Morning

I woke up with my clothes all stuck to me with sweat and it was light outside again and the train seemed to have emptied out a bit overnight. A man and his baby were sitting on Chan Mei's bed and Chan Mei was gone.

The land we were passing looked empty in the snow and I wondered how far we were from the Mongolian border. I wished that I'd brought some kind of rail map with me just to try and place myself somewhere. But all I knew was that we had left the east and we were heading west and yes this country is bigger than I'd thought and maybe the earth really is flat after all and China just goes on and on and on forever.