The clothing of the early-teen boys was quite becoming to the countryside neighborhood, to the dirt road streaked by ox-cart tracks. I remember a student cap without a school mark on it, and a sports cap which appeared to have been white in its early days. The visor of the sports cap, deformed by too many washings, was hanging sloppily over the forehead of the wearer. It took some trouble to make sure that the cap had been a white one.
The item that impressed me most strongly was a woollen sweater. A sweater knitten with wool recycled from at least three aged sweaters. It was obvious that the knitter did not care so much about the colors as about the shape. The colors of the trunk and the two arms were independent from one another. Each of the arms also had an independent sleeve, which seemed to be a more recent addition. The boy in the sweater had something on his head, which I could not make out clearly.
The haphazard outfit of the boys, I recall, brought me back to the days of 'spring famine(春窮)', when the whole village was short of food.
