It struck her eff usively how familiar yet unfamiliar were some fi gures, some backs, some faces and some voices. There were one or two women washing clothes at the riverside; two or three aged men cherishing the sunshine on a stone bench outside; three or four villagers looking curiously out of a wooden store built next to a bridge over the river. It was the only store in the village and the only place people enjoyed going freely. Not far from the store, a father and a son were repairing the tiled roof of a toilet by the river. On another bridge, the last woman in the village with bound feet stood looking lost. She leaned on the railing, holding a walking stick. She slightly bent forward, mumbling to her refl ection in the water. She had lived for almost a century.