The fishing season that year ended at dusk, the clouds were floating low.

The adults
gathered the fishes into the sacks, stowed them away in their sleighs, left the
Heilongjiang River, and headed home.

It was a long trail of snow, greyish-blue in colour at dusk.

The adults rolled up their sleeves, tracking slowly behind their sleighs. They
exchanged no words, and the world was so quiet.

When I almost got home, big flakes of snow started drifting down from the sky. The
scenery before me became blurred, I could only hear the hot, endless breathing of
the dogs, pulling their sleighs.

The adults have disappeared. The village has also disappeared. I felt that only the
breathing of the dogs and the snowflakes were with me. I had a desire to cry, and
that was my first encounter with the beauty of sorrow.

Getting older is a terrifying process that deepens the sense of mediocrity in one's
self.

Ever since that incident, I have only encountered more clouds of smokes amidst
chaos of the city.

Narrow yet common streets, people arguing, broken faiths, even mutual contempts.
That beauty of sorrow as a union among men, circumstances, and sceneries, seems
to have escaped us.

Or rather, feeling threatened, the beauty of sorrow is now hiding away somewhere in
a corner, weeping with its face covered.