arch in relief. The largest village compounds were on the other side of the river, lit up holiday-bright.
I knew what was bothering Father—the bright lights. If he'd had his way, the lane would have been pitch black to hide us from view. He'd have been happiest if we'd delivered our New Year's greetings in complete darkness, hidden from public view. I also knew that Mother's feelings were the exact opposite. She wanted people to bear witness to the fact that we were bringing New Year's greetings to Lao Lan, that close bonds of friendship had developed between us, which in turn was a sign that her husband, my father, had turned over a new leaf, transforming himself from a disreputable vagrant into a respectable family man. I knew that the village was alive with talk about us, talk that centred on the virtues of my mother. ‘Yang Yuzhen,’ they said, ‘is quite a woman. She can bear hardships, she has endurance, patience and foresight, and she's eminently sensible, all in all not one to be taken lightly. As I well knew,’ they went so far as to say, ‘Just watch, it won't be long before that family flourishes.’
There was nothing out of the ordinary about the gate to Lao Lan's house; if anything, it was shabbier than his neighbours’. In fact, it did poorly in comparison even with ours. We stood on the steps and banged the knocker against the gate and immediately heard the frantic barks and threatening growls of the wolfhounds on the other side.
Jiaojiao pressed up against me.
‘Don't be scared, Jiaojiao,’ I comforted her. ‘Their dogs don't bite.’
Mother knocked again, but drew no response, except from the dogs.
‘Let's go,’ Father urged. ‘They must be out.’
‘If so, there has to be someone to watch the place,’ Mother said.
She knocked again, neither too hard nor too soft. As if she were saying: I won't stop until you come out to see who's here.
Her efforts were finally rewarded. We heard the sound of a door opening, followed by a girl's crisp command to the dogs: ‘Shut up!’ Next, the sound of footfalls approaching the gate. Then, at last, a question—impatiently delivered—from the other side: ‘Who is it?’
‘It's us,’ Mother replied. ‘Is that Tiangua? I'm Yang Yuzhen, Luo Xiaotong's mother. We're here to wish you a happy New Year.’
‘Yang Yuzhen?’ The name was not familiar to the girl.
Mother nudged me to say something. Tiangua, Lao Lan's only child, had grown quite a bit, and her mother could have had a second child if she'd wanted. She hadn't. I dimly recalled someone saying that Lao Lan's wife was ill and had not been out of the house in years. I knew Tiangua, a girl with dull brown hair and two lines of snot above her mouth. She was a bigger slob than me, and couldn't begin to compare with my sister. I didn't like her one bit. So why did Mother want me to say something? Was I supposed to believe that my voice carried more weight than hers?
‘Tiangua,’ I said finally, ‘open up. It's me, Luo Xiaotong.’
Tiangua stuck her head out through a small opening in the gate, and the first thing I noticed was that there was no snot above her mouth and that she was wearing a nice jacket. Then I saw that her hair wasn't as dull brown as I remembered, and that it was neatly combed. In a word, she was a better-looking girl than I recalled. She sized me up with a squint and a strange look, and those slitted eyes and light hair reminded me of the foxes I'd seen recently. Again the foxes. I'm sorry, Wise Monk, I don't want to talk about them but they keep coming back to me. Foxes, which had been raised as rare animals at first but in such large numbers that they had to be wholesaled at a deep discount to Slaughterhouse Village, where they were slaughtered and their meat mixed with dog to be sold. Our butchers didn't forget to pump the slaughtered foxes full of water, though the process was more difficult than with cows or pigs, since they were so much trickier, so much harder to work on. That's where my thoughts roamed when I heard Tiangua's say ‘My dieh isn't home.’
But, led by Mother, we squeezed in through the gate and pushed Tiangua out of the way. I saw the well-fed wolfhounds jump to their feet, eyes and teeth flashing in the light, metal