Qingming Road

It has been raining in autumn for a whole month. The cold rain hits the thatched roof of the adobe house, splashing up fine specks of mud and cooling the last trace of warmth in the dilapidated house at the west end of the village. Ren Xiang huddled on the earthen kang covered with hay, his thin coarse clothes unable to withstand the bone-chilling chill. He tightened the half piece of dry wheat cake in his arms, and his eyes fell on the wilted old mugwort beside the kang - it was dug by his father near the mountain stream before he left. It was said to be able to drive away the cold, but now the wormwood leaves were all yellow, and like his sickly body, there was no life at all. Ren Xiang is sixteen this year and has been frail since he was a child. The doctors in the village say that he is born with deficiencies and will not live to be twenty. Hanshi Village is the most remote village at the foot of the Qingming Mountains. For generations, people have made a living by going into the mountains to collect herbs and hunt. All the men in the village are strong and healthy, but he is the only one who has trouble even carrying a bucket of water, let alone following the hunters in the village into the mountains. When he was ten years old, his parents went into the mountains to collect green grass and encountered a mountain bear. They never came back, leaving him alone to guard this dilapidated house and survive on the help of the villagers. This novel and its characters are purely fictitious. Any similarity is purely coincidental and should not be imitated.