1979: Minha Noiva é a Mãe Celestial

December 1979, the Beijing–Kunming Railway.

Heavy snow fell from the sky, and the wilderness outside Beijing stretched away in a vast white expanse.

A black dragon sped sinuously across the white canvas. Its gleaming body was draped in silver frost, while its weathered engine belched clouds of steam that melted the snow swirling through the air before rising slowly into the sky.

Clank, clank…

This was Express Train T62/1, running from Kunming in Yunnan to Beijing West Station.

In the dim corner near the front door of Carriage Eight, Cheng Kaiyan, wrapped in a green military overcoat, lay sprawled across the table and drifted into sleep. Every so often, he muttered in his dreams.

“Catch the spy! Catch the spy!”

Bang! Bang! Bang!

“Wake up! You can’t die!”

He was having a nightmare. In it, a young woman dressed in a military uniform, her face impossible to make out, shook him frantically with an expression of panic.

Cheng Kaiyan slept deeply, as though he had fallen to the bottom of the sea and could no longer breathe. He even felt that he might never wake again.

“Comrade? Comrade! Wake up!”

The voice beside him grew louder and louder. Then the train suddenly jolted. Cheng Kaiyan gripped the table leg to steady himself and finally lifted his bleary eyes.

Beside him sat a rustic countrywoman in a patched, old-fashioned padded coat, her face pale and sallow from hunger. A little girl of one or two, her hair tied into two tiny bunches, sat on her lap. The woman was staring at him anxiously, her head