Several days before, the weather was just as warm as spring, in early morning of yesterday, the weather became cold suddenly, and the sky was full of dark clouds with lead color, at noon, nippy wind was blowing, which lasted for a whole afternoon with whir. Wind stopped at dusk and snow followed. It was the first snow of winter.

At first the snow was with drizzle, soon could only see snowflake like goose feather falling down from overclouded heaven, for a while ground became white. Mountain village was extremely quiet during night, only heard the rustle of snowflake falling incessantly. A creak once in a while. Deadwood of tree was broken by snow.

The heavy snow lasted for a whole night. In the morning, the weather became fine and the Sun showed up. Pushing door open, yo! How heavy the snow was! Mountain, trees, houses, all of which were hooded by a thick layer of snow, the world became white. Willows without leaves were full of shaggy and glittering silver bars. Evergreen pine and cypress were stacked full of fluffy and heavy snowball. With wind blowing, branches swayed gently, silver bars and snowballs fell with rustle, snow like jade crumb danced with wind, reflected morning sunshine, showing prismy rainbows.

The snow on street was with a depth of half a meter, there was creak while stepping on it. Groups of children were making snowman and playing snowball.

As the saying goes, “a timely snow promises a good harvest.” This isn’t superstition and has abundant scientific bases. Heavy snow in cold winter can freeze part of pest to death; Snowbroth infiltrated into earth and satisfied the need of growing of crop next year. The heavy snow was really timely and surely would bring a harvest for wheat next year. Experienced old farmer compared snow as ‘quilt of wheat’, the thicker quilt was, the better wheat would grow in next spring. So there was also another proverb, “wheat gets three layers of quilt in winter, get steamed bread as pillow to sleep next year.”

I think, that’s the reason why people calls timely heavy snow ‘auspicious snow’.