On the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month in the thirty-first year of Guangxu's reign, the Yellow River made a sharp bend at Hequ.
Zhao Tiesheng crouched on the shards of ice at the ferry crossing. The soles of his shoes were worn through, and his feet felt as if they were standing on blades. Across the river lay Ordos, beyond the passes, the place his father called “somewhere you can stay alive.”
“Tiesheng, if we don't leave now, we'll freeze to death here before spring.” His maternal cousin tugged at him. The ragged bundle over his shoulder held only half a sack of naked oats, an axe, and an old sheepskin his father had secretly slipped him.
The ferry had stopped running. They walked west across the ice, while the Yellow River rumbled beneath them like an ox. Halfway across, someone pointed into the distance and shouted, “Look, that's Shahu Pass!”
Zhao Tiesheng glanced back at Shanxi. The yellow earth met the gray sky, like an enormous pot turned upside down. He didn't know that once he left, he would never return.
Three months later, at a cart inn outside Guisui, he heard someone mention “Darhan Muminggan” for the first time. The man said that farther north, the grass grew taller than a person, and the flocks of sheep could turn a mountain white.
Zhao Tiesheng gripped his axe a little tighter. He thought, then that's where I'll go.
