The chapter begins with the Swing Festival—an annual September celebration, which is also known as “Women’s New Year” (57) because young girls are expected to find their future husbands at this festival. On its eve, A-ma and three Sisters-in-law give Li-yan her headdress and put it on her head as “the gift of womanhood” (57). Everyone praises Li-yan’s midwifery skills, but she knows that this is just an introduction to the warning every young girl hears when she receives her headdress: “[H]aving a child without a husband is taboo” (59). Although Akha culture encourages girls and boys to have intercourse before marriage, or “to steal love” (60), it forbids them to have children out of wedlock.

Li-yan secretly hopes San-pa will approach her at the festival because she is madly in love with him. They have been going to school together for the past six years and have become close friends. They also plan to take the gaokao together, the examination that will allow them to go to a university. Li-yan dreams that one day they will both become the first members of any mountain tribe to receive a higher education.