Chapter 106 - Chapter 106: The Lantern Market

The lantern market occupied the central square of the capital every year at the New Year season, and every year it was exactly the same and entirely different. The same in its structure: hundreds of stalls, thousands of lanterns, the particular quality of crowd noise that came from people who were outdoors for pleasure rather than necessity, the smell of fried dough and sugar and incense drifting through cold air. Different in its specifics: who was there, what was being sold, which lanterns were fashionable that year, which children were running through the crowd for the first time.