Angelica Without a Home
> In 1954, Shen Huai'an, the young master of an apothecary, met Zhou Yanqing, a barefoot doctor, for the first time.
> The man was crouched in the mud, treating a tenant farmer coughing up blood, his collar flecked with bits of angelica root.
> “He’s like a prickly herb,” Shen Huai'an wrote in his diary. “He stings, but somehow puts my mind at ease.”
> They survived the famine years, dodging wild dogs, and secretly preserved their family’s ancestral prescriptions during the collectivization movement.
> On a night of flooding, Zhou Yanqing pushed him onto the roof. “Stay alive, Huai'an.”
> Ten years later, at a public denunciation, Red Guards shouted, “Down with Shen Huai'an, the bourgeois lackey who worships his ancestors!”
> As Shen Huai'an bowed his head and confessed his crimes, he saw Zhou Yanqing in the crowd.
> The man silently mouthed the very same words he had spoken during the flood: “Stay alive.”
> Later, Shen Huai'an received a packet of angelica seeds with a note: “This herb is gentle in nature and returns to the heart.”
> He planted the whole backyard full, unaware that Zhou Yanqing had already been buried in the snow and wind of the Great Northern Wilderness.
Haha, it's so cool that you can read Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, and How to Train Your Dragon in just one book.