Some losses happen overnight.

In the early hours of a cold April morning, a bedridden old man dropped his quilt onto the copper basin of burning charcoal that kept him warm. People heard his screams: “It hurts!” The wind was strong that night, and the fire moved in whatever direction the wind pushed it. People fled their homes “without even a pair of shoes,” and from the wind-rain bridges they watched their homes burn. The fire brigade from the township below was summoned by a mobile phone call. But when the firefighters attached their hose to a spigot next to the Drum Tower, no water ran out of the broken pipe. The Drum Tower itself was a bonfire.

By sunrise the Drum Tower and 60 homes were smoldering heaps. Forty-four other homes bore scars, from blackened sides to missing boards, or had been torn down to create a firebreak, which ultimately saved the rest of the village. The old man was the only one who died. Only part of his torso remained, his neighbor reported. For days the air smelled of charred wood, burned grain, and roasted pigs.

“I was going to give my silver to my granddaughter,” one za told me, as she sat across the road from the ruins of her former home. “But it’s all gone.” She threw her arms up in the air, as if the fire were rising before us with a whoosh. “I cried for four days, without stopping, without eating. When government officials arrived, they came to me first, because I was bawling the loudest. I cried to them, I am the widow of a party secretary, and only my coffin wasn’t burned.”

The farmers tallied their losses: homes, pigs, farm tools, grain sheds, and the woven clothes and silver heirlooms of grandmothers and mothers. It would cost them each 20,000 to 40,000 yuan ($2,500 to $5,000) to repair or rebuild, a lifetime of debt. The sons of the fire starter were blamed for leaving their father alone while they were outside drinking with relatives from out of town. “When guests come, you have to offer them wine,” said a carpenter in a village four miles downriver. “It was an accident.”

This accident had its causes. One bad thing leads to another. The family of the fire starter had been troubled for a long time. People used to hear the Eldest Son and father argue at least four times a week. It ended each time with the son beating up the father. A crowd witnessed such a beating in front of the Drum Tower during Spring Festival. “For a son to do such a thing to a father,” said the Singing Teacher, “that is very wrong.” The family’s volatile temper was a curse on the village.