The year Cheng Yuan turned twenty-six, the company in Chengdu fired him. His girlfriend said, "If you can't even support yourself, how can you support anyone else?" So he went back to Old Locust Tree Street. His grandmother's shop was still open. She had Alzheimer's and no longer recognized him, but every day she still opened the door, lit the fire, and boiled water, like a machine that had forgotten why it was still running. Shen Lu had come from Shanghai. She had long legs and fair skin, and standing in a field of rapeseed flowers, she looked like a picture that had been photoshopped in. She had come to Zhongjiang to find someone: Cheng Yuan's grandmother. The question she wanted to ask was one his grandmother could no longer answer.
