In the spring of the twenty-ninth year of Guangxu, at a private school outside Qianmen in Beijing. Ten-year-old Jiang Chunshui sat in the last row. Though her eyes remained fixed on the book before her, she could barely stay awake, her little head bobbing like a chicken pecking at rice. Her mother's health had been getting worse lately. The previous night, she had coughed for half the night again. When Jiang got up to empty the spittoon and wipe her mother's mouth with a scrap of rough paper, she saw a vivid smear of blood on it.
