Further News of Defeat stories.

摘要

This is a work of fiction. Its purpose is to enlighten, entertain, portray, and illuminate. The characters in these stories are all related, in some ways, to the fictional Chinese village of Xinchun. Here is a sample: "A runner arrived at Xinchun Village two days after the fall of Taiyuan. Out of breath, his Kuomingtang uniform soaked in sweat, the soldier collapsed into a fly-infested ditch on the outskirts of a sorghum field. That evening, San saw him on her way back from tending her family's two goats, the man lying there snoring, and when she told her parents about him, they didn't believe her. San, nine years old, often lied to her parents. The Japanese were here one week, the Russians the next. Her parents knew San hated shepherding and dismissed her pleas to save the young man from becoming pig fodder. After putting her to sleep, San's father slung a hoe over his shoulder and walked across his fields under moonlight to make sure. He couldn't lift the man out of the mud by himself, even after taking off his own shoes and using his bare feet for traction. He ran to the village chief, who sent a neighbor to help him. Together with one man lifting the head and the other the legs, they carried him to the granary and dropped him beside sacks of recently harvested sorghum."