Shao ran into several friends from Shanghai, all in Changsha with their universities. Some had been in Changsha for many weeks; they’d already received letters from home. Flush and generous after cashing in money orders, they treated the new arrivals to cheap meals at Changsha’s many small restaurants. Shao was learning to enjoy the region’s distinctive style of cuisine, generously seasoned with mouth-numbing chilies.

“My tongue’s still on fire,” Shorty said, breathing in cold winter air through his mouth.

“I need to wash my face,” Shao said. “Those noodles made me sweat more than a basketball game.”

“Liu Shaoming! Shorty Ho! Hey, stop!” A uniformed soldier was puffing up the hill after them, waving madly. “Ping! Chen Ping!”

“I know that voice,” Shao said, squinting. “But not that face.”

“It’s Wei Daming,” Shorty said. “Thirty pounds lighter. And in a medic’s uniform. And here, in Changsha.”

“Daming! You dumb ox!” Shao shook the younger man by the shoulders. “What are you doing here?”

Daming’s face shone with exertion from the climb, but his wide grin almost split his face in two. “I heard there were Minghua students billeted at Yali Middle School, so I came to see if I could find some of the old gang.”

“Are you here to enroll?” Chen Ping asked.

Daming threw back his head in laughter. “What university would take me? Even if I hadn’t been expelled, I would’ve flunked out. But the army was glad to take me.”

“But a medic,” Shao said. “How did you qualify for that?”

Daming laughed even harder. “Apparently, it was because I could read. They handed me the field surgeon’s manual.”

“Where’s your cousin?” Shorty said. “Both you and Jin Ming were expelled for that prank.”

The smile faded. “Jin was killed, old friend. I had to write my aunt and uncle. I really hope the postal system takes its time with that letter.”

The cousins had been expelled from Minghua partway through the second week of classes. Daming and Jin hosted a farewell dinner at a favorite restaurant in Nanking, spending lavishly on food and drink for their friends. The next morning, they woke up in a hotel room with queasy stomachs and sharper minds. The gravity of their situation made their stomachs roil more than the bottle of brandy they had drunk so freely the night before. They knew what awaited them back home in Shanghai. Their fathers’ wrath, their mothers’ tears of shame. The disapproval of elderly relatives.

“Jin remembered our great-uncle in Anhui Province, a general,” Daming said. “We bought train tickets, rode as far as we could, then walked the rest of the way to the front lines to enlist in his regiment. We thought if Great-Uncle wrote to our parents praising our patriotism, they might not be so angry with us for getting expelled.”

“And did he write to praise your patriotism?” Shorty said.