Autumn Winds in Dancing Sleeves, Asking of Wind and Snow

In our senior year of college, a chance reunion with our high school classmates brought together five young people who had grown up in Shatian, Dongguan: me, He Boxiang, who studied design; Zhang Wang, who worked at a factory; Ning Tao, who was about to start her teaching practicum at an elementary school; and Zhou Shuyao, who was preparing for the bar exam. Over a barbecue, we hit on a wild idea: rent an RV and drive north from Guangdong to see the snow. Our spontaneous trip took us from the lush green south, across the golden lands along the Yangtze, and on to the frozen Northeast. Over three thousand kilometers, in the cramped confines of the RV, five young people on the verge of going their separate ways got to know one another, and themselves, all over again through flat tires, wrong turns, arguments, and late-night heart-to-hearts. And the unspoken feelings between Ning Tao and me, never quite acknowledged, were stoked by our three friends’ matchmaking and teasing along the way, until at last we found the answer we’d been waiting for.