'Come,' she nods.
I follow as she mounts the stairs, one little old lady step at a time, keeping pace with her in an attempt to be companionable until she waves me on ahead. I wait for her on the landing as she toils upwards in her pink granny blouse: her hair lank and silver, her skin weatherworn and wrinkled. I imagine the life she must have led, the things she must have seen – but to broach any of that would have been tactless. An intrusion. Anyway my command of Chinese isn't up to it.
'Look,' she says, as she catches me up on the second floor. And there, beneath us, like a miniature walled city within a walled city, lies the coiled core of the Chengqilou (pictured above).
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