In the winter of 1937, Huo Zhongting, young marshal of the Cheng Army, published a notice in the newspaper announcing that Shen Nianqing was merely his “concubine” and that he was formally marrying the eldest daughter of the Cheng family.
That day, Shen Nianqing, already pregnant, stood in the snow for three hours, waiting for him to come and explain. He never came.
Seven years later, she returned to Chengzhou with her five-year-old daughter, Doudou. Huo Zhongting stopped her, his eyes red. “Nianqing, I’ve finally waited for you.” She smiled and shook her head. “The man I was waiting for died in the winter of 1937.”
Doudou looked just like him. Those eyes, that expression, she was his spitting image. The little girl always asked, “Mama, where’s my father?” Shen Nianqing said, “Your father is a hero. He’s fighting the bad guys.”
On the twenty-third day of the twelfth lunar month, Little New Year, Doudou put on the red padded jacket she was saving for the New Year and went out to buy a sugar figurine. A black car sped past. Her tiny body was thrown into the air and fell into the snow.
Huo Zhongting got out, glanced at her, then turned and left. He didn’t know she was his daughter.
By the Cheng River, Shen Nianqing held Doudou’s cold body and pulled from her sleeve the jeweled Browning pistol, the token of their love he had given her years ago.
“Zhongting, Doudou will be scared over there all by herself.”
A gunshot rang out. Snow fell.
He knelt by the river, holding mother and daughter in his arms. From then on, he could never stand again.
