3SHE TOLD IT exactly like it was. When construction of the Jiao-Ping highway reached our place,the sorghum¹ in the fields was only waist-high. Except for a handful of tiny villages, two crossingrivers, and a few dozen winding² dirt paths, the marshy³ plain, which measured sixty by seventy-odd li – or about twenty by twenty-five miles – was covered with sorghum that waved like anocean of green. From our village we had a clear view of White Horse Mountain, an enormousrock formation on the northern edge of the plain. Peasants tending the sorghum looked up to seeWhite Horse and down to see black soil that soaked up their sweat and filled their hearts withcontentment. When they heard that the Japanese were building a highway across the plain, theygrew restive⁴, awaiting the calamity⁵ they knew was coming.
The Japanese said they would come, and they were as good as their word.
My father was sleeping when the Japs and their puppet soldiers came to our village toconscript peasant labourers and confiscate⁶ their mules⁸ and horses. He was awakened⁹ by adisturbance near the distillery. Grandma dragged him over to the compound as fast as herbamboo- shoot feet would carry her. Back then there were a dozen or so huge vats¹⁰ in thecompound, each brimming with top-quality white liquor, the aroma¹¹ of which hung over the entirevillage. Two khaki-clad Japanese soldiers with fixed¹² bayonets stood there as a couple of black-clad Chinese, rifles

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