My Ungrateful Villagers Got Rich, Then Turned on Me

Lu Xiong crouched in his yard, pinching the peel of a freshly peeled orange between his fingertips. Orange-yellow juice splashed onto his faded rubber shoes. As the droplets burst, they sparkled in the sunlight like the flickering hope in his heart. Three days ago, he'd just bought two thousand jin of unsold oranges from a neighboring village. They were piled high in his storeroom like a small mountain, yet the sweet fragrance swirling around his nose now weighed heavily on his mind. It was so rich it was almost suffocating, and every breath seemed to remind him of the heavy responsibility on his shoulders. A crowd had gathered again beneath the old locust tree at the village entrance. The dappled shadows swayed on the ground, as though they too were