Bunny was born during the first snowfall of that year. Because of this, the news of his arrival seemed as fresh and pure as the snow that accompanied him. Flakes danced down from the sky, landing on the old cypress trees that sheltered the spring at the eastern edge of the village. They also landed further east, down the length of the uneven mill road, and also on the sturdy branches of the apricot trees that stood in the courtyard of every house in the village. They had already shed the year's last leaves. The snow laid blankets on the roofs of the village, some of which presented wooden tiles and others, rammed yellow earth. No corner of the village was left untouched. As Gela gazed up at the drifting snow, the words of old grandma Er Chiang echoed in his mind:
"You'll have a playmate … you'll have a playmate."
He began to chuckle.
"What are you laughing for, darling?" his mother asked.
Gela wasn't going to stop his chuckling to answer her, so Sangdan joined in.
The year's first snowfall came suddenly and left just as suddenly, yielding the next morning to rays of sun that emerged through the clouds and fell feebly down on the earth. All the villagers were out and about early, and before long their footprints made a muddy mess of the newly white earth. Along with the mud, word of Bunny's birth was also making tracks through the village. People were saying that Ler Kymcog had given birth to a son. They said he was very weak, that his crying was feeble and that he wasn't even strong enough to suckle from his mother's breast. They said they were afraid he wouldn't live. Gela's happy mood sank, leaving him as downtrodden as the dirty snow outside.
As winter wore on and snowfall followed snowfall, more bad news from Enbo's house turned into a stream that flowed constantly through the village. Gela noticed that Enbo's eyes, normally so bright and clear, were streaked with tiny threads of red. He mustered up the courage to approach him, though when he found himself in front of him, he was hopelessly tongue-tied. Enbo's mind was mired in his own problems, so he walked away after only a single, distracted glance at the little boy.
In Ji village, there were two types of houses—those with two floors, and those with three floors, though all were built of stone. In the three-storey houses, the ground floor was used to house livestock, while the upper two floors were where the family lived. Families who lived in two-storey houses kept their livestock outside in the courtyard, which would typically be enclosed by a hedge. However, by 1958, most cattle and sheep were no longer privately owned—following the collectivisation of agriculture, the majority of livestock came under the management of the communal production teams. So now most family courtyards only sheltered a couple of dairy cows, as permitted by the government.
Enbo's family lived in one of the two-storey stone houses. Their livestock pen took up the larger part of the courtyard, while the rest was occupied by two apple trees and one crab-apple tree. Under the trees there were two garden patches; one for aniseed, and one for garlic. In winter the fruit trees stood bare and the ground below froze solid, but soft straw spread out on the floor and a rising sun in the sky collaborated with the rich odour of the dairy cows to create a feeling of warmth.
So, even in the winter, people with time on their hands gathered in Enbo's family courtyard, where they would sit on the straw under the golden sun and while away the time with handicrafts. After collectivisation, the number of people with time on their hands dwindled, so now there were usually only a few old-timers in the cow pen enjoying the winter sun.
In stark contrast to the rest of the village, Gela and Sangdan lived in a crude single-storey building tacked on to the side of the production team's storehouse. It had no courtyard, and no livestock pen. Sangdan rarely, and then only lackadaisically, went to work in the fields. She seemed quite happy to spend her time combing her long, sleek, black hair in the empty courtyards of various village families, including Enbo's, where she was a regular. She favoured it for its good light and because if she happened to be there at lunchtime, someone would come out of the house and give her something to eat. In fact, a large part of Gela's diet came to him in the form of alms from all over the village. Often, if his morning wanderings failed to produce anything to eat, he would head to Enbo's courtyard at lunchtime and dine there with his mother. Enbo's mother Er Chiang would carry out a wooden board loaded with two bowls of green tea, a round cake of bread, and two or three roasted potatoes. The food was never exactly nutritious, nor was it abundant, but it was enough to keep the two of them going until night crept down the mountains—time to go home for dinner.
But this year, Enbo's house came under the rule of a new mistress. Ler Kymcog's pretty face did not mask her resentment towards these two uninvited guests, so Sangdan stopped visiting Enbo's courtyard. One day, Gela was walking past Enbo's house when he was greeted by Er Chiang from the other side of the hedge:
"Child, have you and your Ah-ma been keeping well?"
Gela didn't answer. It was obvious enough that Ji village couldn't be treating him and his mother particularly well, and besides, he really didn't have any strong feelings about what was called 'good' and what was called 'bad'. People were always discussing whether these were good or bad times. The debate even broke the village into factions. There was one faction that argued that things weren't as good as before, while the opposed faction were certain that things were much, much better now than they were before. This factional split acted as a kind of dividing line in village society—the optimist faction was supported by the authorities, so they were always in the ascendant. But Gela didn't have any opinions about this.
