Explore "Snow Falling in Spring" by Ming Li on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
BY THE SUMMER OF 1970, MY FAVORITE COUSIN, LEE, HAD BEEN WORKING IN A REMOTE MOUNTAIN VILLAGE IN INNER MONGOLIA FOR ALMOST TWO years. Recently, she had been diagnosed with a serious heart defect and soon would be returning home for good. Where she lived, there was no adequate medical care. When she heard about what had happened to my parents, she invited me to visit her-"to get away from the city," she wrote, "even if it's just for a little while."
By now, lots of teenagers only a few years older than I had been sent to the distant countryside, as Mao had instructed. He believed that students and intellectuals needed to be "reeducated" by the peasants so that they wouldn't be led astray by what they learned at school. Wen's sister Ling, after the failed battle to save her father, had joined a large group of juniors and seniors from our high school bound for Heilongjiang, which borders Russia. She rarely wrote home, and even when she did the letters were always short. "It means she is going through hard times," Wen told me knowingly, "but she doesn't want my parents to worry."