Epigraph

For my Han nanny

This woman, this village girl,an incomparable beauty in her youth,was raped when she was sixteenThis woman crossed the Jinsha and Dadu Riversalone, and traveled across most of Old ChinaThis woman endured many hardshipsand was never understood by others, she became a widowat an age when a husband shouldn’t die and she later remarriedbut that man was twenty years younger than she wasand she ended up suffering immensely because of himThis woman had been through the ups and downs of this worldbut she always dreamed of a worldwhere sweetness and kindness, humanity and fraternal love aboundI spent my childhood held in this woman’s armsIt was from her body and spirit that I first feltthose most sublime human feelings that transcend raceThis woman raised meand made me believe that all people in this world are brothers  and sisters(Despite the awful shadows of thousands of yearsthat deeply wounded me)

The day she dies, she’ll still have a captivating smile on her faceMemories from passing years will become infinitely remote in  her eyesYet all of this will become eternalIndeed the earth has never trembled when it lost this sort of  ordinary womanBut in Greater Liangshan on an evening without musicher Nuosu child will cry for herand the whole world will hear this grief-stricken sound