ready.
She checked the time: 19:43.
Seventeen minutes until the scheduled stream.
She took out hand cream, squeezed a drop onto her fingertips, and spread it evenly. Long-term handling of wood and metal had left her knuckles rough, with faint calluses on her index and thumb. Once, a viewer commented:
"Does the host work with her hands a lot?"
She'd smiled and said:
"Popular science is physical work too."
But what she really worried about was shaky hands ruining the demo on close-up.
She put the cream away and touched the bronze hairpin in her hair. It was the only thing her father had left — simple, no inscriptions, but unusually heavy. She once had it analyzed at a geological institute. The result only said:
High-density copper-tin alloy, trace unknown metal.
The report was still locked in an encrypted folder on her tablet, password her mother's birthday.
She put those thoughts aside and reviewed the final script:
1. Three classic mortise-and-tenon types and uses
2. Seismic-resistant principles via animation
3. Three core advantages, extended to modern engineering
Planned runtime: 45 minutes, plus 5 minutes for Q&A.
She closed the script, opened the platform backend, and confirmed the preview was live. The cover showed her holding a dovetail model, title:
No Nails. How Did Ancient Chinese Buildings Stand for Thousands of Years?
Over 300 comments already:
Finally! Been waiting for mortise-and-tenon!
Is the host wearing hanfu today?
Please cover the Forbidden City beams!
Could this work for moon bases?
She skimmed quickly, no replies, no likes. Interaction belonged during the stream; early responses ruined the rhythm. She exited and launched the stream preparation program. The device stood by, fan humming softly.
At exactly 8:00, she put on her headphones and pressed Start.
The screen lit up. Viewer count jumped from 0 to 78, then over 200 in ten seconds. She adjusted her posture, faced the camera, and spoke steadily:
"Good evening, everyone. Welcome to Cool Knowledge, Hot Talk. Today we're talking about the most basic connection in ancient Chinese architecture — mortise and tenon."
The camera tilted down to her wooden model. She rotated it slowly.
"This is a connection technique relying entirely on the shape of wood locking together. No metal parts, no glue. Only precise cutting and fitting achieves high-strength fixation."
Comments rolled in:
Wow, this craft is amazing.
My ancestral hall uses this.
Such steady hands.
She continued:
"Three common types. First, the straight tenon — simple, for non-load-bearing parts. Second, the dovetail tenon — shaped like a swallow's tail, extremely tensile, used in furniture and doors. Third, the corner tenon — locking in three directions, common in roof frames."
She disassembled the model smoothly, no hesitation.
"Take the dovetail. The slanted design means the more lateral force, the tighter it locks. Like fastening a cuff — a perfect fit makes it stable."
She paused, letting the analogy sink in.
Comments flashed:
Got it! Like jeans — the zipper catches tighter.
Learned this in physics: self-locking!
Ancient people were brilliant.
She nodded slightly and switched to the animation. A simulated wooden building swayed in seismic waves. The mortise-and-tenon joints allowed tiny shifts, but the whole structure stayed intact.
"Three key strengths," she explained.
"One: stress distribution. Load is shared across multiple joints. Two: allowed deformation. Wood is elastic; small slides absorb energy. Three: no external reinforcement. You only replace damaged parts, not the whole structure."
Comments exploded:
No wonder the Yingxian Pagoda lasted 1,000 years.
Modern concrete cracks easier in quakes.
Real sustainable architecture.
She concluded:
"This isn't just a craft. It's a way of thinking about how to coexist, for a long time."
She ended the stream. The screen went dark.
Stream summary popped up:
Peak viewers: 12,437
Interactions: 8,621
Shares: 3,105
She glanced once, exported the recording, named and filed it. The whole routine ran like a preset program — no extra steps, no omissions.
She took off her headphones, rubbed her warm ears, and sipped warm water. Her throat was dry after 45 minutes of talking. She stood by the window, watching the night. The wind had risen again, sand hitting the glass faster than during the day.
She returned to pack her gear: camera bagged, microphone off, mainframe unplugged. She wrapped the wooden model in soft cloth and closed its case. The pothos still sat there, leaves facing south, as if never moved.
She checked the time: 20:58.
Her day was done.
She opened her notebook, wrote in pencil:
Stream completed. Topic: mortise-and-tenon. Equipment normal, signal stable, good feedback.
She closed it and set it on her nightstand.
She changed into her sleepwear, washed up, and lay down. She turned off the lights. In the dark, only the mainframe's standby red light glowed, like a sleepless eye.
She closed her eyes. Images flashed:
the swaying beam in the animation,
the comment self-locking principle,
and the line she'd added on the spot:
how to coexist, for a long time.
It hadn't been in the script. She couldn't explain why, but she felt she had to say it.
The wind grew louder. The metal roof trembled slightly. She turned over, and sleep slowly came.
Somewhere she did not know, an invisible signal pierced the atmosphere, crossed the 500-kilometer monitoring orbit, and stretched toward the space near Mars.
The signal carried compressed, encoded video:
43 seconds of dovetail disassembly,
17 frames of stress-distribution animation,
and her calm final sentence.
Toward the distant Lyra constellation, a photon-based entity slowly shifted form. Its surface bloomed with a hologram of hexagonal grids and interwoven wood grain. It had no mouth, yet emitted resonant waves:
Reception complete.
Decoding initiated.
Keywords extracted: locking, self-locking, coexistence.
It labeled the information:
High-Dimensional Connection Paradigm, Early Civilization Stage,
and uploaded it to the interstellar knowledge base, classified as:
ARCH-07-CHN-001.
But on Earth, at this moment, everything remained in the quiet night.
Lin Wanqiu rolled over and touched the notebook under her pillow. The edge pressed lightly against her hand. She didn't open her eyes, just pulled her hand out and rested it gently on the book, as if protecting something precious.
Outside, the wind blew stronger.