to our place in the summer. In the daytime we'll go to the seashore to pick shells. We have all kinds of shells, red ones and green ones, devil's-terrors and Kuanyin's-hands. In the evening you can go with my father and me to watch the watermelon patch."
"To guard against thieves?"
"No. We do not consider it stealing if a passer-by is thirsty and helps himself to a melon. We watch for badgers, hedgehogs, and especially the 'ch'a.' You can hear them gnawing on the melons in the moonlight, crunch, crunch. Then you get hold of your fork and walk up lightly—"
I did not know what a "ch'a" was—I don't know to this day—but for some reason or other I imagined it to be something like a small puppy, only more fierce.
"Don't they bite?"
"But you have your fork. When you get close and see it, you strike it with your fork. The beast is very quick. It will rush toward you and run off between your legs. Its fur is as slippery as oil."
I never knew that there were such new and marvelous things in the world: that there were shells of so many colors on the seashore and that watermelons could have a more exciting experience than being displayed in fruit shops.
"When the tide is in, there are lots and lots of jumping fish. They all have two legs like young frogs."
Ah, Yun-t'u knew about an infinite number of strange things which none of my usual playmates knew anything about. They knew absolutely nothing, for when Yun-t'u was playing on the seashore, they, like myself, could only see a four-cornered sky above the walls of the courtyard.
Unfortunately the first month came to an end and Yun-t'u had to go home. I cried, and Yun-t'u also hid in the kitchen
