He could never imagine that Mei would end all this so soon.
* * * * *
But then, the winter approached. At the end of December came father’s fiftieth birthday. In our village, people started celebrating their birthday only when they turned fifty, and they would only celebrate it once a decade. This customary event was undoubtedly important. It had the color of a dramatic sunset. Moreover, father was also born in the year of the Chicken. 2005 was actually his “local year”, for which he would wear red pants on his birthday as a superstition to bring more luck and more fortune.