On a chilly early spring morning in 1915, the warmth had barely begun to return. The sky was still overcast, and the sun was like a man just waking up, his eyes not yet fully open, rousing himself without much energy. Its light was dim, leaving the mountains, rivers, and earth shrouded in gloom.
Outside Tongzhou Railway Station, a brand-new rickshaw from the East was parked by the roadside. The puller had run over to a food stall near the train depot to eat a flatbread and some fried dough sticks. Feng Mingqi, wearing a white fox-fur coat with a glossy satin lining and a mandarin jacket with a dragon-patterned pocket, watched the station and sang a passage from The Yang Family Generals, his voice rising and falling with feeling: “I lament that the Yang family served the Song with loyal hearts.”
As the gateway to the capital, Tongzhou had never been short of famous figures or larger-than-life heroes. Compared with them, twenty-four-year-old Feng Mingqi was neither the richest nor the most handsome. But throughout Tongzhou, no one else had spent more than a decade riding in a rickshaw, dressed to the nines in a heavy fur robe, arriving at the railway station to sing opera and curse at people. In all of Tongzhou, only Feng Qiwutong and Feng Mingqi, father and son, did that. There was no other branch of the business.
It is well written and is a masterpiece of the Republic of China period.