Where coal fires burn, black smudges spread. Living quarters confined and necessarily efficient. The ubiquitous thermos bottles hold boiled water in reserve, for tea, for cooking, for washing. Teacups on small tables. Pots and pans and dishes stacked on open shelves.
Chopsticks fan out like a flower arrangement from a vase.
A cleaver lies on a cupped-out chopping block. The smooth dirt courtyard, swept tidy. The raised dust settles on sill and step, on the disused bicycle in the corner, on upturned wheel-barrow and storage box lid. The inescapable dust settles everywhere, but remains only where no hand bothers to sweep it away like the wooden frames of window panes. And even where broom and bristle travel a remnant clings.