Reading Xiangxi (Sangongqiao Chapter I)
Sangongqiao Chapter: On the road to Fenghuang. From Jishou to Fenghuang is an hour and a half's drive on a good but narrow road—a friendly, greenish asphalt road. Past Qianzhou the place names turn amusing: first Toupaotai, then Erpaotai, Sanpaotai, Wanxi, Liaojiachong, Ganziping, and Sangongqiao. Counting off the villages, the road takes on meaning.
This article has been compiled from historical materials on 'Zhangjiajie Tour Guide Network' (33519.com · Specialty Foods / Cuisine / Customs section). Prices, business hours, administrative divisions, and statistical data mentioned in the text may already be outdated. Before traveling, please refer to the latest announcements from merchants, scenic areas, and local competent authorities; the parts involving folk legends and folk customs are local historical and cultural anecdotes, provided for cultural reference.
Sangongqiao Chapter
Going to Fenghuang via Sangongqiao
From Jishou to Fenghuang, it is a one-and-a-half-hour drive, and the road is easy to travel. Not wide.
But it is a friendly, greenish asphalt road. After passing Qianzhou, the place names are fun: first Toupaotai, then Erpaotai, Sanpaotai, Wanxi, Liaojiachong, Ganziping, Sangongqiao. Counting the villages, the road becomes meaningful—it is the distance between villages, not the mechanical ticking of a meter. In the paddy fields, because spring plowing has not yet arrived, the purple vetch used as green manure has not been trampled by cow hooves and is blooming profusely, like an endless flower carpet on a green background, showcasing the unconscious luxury of the countryside. Where the roadside can be painted, it says "Return farmland to forest," which is work to prevent soil erosion. Occasionally, a household happens to be by the road, and the wall is wide enough, so the propaganda team paints in white paint: "Fiber optic cable has no copper; stealing is useless." The meaning is very clear: not only does it tell people not to steal, but it also tells you the reason not to steal, so you don't do useless work and face lawsuits.
My hometown is in Sangongqiao, named after a three-arch stone bridge in the village. About the bridge's history, a teacher who teaches history in elementary school says it is from the Ming Dynasty, but since he is not a local and has no textual evidence, no one believes him. People prefer to ask the oldest man in the village, nicknamed "Pig Hair," 93 years old, who got the name from doing pig business when young. He would go to the market, leaving before dawn with empty cages to La'ershan, at noon loading piglets to sell in Qianzhou, and at night the cages were empty again, carrying back a pound or two of meat. Passing the grocery store, he would shout in a rough voice: "A pound of soy sauce!" Stir-fried greens do not use soy sauce, so others knew his family often ate meat. He has a classic story: he always wore a hat that seemed never washed. Once at the market, he lost it by the roadside. He was not anxious. The next market (rural markets are every five days), he went again, picked it up, and at the village grocery store bought another pound of soy sauce, proudly flipping his unwanted hat to show the shopkeeper: "See, I'm not destined to lose money. There was 500 yuan in this hat; it slept on the road for a market day." Now he is not hunched or deaf, often carrying his great-grandchild to stroll the streets. When asked if he knows which dynasty the old bridge is from, he asks: "Who was before Chairman Mao?" When told it was the Republic of China, he says: "No." Asked "Qing Dynasty?" he says: "Empress Dowager Cixi's time?" Upon confirmation, he shakes his head, fills his pipe with tobacco, takes a puff, exhales, "Even earlier." Then the dry tobacco pipe gurgles, and no more. And the bridge's history remains unclear.
Visiting the Miao Village of Yanke Village
It was around noon when I arrived home. Mother was busy killing chickens and ducks. I hadn't been to the more distant villages for a long time, so I said I wanted to go out for a walk. Mother hurriedly told me to bring a camera, and pointing to a stretch of stone-slab mountain path beside the Three-Arch Bridge, said to just go to Yanke Village and not wander too far.
