By November, Nanjing's temperatures stayed between eight or nine and seventeen or eighteen degrees Celsius—a perfectly pleasant range. If it got cold, you only needed to put on another coat. If it got warm, you could just take it off.
Sunday was a day off. Children ran and played in the streets, men gathered to play chess and cards and shoot the breeze, while women chatted about household matters. Unlike those lazy old men who gathered around smoking and bragging, the women were either knitting sweaters or stitching shoe soles. Most of them kept their hands busy with some kind of work.
At three in the afternoon, Wang Yan carried a bag and found the Qiao family home by following the house numbers.
"Hey, who are you looking for?" A woman fiddling with chicken gizzards leaned out and asked.
Wang Yan recognized her. She was the Qiaos' neighbor, the woman Yicheng and the others called Aunt Wu. She was a decent person, the sort who was hard-mouthed but soft-hearted. When the Qiao children's mother went into labor and had to be taken to the hospital, Aunt Wu had warmly helped send her there, waited with her, and looked after the children. When Erqiang and the others stole food from her home, she spoke harshly, but never went too far. Later, though she made some snide remarks, it was nothing more than the petty thoughts of an ordinary person.
She wasn't a bad person, and she helped others. She was just a bit of a gossip.
Wang Yan smiled. "I'm looking for Qiao Erqiang's house."
"Who are you? Never seen you before." First came the questioning, then the directions—classic procedure.
"I'm Sanli's classmate. Erqiang and I get along pretty well. I live at the first house by the western intersection, Number