The Old Capital Town

In the early years of the Republic of China, there was a small northern town called Gudu. Whenever it snowed, it seemed as though the whole world had forgotten the place. That winter, a theater troupe came to town. The star onstage sang so captivatingly that the whole town went wild, showering a living person with gold and silver to build a memorial arch and a shrine in their honor. But the merit stele commemorating the seventy-two righteous men who had died defending the town was quietly taken apart and used to shore up the theater's foundations. Only the old man who had guarded the stele still remembered the names carved on it, though everyone thought he was mad. The young mistress who had returned from studying in the provincial capital spoke constantly of freedom and self-governance, using newfangled ideas as a pretext to seize power and line her pockets. The living goddess onstage was welcomed by the masses while she basked in glory, but when disaster struck, she fled with the money. The orphan whom the stele keeper had carried back from the battlefield now made a living driving a cart. The troupe's young male lead sang of every joy and sorrow onstage. The two young people secretly found each other in the snow and secretly married. In return, the whole town came after them, beating drums and gongs. The ancestral hall doors opened, and the gong sounded to announce the drowning punishment. Prejudice in people's hearts is a mountain. The opera ends, people leave, and the snow melts. Only the forgotten stele remains where it stood, waiting for someone who remembers where they came from. Smoke rises from the hearth at the place of one's beginnings; at the place of return, a stele stands.