The stone-slab path was uneven, and since it had just rained, the mud in the cracks between the stones was covered with hoofprints where cattle had stepped, along with astonishingly large cow pats. Cattle are the treasure of rural people and their most valuable property—even cow dung is more precious than pig manure and the like. And because cattle eat grass, it doesn't stink, so it doesn't offend anyone. Cow dung can even be used to plaster walls; wherever there's a crack, cow dung is the best thing to plug it with. Now the indescribable fragrance of cow dung drifted faintly in the air after the rain. On both sides of the path were vegetable plots and the hills allocated to each household. In the plots were golden rapeseed flowers and radish flowers that were white tinged with purple. Unlike the ones that flashed past from the car, these flowers could submerge me; placing my hand on the swaying blossoms, I could feel the gentleness of the wind brushing over them. There was also Chinese milk vetch, blooming without end. Although the hillsides bore the words 'Return farmland to forest,' for the time being no one paid them any mind, so they remained bare as before.
The scenery along the way was all hazy and dreamlike—if we hadn't come, I'm afraid no one would know for whom it bloomed. Occasionally on the hill beside us I could see a woman tending cattle. The cattle grazed slowly on the side, but she was not idle: one hand reached for the silvergrass stalks and slender branches on the rock face, while the other wielded a curved sickle for cutting firewood, cutting bundle after bundle and piling them up. She was preparing to take them back to the courtyard to dry in the sun for firewood, which would light easily.
Outsiders, upon hearing 'Miao village,' immediately think of stilted houses, but actually it's not all like that. The Miao people's building materials are all sourced locally. In places where timber is scarce, it's impossible to build wooden stilted houses. If stone is easy to quarry, then that place will inevitably have mostly stone houses—as in the deep mountain areas of Ouyang, Chashan, and Guandao, where many stone houses still exist today. If there isn't even stone, then one can only live in earthen houses with yellow mud walls. Timber and stone may both be lacking, but yellow earth is everywhere, so in the mountains earthen houses are the majority. Later on, as life became more comfortable, people renovated the mud houses into blue-brick ones, and now there are even small Western-style buildings with mosaic tiles dotted among them. Needless to say, these belong to the village's wealthy—the occupation of the owners would certainly not be tending a few mu of fields, plowing in spring and harvesting in autumn.
The 'Shade-Resting Tree' at the Village Entrance
In the distance at the village entrance stood a verdant pine tree. This is the Miao village's 'shade-resting tree,' also called the 'resting-foot tree.' No matter which village you go to, at the entrance or at a fork in the road, you'll see one or several of these evergreen trees for passersby to rest in the shade or take a break. Pine trees are usually planted by wells, so seeing the tree is like seeing the village, and also like seeing the well. In the village, peach and plum blossoms were scattered here and there. Shen Congwen said, 'Among peach and apricot blossoms there are households, and where there are households there is wine for sale.' But the villages here don't seem to have such charm. Though good wine needs no bush, people today would rarely walk thirty or forty minutes along a mountain path to a village to find wine to drink.
Our appearance in this deep-mountain Miao village was an anomaly, so we were immediately noticed by the people scattered along the field ridges plowing and planting, and those on the hillsides herding cattle and cutting grass. A middle-aged woman tending cattle on the opposite slope and a few other children saw us walking into the village entrance and shouted in Miao toward an old man beside us who was barefoot and clearing weeds in his vegetable garden: 'Uncle, do you know whose relatives they're visiting?' The busy old man looked up at us, struck a match, and set fire to the wild grass at the edge of the vegetable plot. The flames spread at once. He couldn't identify who we were, nor did he care to, and responded: 'I don't know.' The other side also said 'Oh,' and added: 'Probably photographers.' I laughed happily inside. The people with cameras who went from street to street when I was a child always made us incredibly excited—that joy was no less than the ecstasy brought by the loud bang of popcorn exploding. If one could hold a bunch of plastic flowers and take a photo, that would certainly be lovely; if not, watching others smile behind their hands in front of the lens was also a feast for the eyes.
