“Is the wedding in the town?” Ming asked.
“No, it will be my birthplace in a small village.” Mei said, with a positive tone that was assumed. “Don’t worry, we’ll have a full day to rest tomorrow before taking a morning bus to the village. Okay?”
Ming nodded his adolescent head in ignorant silence.
They had no further conversation.
It didn’t occur to Mei to encourage Ming to talk more. It was neither her nature nor the way she grew up. Besides, she was slowly drowning in the meaning of “birthplace”, which took her to all those nostalgic places where her childhood was - the rice terraces in all seasons, the mountains and the valleys, the bamboo forests and the bamboo shoots, the cedars with needles, the pines, the mushrooms, the wild lilies and the wild kiwis, the rocks and the mud, the fi sh and the shells in the river, the snows and the snowballs.