Prologue
If you lose someone you love dearly, you will surely grieve, and perhaps feel regret as well. So keep living, and live with all your strength, if only for the hopes that loved one had for you. Their hopes have become their final wish, and your efforts are what keep hope alive.
Have you ever written a letter to someone who has passed away? I wrote dozens of letters to my late father, telling him how our village had changed and developed over the years.
Each letter tells a story, shares reflections on life, and recounts the lives of people in the village.
I begin with the development of the rural roads, from the dirt tracks of the past to the asphalt roads of today, then tell of the village head and Party secretary who led the people in building them.
Over the past ten years, my own family has changed too. What began as one household became two, and then more and more.
Amid all these new changes, what is precious is that the villagers have held on to many of their ethnic festivals and customs. This part tells of the village’s celebrations and foods: flower rice for the Eighth Day of the Fourth Month, planting fragrant melons at the Mid-Seventh-Month Festival, bullfighting at the Spring Festival, and tossing glutinous rice cakes onto the beams at new-house banquets...
Following the things I saw and heard on several trips home, and using my family and the people of the village as the subjects of the story, this novel about an ethnic minority community brings family bonds and a deep love of home to life.
