The north wind howled like a knife in the twelfth lunar month, slicing against the tattered window paper. Xu Qingshan curled up in a pile of straw, using the moonlight leaking into the room to trace the Analects in the dirt with his finger, over and over. His stomach was empty, but a fire burned in his heart: next spring’s county examination was the first, and only, chance of his eighteen-year life.
