The north wind of the twelfth lunar month was like a knife, whistling on the worn window paper. Xu Qingshan huddled in a pile of straw and wrote "The Analects of Confucius" on the ground with his fingers over and over again by the moonlight that leaked into the room. His stomach was empty, but there was a fire burning in his heart - the county examination next spring was his first and only chance in his eighteen years of life.
