This is not a story about power.
It is a story about land. About seeds. About snow falling on someone’s shoulders, and people living in this world.
It is also the story of a child slowly growing up, slowly growing old, and finally returning to the earth.
He opened his eyes in swaddling clothes, unable to make out what the world looked like.
He closed his eyes on his deathbed, while snow continued to fall outside the window.
In the fifty-odd years between, he did many things.
He saved some people’s lives.
He wrote a few books.
He remembered someone standing in the snow.
He was loved all his life by a woman named Huiniang.
