Jiangnan lay veiled in a pleasant, faint mist, sparse as strands of silk, lending this blue-green ancient town a touch of enchantment.
The white snow in the pond had turned into water lilies, and tiny flecks of green sprouted between the blue bricks along its banks.
Cooking smoke curled up around the rafters. A fine, unbroken rain fell onto the rooftops, flowed down the channels between the tiles, then dripped from the eaves into the little river that passed through the town outside.
Both banks of the river were lined with quaint, poetic homes. Here and there, little stone bridges wide enough for two people spanned the water, joining the two banks together.
From time to time, little boats rocked beneath the bridges with the swaying strokes of their boatmen, threading their way through the ancient town.
This air of mist and rain gave the people here something of a gentle, refined disposition.
In a school beside the river, a teacher stood at the front, holding up a book and reciting its passages aloud, while the many young children in the school slowly read along with him.
The soft children's voices drifted over the open windowsill and climbed onto the eaves, falling with the droplets gathered from the fine, unbroken rain onto the slender greenery between the blue bricks by the river, bending those fine shoots at the waist before falling into the water.
An old man wearing a bamboo hat stood aboard a little boat on the river. Working his twin oars through the drizzle, he stirred the river water, making the boat rock as it slowly passed the school's window.
One little boy's gaze was caught by the boat outside the window. He put down his book and, once the boat had gone into the distance, stretched his