Siheyuan: 1951, I Moved into the Central Courtyard from the Start

I woke up on a heated kang in the east courtyard in July 1951, with skinny arms and legs and blood seeping from the top of my head. My father was an active-duty battalion commander. My mother was killed by Japanese soldiers when I was six. Of the more than twenty families in this compound, the three main rooms in the central courtyard belonged to us. I touched a jade pendant, and a streak of light shot from it into the crown of my head. First I pressed a hand to the bleeding wound, then started wondering what the pendant was all about.