For ten years and more, the local military commander at this provincial border had emphasized maintaining the peace and keeping things as they were. He handled things quite deftly, so there had been no unrest. Commerce on land and water never had to stop on account of warfare or rural banditry; good order was the rule, and people were satisfied. They felt grief at such misfortunes as the death of a cow, the capsizing of a boat, or any other fatal catastrophe, but the disasters suffered by other places in China due to the awful struggles going on there seemed never to be felt by these frontier folk.

The most stirring days of the year in this border town were the Dragon Boat Festival, the Mid-autumn Festival, and the lunar New Year. These three festival days excited the people here exactly as they had fifty years before. They were still the days that meant the most.

At the Dragon Boat Festival on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month, women and children put on new clothes and painted the character wang, or "king," on their foreheads using wine mixed with realgar. Everybody got to eat fish and meat this day. By eleven o'clock in the morning, all Chadong was sitting down to lunch, after which those who lived in town locked their doors and went down to the riverside to see the dragon boats race. If they knew people on River Street, they could watch from the houses on stilts overhanging the river. Otherwise, they watched from in front of the customs house or from one of the many piers. The dragon boat race began downstream at the Long Depths stretch of the river. The finish line was in front of the customs house. The local military officers, customs officials, and all people of importance gathered at the customs house this day to take in the excitement. The oarsmen had prepared for the race days in advance, with each competing team selecting its strongest and nimblest young lads to practice their maneuvers in the deep part of the river. The dragon boats were longer and narrower than ordinary wooden boats, with upturned ends and a long vermilion stripe painted on the hull. Most of the year they were stored in dry caves by the river. When it came time to use them, they were towed out into the water.

Each boat sat twelve to eighteen oarsmen, a helmsman, and two men to beat the drum and gong. The oarsmen's short paddles rowed the boat forward to the rhythm of the drumbeats—first unhurried, then urgent. The red-turbaned cox sat in the prow waving two little signal flags left and right, directing the motion of the boat. The men who pounded the drum and beat the gong usually sat amidships. The moment the boat launched, they started up the single-minded booming and clanging that governed the speed with which the boatmen thrust their oars into the river. The boat's speed had to follow the sound of the drum and gong, so whenever two boats got to the climax of their competition, the thunder of the percussion, added to the encouraging cheers from both banks, recalled novels and stories about Liang Hongyu beating her drum in the historic naval battle at Laoguan River, and the cacophony when Niu Gao fished the rebel Yang Yao out of the water. All who rowed their boat to victory were rewarded at the finish line in front of the customs house with red silk and a little silver badge, not just for their individual efforts but to acknowledge the boat's glorious teamwork. Soldiers used to taking things into their own hands felt compelled to congratulate the victorious boat by setting off strings of five-hundred-pop firecrackers.

After the race, the garrison soldiers and officers in town, to make common cause with the citizenry and increase the merriment of all concerned, released green-headed drakes out on the river with red ribbons tied around their long necks, so that the best swimmers, be they soldiers or civilians, could jump into the river and catch them. Anyone who captured a duck got to keep it. Thereupon the river at Long Depths hosted a unique spectacle: a stream simply covered with ducks—and people swimming after them.

These competitions, of boat against boat and man against duck, went on until the day was done.

Dragon Head Elder Brother Shunshun, now boss of the riverfront, had been an expert swimmer in his youth. When he dove into the water to catch a drake, he never went home empty-handed. But it came to be that during one festival, when his younger son, Nuosong, had turned eleven and was able to hold his breath long enough to swim to a drake under water and catch him by surprise, the father said to his son, a little defensively, "All right, it's up to you two now, no need for me to dive in anymore!" And that was the end of his jumping into the water to compete in catching ducks. Diving in to save a life, of course, was a different matter. He would jump into fire itself to save a person from calamity. You could be sure he would consider it his bounden duty even when he was eighty! Now Tianbao and Nuosong were the best rowers around, the top picks.

The Dragon Boat Festival on the fifth of the month was about to come around, so a big meeting was held on River Street on the first. The neighborhood decided then to launch the boat that belonged to their street. It happened that Tianbao was on an upcountry journey that day, accompanying merchants on the land route to East Sichuan to sell festival goods in Longtan. Only Nuosong could attend the meeting. Sixteen strapping young men, strong as oxen, journeyed upriver to the mountain cave where the boats were hidden, carrying incense, candles, firecrackers, and a drum on legs, whose rawhide drumheads had the circular yin-yang symbol painted in vermilion. Ceremoniously, they lit incense and candles and pulled their boat into the river. Then they boarded it, exploding firecrackers and beating the drum. The boat swept downstream, swift as an arrow, to the Long Depths.

That was in the morning. After noon, the dragon boat of the fisher folk on the other shore was launched, too; the two boats began to practice all sorts of competitive maneuvers. The very first drumbeats coming from the river brought joy to those who heard them, a sign that the festival was close at hand.

Denizens of the houses on stilts near the river began to think of their man's return, or began to hope for it, or at the very least were stimulated by the drumming to remember him. Many boats would be home for the festival, but others would have to pass the day away from home. This was a time when you could see feelings of delight and sorrow you ordinarily didn't get to see. Along the River Street of this little mountain town, some people were beaming; others were frowning.

When the booming of the drums skimmed over the water and crossed the hills to the ferryboat, the first to hear it was the yellow dog. Startled, he ran wildly around the house in circles, yapping all the way. When someone ferried across the stream to the eastern bank, he followed and ran up the hill with them, barking toward the town.

Cuicui was sitting on the great rocky bluffs outside her door, weaving grasshoppers and centipedes from palm leaves to amuse herself, when she saw the yellow dog suddenly awaken from his sleep under the sun and run around as if possessed, then cross the stream and come back. She scolded him, "Hey there, dog! What's gotten into you? Stop it!" But soon she made out the sound herself. She, too, ran around the house, then ferried herself and the dog across the stream, where she stood with him on the hilltop and listened for the longest time, letting those entrancing drumbeats carry her away to a festival in the past.