Which People, Which Years

Preface

The first time Su Xiaotang climbed onto a tobacco-curing shed, she had no idea what danger meant.

On that autumn afternoon, sunlight spilled lazily over the village. She followed six mischievous kids, climbing the mud wall like a monkey along a slanted bamboo fishing pole, then sat on the roof, which was covered with rice straw. The wind brushed her cheek, and the rice straw gave off a lovely dry-grass scent. The whole world spread out beneath her: treetops, a big yellow dog, and rice paddies patchworked together like pieces of cloth Grandma had sewn. They raised their grimy little hands high and waved at the birds flying across the sky.

It was the freest, most fearless moment of her childhood. She thought the world was just like that, and that every tomorrow would be bright.

She didn't know that when she returned home that evening, her father's fists would be waiting for her, along with her mother's silent figure, enduring it all like a rag doll. She didn't know how deeply violence would scar her heart. She knew even less that more than a decade later, she would be sitting in the library of Haishi University, with southern sunlight beyond the glass curtain wall, writing a line in her notebook:

"Learning knows no setting, and growth needs no particular soil."