Bai Xiaolan stood in the office of the militia with several fourteen and fifteen-year-old boys. An equally aged girl stood alongside them, her head lowered as she stared at the tips of her shoes.
Upon seeing Ji Xiangdong walk in, Bai Xiaolan immediately lowered her head, not daring to look at him. Her heart pounded with apprehension, regretting her impulsive interference.
That morning, after Ji Xiangdong had left, she had wandered around the Poplar Forest and spotted two middle-aged women picking wild mushrooms. They enthusiastically told her that there were plenty of mushrooms in the autumn which could be dried and then stewed in winter, tasting as good as meat. They showed her the morels and wild oyster mushrooms they had collected, explaining that the morels liked to grow under rotting leaves and the wild oyster mushrooms on damp, decaying tree roots.
