The autumn rain of 1972 came down with unusual fury. As Bai Weiwei’s cloth shoes sank into the mud, she glimpsed blood-red wild azaleas on the cliff face. The flowers blazed through the rain like the piano keys the Red Guards had burned the night before.
“Educated youth from the city?”
The dialect, sharp as gunpowder, struck her ear. Bai Weiwei whipped around. Beneath the gnarled branches of an old locust tree stood a barefoot young man. The gap in his rain cape revealed a muscular calf, and smoke still curled from the barrel of his hunting rifle. The thunderous shot that had just frightened off a wild boar had come from this mountain-spirit of a man.
