The three occupation powers had complete discretion over dismantlings, however.

1. I visited this jiao festival with introductions from Fiorella Allio, now the authority on the Xigang festival, who was already studying the Ox-Plow Song troupe. At Xigang (Hsikang), people commonly use the term kua-hiuⁿ (T.), as Allio does, the term jiao being reserved for the Daoist rituals narrowly speaking.

Wrex: And for a while, we were getting through. Some of the tribes started coming around. Shepard: I take it the warlord didn't appreciate that. Wrex: No. He didn't. He arranged a Crush with the tribes. A meeting on neutral ground. He wanted to talk. Wrex: We met at the Hollows, near the graves of our ancestors. The skulls of our dead laid bare to remind us where we come from, and where we all go. Wrex: It's as sacred as any krogan place can be. Violence is forbidden.

Women now resembled well-rounded cabbages from which protruded a tiny head crushed beneath a Charlotte hat covered with plumes and gew-gaws.