August 8th, the fifth of the seventh month on the traditional Chinese calendar and the day of Zhong Yuan Festival.
Starting early this morning, men and women of all ages were filing out of the city, heading right for the cemetery on the eastern slope of Phoenix Mountain. Swarming the roads leading from the villages and downtown area to the cemetery were cars, donkey wagons, jeeps, and tricycles of every kind.
The mountain gate several kilometers away was also drowned in a hubbub of human noises—actually, the stream of tourists flowing onto the mountain had not been interrupted since the beginning of this summer.
People were moving up in groups of threes and fives. One group stood out more than anyone else: they were two men, four women, and a little kid, one of whom was in a blue robe and apparently a Taoist priest.
They were none other than Gu Yu and his companions.
