【正确答案】 Xiangzi was looking for a place to sit down and think about what had just happened. Even if he only wound up crying, at least he'd know what he was crying about. The changes had come too fast for him. With snow everywhere, there was no place to sit. All the teahouses were boarded up, since it was past ten, but e-ven if they'd been open, he wouldn't have gone in. What he needed was a quiet, out-of-the-way spot, since he knew that the tears could start flowing at any minute.
With no place to sit, he decided to keep walking, slowly. But where should he go? A silvery world offered him no place to sit and nowhere to walk to. The only break in the winter expanse came from hungry birds and a solitary man who was sighing in despair.
Where to go? This was the first order of business. A small inn? Out of the question. The way he was dressed, he could be robbed during the night, not to mention all those frightful bedbugs. How about a larger inn? Too expensive. All he had on him were those five yuan, the sum total of his wealth. A bathhouse? But they locked up at midnight, with no overnight accommodations. There was nowhere.
The wandering took him to Zhonghai lake. He stood on the bridge, where all he could see anywhere was a blanket of snow, and only then did it occur to him that the snowfall hadn't stopped. He reached up to feel his knitted cap—it was wet. The bridge was deserted; even the duty policeman was nowhere to be seen. Street lamps appeared to be blinking amid the onslaught of snow. He looked around at all the snow, his mind a blank.
Xiangzi stayed on the bridge for a long time, feeling that the world had died; no sound, nothing stirred. The gray snowflakes took this opportunity to speed up their disorderly fall to earth and submerge the land before anyone was aware of it.