Encountering 'My Old Deskmate' by the Fields
Walking further in, the village became clearer and clearer. I could even see the clothes drying against the sky. The fence at the edge of the sky was to keep pigs and cattle from getting in and ruining the crops, but on sunny days it could also serve as a clothes-drying pole—truly a clever and simple idea. I was hesitating about whether to go in when a woman carrying a child on her back and hoeing the ground beside me called out my name. I looked up at her. Her face was familiar, but I couldn't recall her name. I smiled at her and said, 'Do you still remember me?' She wiped the sweat from her forehead with her hand, her gaze somewhat flickering. 'I'm Juxiang, from Tangchong. I was in third grade with you.' I looked at her again and finally remembered—she was from another village. In winter when we went to school, everyone carried a hand warmer. She would often grab a corn cob from home and bring it to school. As soon as class was over, she'd toss a few kernels into the hot ashes of the hand warmer, using two thin twigs like chopsticks to poke around in the ashes. Hearing a tiny pop, the ashes would suddenly puff open a small patch, and she'd immediately pick it out with the twig chopsticks, toss it between her left and right hands twice, and once cool, pop it into her mouth and crunch away. I often got some benefits—she didn't much like doing homework, but I did. I'd do her homework in exchange for five or six kernels of corn. I didn't have the patience to pick them out one by one, so I dumped them all into the ashes at once. Before I could wait for the pop, the class bell rang. I hurriedly grabbed the hand warmer and went in. Before the teacher could even speak, the explosion went off. The teacher would inevitably sweep the whole class with a piercing glare, land on my face, give me a fierce look, then turn to write on the blackboard. After class, Juxiang wouldn't give me any more, saying I wasted food. But if the next day I did her math homework again, she'd still let bygones be bygones and bring a handful of soybeans for a change of flavor.
I walked into the vegetable plot, recalling the happy times of the past, and asked what she was doing. She relaxed a bit, hoed the ground twice, and told her other five-year-old child squatting at the edge of the plot to call me auntie. She reached out and pulled an orange segment from the hand of the one-year-old on her back, saying softly: 'I'm digging up these late-planted celery. The soybean seedlings have sprouted, so I need to get the soybeans planted first.' Her child was shy and didn't dare call me, lowering her head and randomly pulling at the grass by her feet. So she called again: 'Yingmei, call her auntie.' I remembered the drinks and biscuits in my bag and took them out for the child. The little girl still didn't dare look up at me, glancing at her mother. Her mother smiled and said, 'Eat it yourself, don't give it to her.' But the child had already taken it. She was a bit embarrassed. I asked her why she was hoeing with the child on her back. She said her husband had gone out to work, and her mother-in-law had just caught a cold. Seeing the weather was nice today, she'd brought the child out to dig up the old celery so the soybeans wouldn't be planted too late. I said let's take a photo. She tugged at the hem of her clothes and said she was ugly and dressed poorly, so no photos. I said it didn't matter, she looked fine. So she adjusted the child on her back, cleaned the child's hands, and said, 'Alright, let's take one then. Photographers haven't come to the village in years—haven't had a photo taken in a long time.' I took a few shots and asked Yingmei to pose too, but she still hid from the camera. Just then, the middle-aged woman on the opposite slope started teasing: 'Sister-in-law, you're diligent for just one day and you're already in a photo!' She responded cheerfully: 'That's right, you all always say I'm lazy—today I'll show you what work looks like.'
Four Bare Walls but Warm Hospitality
After the photos, she said to come sit at her home—it wasn't far. So we followed her, past the well with the pine tree, around two yellow dogs, and past a few bleating goats. There weren't many people in the village. She said the young people had all gone out to work, and those left were the elderly and people like her who couldn't leave their children. Her home was not well-off—still a yellow mud-walled house. Under the eaves outside there were two swallow nests, one old and one new. The house had three rooms, the usual layout of a Miao home. The middle was the main hall, with little furniture, piled with pig feed. The only decoration on the wall was a certificate of merit, awarded to someone from the production team. She said it was her father-in-law's.
The right side was a side room with a fire pit, above which hung several pieces of bacon smoked black. A bed was placed there, draped with a blue mosquito net of the home-dyed kind. The left side was the kitchen, with a raised platform at the back where another bed was placed, hung with the same kind of mosquito net—probably her in-laws'.
I asked her where her husband was working. She smiled and said she didn't know. I was surprised and said, 'Don't you ask?' She smiled again, but with a touch of loneliness, and said, 'I do ask, but when I ask he gets angry and won't tell me.'
