Not far from the ancestral hall there was a set of stairs winding up a gentle slope and opening out onto a covered courtyard with corridors leading off in different directions. There must have been about seven or eight different households living in the one building. The residents of the village told me that about thirty years ago a platoon of soldiers had arrived one evening and made camp within the courtyard. They arrived late and their departure was before dawn; no one knew from where these soldiers came. But everyone knew that one of them must have taken advantage of the local tailor’s daughter. Nine months later, this poor woman gave birth to a child. Thirty years later, with the hum of a sewing machine echoing out from her door, Abing’s mother greeted me. She was known to be the best seamstress in the village, and the most unlucky woman. Her entire life was spent taking care of a blind, dim-witted boy, sewing to make a living, never once enjoying a happy laugh. Her face showed the strains of her sorrow and helplessness. I saw a woman whose fate had tormented her night and day. She wasn’t yet fifty years old, but she had the look of an old woman well past seventy. Relying on a trade passed on to her by her ancestors, mother and son did not want for food, but they had little else.