The New Year drew ever closer.
It was already February 7, the twenty-eighth day of the twelfth lunar month.
Chen Shi'an ended his winter-break travels. At first light, he set up his navigation, mounted his bicycle, and rode toward Northern Ridge in the Profound Peak Mountain Range with Fat Cat on his shoulder.
He had grown up in the mountains, but this was his first taste of returning there for the New Year.
Before, he had simply thought of the mountains as home. Having never traveled far, he had never understood what it truly meant to be eager to return.
And it wasn't just Chen Shi'an who found the feeling wonderful. Even Fat Cat, who was about to return home, had lost the usual laziness with which the cat slept through journeys. Fat Cat leaped onto Chen Shi'an's shoulder and faced the wind, head raised, looking all around. Those amber eyes reflected the winding road ahead and the distant mountain silhouettes growing ever clearer.
When he rode into a small-town market along the way, the festive atmosphere grew even stronger.
The municipal authorities had long since hung strings of red lanterns along both sides of the road. Their scarlet tassels swayed gently in the warm winter morning sunlight, lending warmth even to the dull road.
Vendors called out one after another, their stalls crammed with New Year goods. Bright red spring couplets and glittering gold fortune characters were stacked high, while firecrackers and fireworks formed little mountains. The scents of assorted candies, dried goods, and cured meat mingled with the toasted fragrance of roasted nuts and seeds, winding through the air...
Many young migrant workers had also begun returning home. Whenever a bus pulled into the stop, people towing suitcases filed out, and the motorcycle taxi drivers waiting nearby immediately