Answer: Aina wishes to reconnect with Zhu Wenli to try to apologize. When she was a kid, and her student, due to a misunderstood in an explanation of what "metaphor" meant, Aina and her friends told the Chinese government workers that she was criticizing the Communist Party. After that, she was fired and soon was sent to forced labor fields. She feels guilty for changing such a good woman's life like that, since she was a child and didn't understand how complex politics were on a Communist dictatorship like China. 11 years later (that's where the story's title comes from), when she <u>gets back to the same city she did her elementary school and finds out that Zhu Wenli is living there</u>, she decides to reach to her, but once she recognizes her old teacher in the middle of a street fight, she gets disappointed. Zhu Wenli looks wild, has scars on her face and even her voice tone has changed. She realizes that the Zhu Wenli that she had known is gone forever after she went to the fields. The sweet, delicate and shy Zhu Wenli was changed into that weird, strong woman, who feared nothing.
A. I was very sick one winter with flu. I had to stay inside all month long, and no one could come to visit me. I was so lonely and felt so sad, because I wished my friends would come over, so I know how August might have felt when everyone stayed away from him.