She scooped a ladle of water from the vat to wash the pot, and said to me: 'You must be hungry. We don't have anything fancy, but let me fry some glutinous rice cakes for you. Eat before you go.' At New Year, pounding glutinous rice cakes is the liveliest affair. The cakes are dried, then soaked in a water vat, where they keep for a long time. When guests come, frying rice cakes to serve them is proper etiquette. I wasn't hungry and told her not to bother, but she still scooped a spoonful of oil and squatted down to light the fire in the stove. By now Yingmei had confirmed we were guests of her home and began circling us familiarly. I asked her to pose for a few more photos and said, 'After we take the photo, shall we send it to Daddy?' The child didn't know that even her mother didn't know her father's address, and with a touch of shyness, she leaned on the doorsill and said, 'Okay.' In the end I still didn't let Juxiang fry the rice cakes. We chatted a while longer. She said she'd been married ten years, then looked at me and said, 'You're doing well now, right? Not like us. I've aged, haven't I?' There wasn't much complaint in her tone. But I knew—married ten years and the first child only five—the first five years after marriage must have been hard. And both children were girls. Living with her in-laws, there would be daily nagging. But she didn't say much, still smiling, always asking me: 'Are you sure you're not hungry? Frying a rice cake is quick.'
After saying goodbye and walking out, I suddenly realized she wasn't wearing Miao clothing and asked why. She said young people don't wear it anymore—only those over forty or fifty do. If you want to see the beautiful ones, it has to be during festivals or at a wedding banquet. Then they'd definitely wear a full set of jewelry and layer upon layer of clothing.
I passed by the bleating goats again and looked back at her. She stood in the doorway with the toddler on her back and Yingmei, her features no longer distinct.
The Mysterious Shamanic Ritual—'Gangxian'
The night we arrived home, someone in a neighboring village was performing 'gangxian'—that is, inviting a spirit medium (a female shaman) to communicate between the living and the dead. I had often heard of this mysterious affair of communication between humans and spirits as a child, but for some reason I had never witnessed it with my own eyes. However, if a person had a habit of bouncing their legs—unconsciously shaking both legs constantly—people would tease them: 'Are you doing gangxian?' So I knew that one of the medium's signature movements was continuously shaking both legs. I also heard that she would cover her forehead with a headscarf, and while her spirit traveled to the underworld, she would imitate the voices of the deceased, mimicking their tone to communicate with living relatives.
In Shen Congwen's writings, he gave considerable vivid attention to the female shamans of Fenghuang.
According to him, the shamans of Fenghuang were not outsiders—con men or lazy folk pretending to be mad to make a living—but mostly took up the profession involuntarily, as a role approaching 'having no choice.' Most were ordinarily extremely honest and simple, quiet and sparing of words. But suddenly they would fall ill and take to bed as if possessed by a spirit, their voice and manner completely changed. They might sing wildly and act up, talking of everything under heaven and earth. They would laugh and cry unpredictably and beat themselves. For days they would not eat, drink, or sleep. After two or three days, it was as if something in their life steadied them; from extreme exhaustion they needed rest, and after sleeping a full day, they would become clear-headed again. But this was periodic—when the illness struck, only performing the shamanic ritual could provide release.
Waiting for the Spirit Medium
I yearned for this mystery, so I patiently waited for sunset and dusk, then for the moon to rise above the willow tips. The ritual, conducted in the dark of night, could not be held early. After dark, we still used flashlights, relying on that weak circle of light and the guidance of moonlight and starlight, groping our way along stone-slab paths, not knowing how many pigs in their pens we startled, until we finally reached the home of the person who could introduce us to hear the 'gangxian.' She was a middle-aged woman with a towering Miao headwrap, fair-faced with delicate eyebrows, her silver earrings glinting under the lamp. She told us the spirit medium had been invited from the countryside over in Jixin and was quite famous, though this was her first time in Tangchong. Last night, a family in the village whose mother had passed away had invited her to ask about her situation 'over there.' Tonight, it was a family with a child working away from home who had invited her. But whenever anyone invited the medium, they always informed the whole village, so anyone with unresolved worries could join in and ask.
