“But that’s not the end of my tale,” Uncle Ping told him.

“A few months later I woke in the middle of the night,

because there was knocking on my window shutter.

I looked out cautiously, expecting to see something sinister,

but it was my beloved shivering in the darkness.

I rushed around to the front door,
led her inside, heated some water.

I had so many questions but was afraid of scaring her away.

She told me she had been in Shanghai.

Wouldn’t say why. Did she have someone there? I thought.

A Shanghainese?