Letters

In a pavilion on Caizhi Mountain, Cui Dongshan had drunk two flasks of Chun Qing's wine and felt a little guilty. He shimmied along the railing until he was sitting at her end, shook a woven bamboo food box from his sleeve, and swept out a hand. Mountain mist gathered into a white cloud that served as a table. He opened the box's three tiers and set them before them: assorted pastries from Yashui Shop in Qilong Alley, along with snacks from elsewhere. Chun Qing picked an Apricot Blossom Cake, holding it between the fingers of one hand while cupping the other beneath it. She ate with her eyes curved into happy crescents.

Beside her, Cui Dongshan held a snack in both hands and gnawed at it with his head tilted, as though it were a short length of sugarcane. It was crisp and golden, and he made quite a racket eating it.

"Is that the fried sanzi the book described as 'shattering on the tongue, crisp as falling snow'?" Chun Qing asked.

Cui Dongshan pointed at one of the tiers before him and replied through a mouthful, "They come from the same custom: biting off the scorpion's tail on the second day of the second lunar month. But it's a little different from the sanzi you mentioned. Here on Treasure Bottle Continent, we call it mahua. The lotus-root-flour kind is cheaper; the assorted stuffed kind is the most expensive. I made a special trip to Osmanthus Street on Huangli Mountain to buy these. My teacher likes eating them when he's alone on the mountain, so I came to like them too."

It was hard to imagine that a child listening to an old person tell old stories would one day become an old person telling stories to children.

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