The summer she turned nineteen, Jin Xueli found a part-time job at a traveling carnival. The carnival had just rolled into her small hometown, its grounds freshly set up in an empty lot on the outskirts.
The stage was cobbled together from scrap wood, and the handful of tents were yellowed with age.
Long strings of light bulbs, draped across the grounds, shouldered the heavy burden of manufacturing a joyous, dreamlike atmosphere—provided you didn't trip over the wires snaking across the ground, and prayed they wouldn't short out and start a fire.
Jin Xueli sometimes found it hard to believe that a traveling carnival could still survive in this day and age.
No, it wasn't the carnival itself that was so astonishing. Rather, it was a faithful reflection of the town.
Only in a place like Shennan Town, a place that felt abandoned by the era and the world, slowly being buried under despair and dust, could such a carnival survive—and even become an event the whole town eagerly awaited.
