After the typhoon, the village was a scene of devastation, with wreckage everywhere. Fallen branches and trunks blocked some of the paths, and people had to kick them aside as they passed. Broken glass carpeted the ground beside some houses, and rubbish lay everywhere.
Usually, after a typhoon, every household would start clearing the roads, tidying their homes, and repairing their roofs. Now it was nearly noon, yet the roads still looked just as they had when the typhoon had passed. No one had cleaned them.
Everyone had poured all their enthusiasm into the shellfish they had just hauled home. For the moment, they had no time to tidy their houses or sweep their yards.
As Ye Yaodong and his father walked along, they saw sacks of shellfish piled outside every home. Men and women, old and young, all wore beaming smiles as they sat around on stools with bamboo baskets, sorting their catch or busying themselves with other tasks.
Some called out to their neighbours on either side and across the way, asking how many sacks they had filled and announcing how many their own families had brought back. They had more people, more hands, so they had filled more sacks, and so on. They were utterly thrilled.
This was all money. When did they normally get so much shellfish to gather? And shellfish they could sell, at that.
A few children could not sit still. After sorting for barely any time, they began squirming as though their bottoms had been greased. Eventually, while the adults were not looking, they secretly shifted their bottoms, shuffled their feet backwards, and slipped off to a corner to splash in the water.
Puddles filled the hollows in the dirt road. One mischievous boy, the sort neither people nor dogs could stand, saw