After the Beginning of Winter, the weather grew colder by the day. When they climbed Lion Mountain early in the morning, a thin layer of white frost covered the rocks and ground. The pines and cypresses, the last to wither, looked almost black with green, as though frozen, and their breath came out in white clouds. Winter had arrived in Wu Commandery.
Chen Caozhi and Lai De had both put on winter clothes, but Ran Sheng refused. He wore only two unlined shirts and said he was hot. When they felt his hands, they were indeed warm. Ran Sheng's constitution was truly extraordinarily robust.
But the cold had yet to settle in fully in the tenth month. For several days running, the winter sun shone high, and it felt as warm as if spring had stepped across the ice and snow to arrive ahead of time.
On the sixteenth day of the tenth month, a day off from lessons, Chen Caozhi and Liu Shangzhi went with Gu Kaizhi to Shanluo Village and ate lunch at the home of the tenant farmer surnamed Mao. The Mao girl worked alongside her father and brothers every day. Though her complexion was not particularly fair, it was lustrous and smooth, her features were lively, and she walked with a light, vigorous step. Presumably, she also looked lovely pounding laundry beside the stream.
On their way back that afternoon, Gu Kaizhi said, "Zizhong, the weather is clear today. Once a bright moon comes out tonight, I can finish my Nighttime Laundry Pounding. That's much faster than Master Wei's painting of the flute presentation."
Chen Caozhi had previously only known how to paint landscapes and had never learned figure painting, so he said, "Chang Kang, I want to learn figure painting from you. Master Wei hasn't