A Hidden Message

Peter Lee spent days perfecting a poem for his wife Yin Sze to mark their tenth anniversary, then walked into the Jaeger-LeCoultre boutique in Hong Kong and asked for the whole thing engraved on the case. Chinese poems are written vertically, in columns running top to bottom and ordered right to left. It reads: “It is my honour to have you as my wife, I love your kindness, our lonely single days are at an end, and we shall live happily together ever after.” But it works in two directions. Read horizontally, left to right, the top row says “love you forever” and the bottom row says “Yin Sze, the wonderful wife” — two more messages hidden inside the first, on a watch whose whole idea is that something is concealed until you turn it over.