In all my years, although I had visited cities in the north, I had never gone there in winter.
The northern snow was simply too much for a southerner like me. Sometimes the snow on the ground reached my knees.
But I had to admit that the snowy scenery in the north, especially in Qi City, was as beautiful as a scene from a cartoon, as though the entire city were a flawless expanse of white.
To experience the local customs and everyday life, the Seventh Master and I did not linger in the city, instead making stops in the surrounding towns and villages.
We traveled through several towns before finally heading from Qi City to Shen City. After spending two days in a town in Shen City, we went to a fairly remote little mountain village.
The Seventh Master said that traveling meant going somewhere less developed or remote.
Less developed places were mostly poor, and poverty revealed every facet of life. Remote places tended to breed strange occurrences.
In the end, we decided to set out from this little mountain village and continue up the mountain to the village above.
It was already the seventh day of the Lunar New Year, and half my vacation was over.
On the way up, we met six young people, three men and three women.
All six looked very young, like college students.
They were talkative, and so were we. After chatting for a while, we learned that they were college juniors who had set off to travel together after celebrating the New Year at home. Like us, they had come from other cities to experience the local customs and way of life elsewhere.
The six college students were also couples-three couples.
"It's good to be young. So full of life."
"It's