When we arrived at the host's home, the ritual hadn't started yet. Everyone in the room smiled at us with tacit understanding—both warm and furtive. We passed through the main hall to the left side room. The altar was set on an eight-immortal table by the fire pit in the side room: a rice measure filled to the brim with rice, with three sticks of incense stuck in it, burning with curling smoke. There were about ten people in the side room, two young women still holding infants less than a year old. The hostess was a middle-aged woman with a spirited, clear demeanor. Beside her was an old woman helping fold paper money. I knew about this—paper money had to be burned three sheets at a time, and never face-down; if burned reversed, 'the people below' couldn't enjoy it. So folding paper money required an experienced old person specifically. The spirit medium stood by the altar, a woman of about fifty in Miao dress, neatly built, tall, with full features, dressed cleanly and efficiently—she didn't look at all like someone with a mad illness. I immediately took a liking to her. The old woman folding paper money, by contrast, was somewhat hunched, her aged face covered in liver spots, somewhat frightening in the lamplight. I held my breath, waiting for the ritual to begin, but unexpectedly the medium stood up and asked the host where the toilet was. The hostess got up to take her, and it seemed the taboo was broken. The other women in the room began chattering, exchanging the bits and pieces they knew about this medium. The auntie who brought us said this medium had great stamina—she'd sung all night last night, finishing at six in the morning, and tonight she'd continue. A young woman with a pointed chin said: 'You didn't hear the end last night, did you? She really has some skill. Last night Old De's mother possessed her and told the family she really wanted to eat rice tofu. Old De went to market today to buy some. His mother really loved rice tofu when she was alive—do you remember?' She giggled, and the others laughed and chimed in, describing the medium's performance last night all over again. I listened with great interest, all the more impatient to witness the medium's wonders with my own eyes.
Singing and Speaking, Ascending to Heaven and Entering the Earth
The immortal medium returned, the housewife burned paper, and the ritual began. The medium pulled off her blue-black headscarf and covered her eyes completely. Her legs began to twitch rhythmically, and she started humming, the melody gentle, her voice low and rich, making one feel very comfortable. She sang entirely in the Miao language. I pricked up my ears and understood about eighty percent. The words were not profound, but because they were sung, they were somewhat hard to grasp. The gist was: "Here I burn incense and bow my head, with proper rites and reverence, again I invite the gods to descend to my side. All you immortal masters, all you immortal mediums, my master and disciples, my dragon-tiger immortal masters, dragon-tiger immortal mediums, please inquire in all four directions, and seek for me that person far away, who is in a foreign land." The aunt wearing the Miao headscarf told me this was inviting the master, that roughly speaking, her strength alone was not enough to roam everywhere, so she had to seek help from her master and other sisters. She sang twice more in the same rhythm, then stopped and asked the housewife: "What zodiac sign is your child?" The housewife told her, and she sang the child's zodiac sign once, invited some more masters and mediums, then asked again: "What lunar date and what hour did the child leave home?" The housewife thought for a moment, consulted with family members, and said it was the twenty-fourth of the first month. She sang again: "The one born in the year of the Tiger left at the hour of the Horse, the date set on the twenty-fourth." The housewife suddenly remembered it was not the twenty-fourth but the twenty-third. She heard this, confirmed it once more, sang again, then said: "Grab three handfuls of rice." The housewife grabbed three small handfuls onto the table. "Count how many odd and how many even. If it's three odd and three even, that's good." The housewife counted and found three odd and two even. She grew anxious and asked her: "How do you say this should be resolved?" She sang once more and said: "That means there's a bit of minor misfortune. Burn a handful of paper." The housewife did as told, burning it, and grew even more anxious: "Help me ask all the gods and immortals, see how it can be avoided?" The medium said nothing, sang again, asked again, and finally said: "The twenty-third isn't any great calamity. Invite an old shaman, clean around the courtyard front and back, and there won't be any great harm." The housewife nodded. The medium also cautioned that it must be a Miao shaman, not a Han shaman. She sang once more, and the housewife was finally reassured.
So the medium and the housewife, in their questions and answers, in her singing and prayers, little by little communicated between human and god. I had originally held an extremely mysterious reverence for her, but gradually I found her very approachable—just an ordinary woman who could sing and speak well, and because she had another kind of wisdom for reading people's hearts, she was able to become a communicator. The ethereal realm of gods and ghosts is beyond ordinary people's reach, but communication between people she accomplished very well. She had not a trace of eerie or crazed behavior, but was like a woman extremely skilled at comforting others. Chatting with her women friends about a son away from home, the melodies she sang were very moving, gentle and close to human feeling. Thus she traveled to heaven and earth, dissolving both the celestial and the mortal into her lyrics, always maintaining the beauty of the melody. This perhaps is the reason she was so different from ordinary people and won special respect.
Reading Hearts, Releasing Pain
At this point, an old woman by the fire pit got up, inserted five yuan into the rice measure, saying she wanted to join in and ask about family matters.
