In the summer of 1997, the people of Fangqiao Town all said that Zhou Haisheng was taken away by a large bus coming from the south. That morning, he wore a white dacron shirt cleared out from the town supply and marketing cooperative's clearance sale. The buttons on the cuffs were sewn on overnight by his mother, using white thread unpicked from an old cotton-padded jacket. The color didn't quite match, being a shade whiter than the shirt, but unless you looked closely, you couldn't tell. He stood under the old scholar tree at the entrance of the town for a full forty minutes, waiting for that southbound bus heading from the county seat. When the bus arrived, he picked up the gray artificial leather travel bag by his feet and stepped onto the bus door.