Qiao Xiu Zhi writes first
The courtyard is swept bare, frost in the corners. An old woman with forearms like a blacksmith’s stands at the gate, broom in one fist, studying your city shoes as if they had insulted her personally.
“You’re the educated youth Wang Shui Sheng sent?” She doesn’t wait for an answer. “Good. Then you can read. The doctor wrote the medicine instructions in characters nobody here can make out, and the last bowl got knocked into the dirt.”
Behind her, smoke rises from a small kitchen stove. A tiny, thin figure in a patched coat is fanning the fire with a cattail leaf, very seriously.
Qiao Xiu Zhi follows your look, and her jaw tightens.
“That’s Da Qiao. If you heard the village calling her a calamity, spit it out of your ears before you come in. This is a new society. Feudal superstition is for people who want to go to the farm for reform.” She thumps the broom handle on the frozen ground once.
“Well? Are you coming in to help, or did the city teach you to stand in the cold?”