The medium began another round of inquiries, then said: "The number of people in your household is odd." The people in the room began to exclaim. The old man folding paper money clicked his tongue and said: "That's right, their family has seven people, isn't that odd." The medium did not gloat but calmly continued her melody, then said, "Your family has lost wealth." This time the old woman did not believe it, but did not argue either, only saying: "Did you see clearly? What has my family lost?" The medium sang for a while and said: "Your family has lost something, anyway." At this point the old man folding paper money could not hold back and said: "Of course you've lost something—that son of yours." The old woman seeking the reading still turned to the medium and said: "Look again for me, what exactly happened?" By now the medium had already drawn information from the old paper-folder, and said: "I see a dark black hole. Hasn't something leaked out of your family? If not wealth lost, then a person lost." The old woman seeking the reading could no longer hold back her tears and finally spoke: "Yes, I have lost a person. My heart is so worried. Help me see, how exactly did he go?" The medium sang again, and following the original procedure, grabbed rice, burned paper, questioned about the birth date and eight characters, and finally, layer by layer, revealed that the child had gone out to work, and just after arriving, three people had plotted for his money and killed him. The mother of the deceased was now streaming with tears, saying: "I knew he was such a gentle person at home, how could he have offended anyone—so he was murdered." She pressed the medium about the process of the child's murder, but the medium did not fully tell, only saying three people, one younger, two older. To say more would be to leak heaven's secrets. The people around, when the old woman pressed further, also chimed in, always telling the medium: "You have to explain it fully. You just say there's a leak—who knows if it's leaking a person or leaking wealth?" I, amid the incense smoke and the medium's songs, had slowly lost my sense of awe and turned to appreciating the medium's gestures and music.
I did not feel she had truly seen through yin and yang, or communicated between humans and ghosts and gods. In fact, she was like a patient, clever woman who, through repeated questioning and the words of those around her, saw through human nature and gave people comfort. The woman in the towering Miao headscarf who had brought us said to me that the old woman's child had died in a car accident while working away, and when fellow villagers sent word back, by the time the mother arrived, the child's body had long grown cold.
A person over sixty, who had hoped the child would go out and make something of himself, could hardly accept the fact that the child had died in a foreign land, so her heart was constantly worried, unable to let go for a moment. I thought the medium must have heard, in the old woman's choking sobs, a mother's unwillingness and deep pain, and so said the child had died unjustly. The mother would naturally, in recalling the child's gentle character, gradually release her pain.
Song Constructs a Social Scene
The procedure continued. I was no longer much concerned with what the medium sang. In the dense incense smoke, the fire in the fire pit burned warmly. Her ritual and her songs, which I could not fully understand, became the backdrop of a social scene.
The men began the diplomacy of such occasions, offering cigarettes to other men. Some who accepted lit them right in the fire pit, smiled, and went back to listening. Those who did not smoke tucked them behind their ears and nodded to the one who offered. The women began chatting about daily matters, commenting on her voice and lyrics, comparing her gestures and wisdom with another medium from another village. The warm side room was filled with a harmonious, cozy atmosphere. In fact, this witch was less a mysterious sorceress than a Miao singer. I thought she was immersed in her songs, envisioning the world she entered, a world no one else could reach. In the world she sang of, she saw another kind of human scene. I believe a person with a rich imagination can construct a story from another's simple narration, but usually ordinary people are not so confident, using such a calm tone, such a low and rich voice, always maintaining this lucid dialogue with the people and gods in the world of others' and her own fantasies. And she could. In this sense, she was indeed a witch, a person with extraordinary abilities.
She kept singing. Some people had already begun to doze off. I took a few photos and took my leave. Passing through the main hall, a middle-aged man called to me, saying the real good show hadn't even started yet—it wasn't yet time for the "ascension" when she would completely take on another's manner, and that singing would be truly beautiful. I was somewhat tempted, but my mother had just been snoring like thunder. Although the medium was unaffected and still kept her singing rhythm, I always felt it would be a great disrespect to this incense-wreathed occasion, so I left anyway. Walking unsteadily on the stone path, I don't know which family's dog I startled again—it barked a few times. In the chilly early spring night, such barking should give one a sense of desolate vastness, but because I had just attended a mysterious ritual, the singer's melody still echoing in my ears, the warmth of the fire pit still lingering on my body, my heart was actually full of excitement, not feeling the cold at all.