by Yu Hua
I went north with this cannon battalion, and the more we walked the farther away we got. A month later we arrived in Anhui province. The first couple of days all I wanted to do was run away, and at the time I was not the only one with desertion in mind. Every couple days, one or two familiar faces would be missing from the battalion. I wondered if they really had run away, so I asked a veteran soldier called Old Quan.
“Nobody gets away,” explained Old Quan.
Old Quan asked me if I heard those shots fired at night while we were asleep, and I said I’d heard them. He told me, “Those are your deserters. Even the lucky ones who aren’t shot end up being caught by other units.”
As Old Quan spoke, my heart froze. Old Quan told me he was conscripted during the War of Resistance. When his troop set out for Jiangxi he deserted, but within a few days he was conscripted again by the troop going to Fujian. By then he had been in the army six years and had yet to fight the Japanese. All he’d fought were communist guerrilla detachments. During his period of conscription, Old Quan had run away seven times, and each time another unit had captured him. The last time he tried to escape he had made it within a hundred li of his home, and then he ran into this cannon battalion. Old Quan said he didn’t want to run away anymore.
“I’m sick of running,” he said.
After we crossed the Yangtze River we wore cotton-padded jackets. And as soon as we passed the Yangtze, my dream of deserting also died. The farther I got from home, the less courage I had to attempt escape. In our company we had about a dozen fifteen- or sixteen-year-old boys. Among these soldiers was a kid named Chunsheng, from Jiangsu province. He would always ask me if there was really fighting to the north, and I’d say there was, but actually I didn’t know. I thought, if you’re a soldier then fighting should be inevitable. I was closest with Chunsheng. He would always be next to me, pulling my arm, asking, “Do you think we’ll be killed?”
“I don’t know,” I’d reply.
As he asked me this my heart would feel wave after wave of pain. After we crossed the Yangtze, we began to hear the sound of cannons and guns. In the beginning it would echo from far away, but after walking two more days the gunfire grew louder and louder. It was then that we arrived at a small village. There weren’t any animals in that village, let alone people—there wasn’t a living being anywhere in sight. The company commander ordered us to set up the cannons, and I knew that this time we were really going into battle. Someone walked over and asked the commander, “Commander, where are we?”
The commander said, “You’re asking me? Well, how the fuck am I supposed to know? Who the fuck am I supposed to ask?”
The company commander didn’t know where we were, and the peasants had all run away. I looked around in all directions. Other than some bare trees and a few thatched huts, there was nothing. Two days later there were more and more common soldiers in yellow uniforms. They came unit by unit from all directions, and some of the battalions set up camp right beside us. After another two days we still had yet to fire a single cannon when our company commander told us, “We’ve been surrounded.”
We weren’t the only company to be surrounded—there were somewhere around a hundred thousand Nationalist troops that were surrounded within a twenty li square area. Everyone in sight was wearing these yellow uniforms; it looked like a temple fair. Old Quan was really something. He sat on a dirt mound outside a tunnel, smoking and watching the yellow-skinned common soldiers go back and forth. From time to time he’d say hello to one of them—he really knew a lot of people. Old Quan had been all over, having drifted through seven different units. He laughed, told dirty jokes to some old friends and exchanged gossip on some other soldiers. It seemed as if everyone they asked about was either dead or someone had just seen them within the last few days. Old Quan told Chunsheng and me that back in the day all those guys had tried to run away with him. Just as Old Quan was speaking, someone called over in our direction, “Old Quan, you’re still not dead?”
Old Quan bumped into another old friend. Quan laughed. “You little bastard, when did they catch you?”
Before that guy could reply, someone else called Old Quan, who turned his head to look and jumped up to yell, “Hey, where’s Old Liang?”
The guy laughed and yelled back, “Dead.”
Dejected, Old Quan sat back down, cursing, “Fuck, he still owes me a silver piece.”
“You see?” Old Quan proudly continued, telling Chunsheng and me, “Nobody succeeds in deserting.”
In the beginning the Liberation Army just surrounded us, but they didn’t attack right off, so we weren’t really afraid. The company commander wasn’t afraid, either. He said that Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek would send in tanks to save us. Later, even when the rifle and cannon shots in front of us got louder and louder, we weren’t scared, just bored. The company commander still hadn’t ordered us to start firing the cannons. One veteran soldier thought that sitting idle while our brothers-in-arms were on the front lines shedding their blood and sacrificing their lives was no kind of plan, so he asked the commander, “Shouldn’t we fire a few shots from the cannons?”
