Children of the Jialing River

The waves of the Jialing River have battered the backbone of northeastern Sichuan, while the old locust tree by the river in Qingshi Village has borne witness to forty years. Here, three generations of the Shi family have used bamboo strips as their brush, striving generation after generation to change the fate of themselves and their village. The old ancestral hall, the threshing ground, the sweet fragrance of mugwort rice cakes, the dialect of northeastern Sichuan and the curling smoke from cooking fires: all are hidden in the soft rustle of bamboo strips. When five-year-old Jiang Ou grips the mold, the waters of the Jialing River remember: this is not merely the passing down of a craft, but a “living fossil” woven from bamboo strips by an entire village. Tradition never grows old, the countryside never grows stale, and where hands and hearts meet, Qingshi will be forever young. Open these pages and listen as Jiang Ou’s patterned wings fly forever toward home.