Siheyuan: The Old Man in the Back Courtyard Who's Almost a Hundred

The wind in the twelfth lunar month cut like a knife, burrowing between the bones. A few older women huddled beneath the porch in padded coats, their tongues wagging at a furious pace. Silly Zhu's father hadn't shown his face in days, so he had probably run off with a widow. Jia Dongxu had found himself a country girl named Qin Huairu, and she was quite a looker. Xu Damao had taken his wife to the hospital again, and this time she was probably really pregnant. Second Aunt pursed her lips and said that old Song in the back courtyard probably wouldn't make it through the winter. Jia Zhangshi, holding a shoe sole in her hand, hurried over to join the conversation. “A man who lives too long becomes a menace. He's lived to such a ripe old age and still won't close his eyes. Is he trying to make the younger generation in our courtyard suffer in his place? My Dongxu's been sick a lot lately. I bet that old geezer's to blame.”

She hadn't been in the city long and didn't yet know who in the courtyard could be provoked and who couldn't. That nearly hundred-year-old Song wasn't nearly as simple as the wandering doctor she called him.