even in my wildest dreams, i could not have envisioned a day when all this would be the stuff of my own fiction, for i was just a boy who loved stories, who was infatuated with the tales people around me were telling. back then i was, without a doubt, a theist, believing that all living creatures were endowed with souls. i'd stop and pay my respects to a towering old tree; if i saw a bird, i was sure it could become human any time it wanted; and i suspected every stranger i met of being a transformed beast. at night, terrible fears accompanied me on my way home after my work points were tallied, so i'd sing at the top of my lungs as i ran to build up a bit of courage. my voice, which was changing at the time, produced scratchy, squeaky songs that grated on the ears of any villager who heard me.
i spent my first twenty-one years in that village, never traveling farther from home than to qingdao, by train, where i nearly got lost amid the giant stacks of wood in a lumber mill. when my mother asked me what i'd seen in qingdao, i reported sadly that all i'd seen were stacks of lumber. but that trip to qingdao planted in me a powerful desire to leave my village and see the world.
in february 1976 i was recruited into the army and walked out of the