A Windy Midsummer Night

Li Qiuyue is thirty and has been widowed for four years. Everyone in Liuhe Village praises her as a “lively widow,” saying she works like a man, handles everything at home and in the fields, and never gives anyone trouble. But only she knows how, on every night she’s woken by the sounds from the Zhao couple next door, she douses the wicked fire inside her with cold water, again and again. She thought this was how she’d spend the rest of her life, like the old locust tree at the village entrance, standing there as a living monument to chastity. Until a city man arrived in the village to teach the locals how to sell things online. He was gentle and refined, and his words were like a spring breeze. He didn’t notice her, but she began to notice herself. That faded floral blouse really didn’t suit a brand-new thought: Why should the voices on the other side of the wall belong to someone else, while her nights hold nothing but loneliness and cold water?