At the time the commander was in a tunnel gambling. He furiously snapped back, “Fire the cannons? In which direction should we fire them?”
The company commander had a point: What if our cannons hit our Nationalist brothers-in-arms? The Nationalist troops in front would instantly turn around and teach us a lesson. This wasn’t a game. The commander ordered us to stay in the tunnels. We could do whatever the hell we wanted, as long as we didn’t fire the cannons.
After being surrounded for a while our supplies of food and ammunition were close to empty. Whenever a plane appeared overhead, the Nationalist troops below crowded together like a colony of ants. No one wanted the trunks of ammunition that were thrown out of the plane; everyone piled onto the bags of rice. As soon as the plane left, the soldiers who got their hands on some rice would carry it off to their tunnels. Two men would carry one bag while others beside them would fire shots into the air to protect the carriers. Only then would the crowds start to break up, and everyone would return to their tunnels.
Before long, groups of Nationalist troops surged out of their tunnels toward the houses and leafless trees. Men were climbing on the roofs of thatched houses near and far, tearing down huts and cutting down trees. This was almost like going into battle, and the cacophony that followed almost drowned out the sounds of the gunshots in the forward position. In less than half a day, all the houses and trees were gone. All that was left on the desolate land were soldiers walking around with house beams and tree branches on their shoulders, while others carried planks and stools. After returning to their tunnels they began to cook rice. The smoke rose up, twisting and turning in the sky.
At the time, what we had most of were bullets. No matter where you’d lie down they would press up against you until it hurt. After all of the houses and trees around us had been torn and cut down, soldiers flooded the land, cutting dead grass with their bayonets. The scene was just like the busy season when farmers harvest rice. There were even a few soldiers who, covered in sweat, dug at the roots of some trees. And then there were some who started to dig up graves, using the weathered coffin boards as fuel for fire. As they dug up the coffins they’d just throw the bones of the deceased to one side, not even bothering to rebury them. When you’re in the kind of situation we were in, bones of the deceased are nothing to be afraid of. If you had to sleep pressed up against them you wouldn’t even have a nightmare. There was less and less firewood to cook the rice with, while there was more and more rice. No one fought over the rice anymore. In fact, Old Quan, Chunsheng and I carried a few bags of rice back to our tunnel to use as a bed to sleep on, so we could avoid the discomfort of bullets pressing against us.
It had gotten to the point when all possible sources of cooking fuel were exhausted, yet the Generalissimo still hadn’t come to save us. It was a good thing that the planes stopped air-dro
pping rice and began sending down flatbread. As soon as the packages of flatbread hit the ground, our brothers dived recklessly on top like animals trying to get their share. The way they piled on top of one another, layer after layer, was exactly how my mom used to weave the soles of my shoes. The way they screamed was no different from a pack of wild wolves.
“Let’s split up and snatch some,” suggested Old Quan.
Splitting up was our only chance of getting our hands on some flatbread. We crawled out of the tunnel, and I chose a direction. There were shots being fired close by, and there would often be stray bullets whizzing past me. One time I was making a run for it when the guy next to me suddenly just fell down. I thought he had passed out from hunger, but when I turned around I saw that half of his head was missing. It scared me so bad that my legs went soft and I almost collapsed. Getting your hands on some flatbread was even harder than it had been to get rice. It was said that the Nationalists were losing more men by the day, but as soon as that plane would appear in the sky, everyone suddenly popped out of the ground, and the barren earth appeared instantly to have grown row after row of grass that moved with the plane. As soon as the flatbread was air-dropped, the soldiers on the ground split up, each person rushing to the parachute he had his eye on. The bread packages weren’t sturdy, either, so as soon as they hit the ground they broke apart. Dozens if not a hundred men would all rush to the same spot. Some of the soldiers collided, knocking each other unconscious before they even got close to the drop point. I tried to get some, but aside from a few measly bread cakes, all I ended up with was a sore body—it was as if someone had tied me up and whipped me with a belt. When I got back to the tunnel, Old Quan was already sitting there. His face was all black-and-blue, yet he hadn’t even ended up with as many bread cakes as I had. Old Quan, who had been in the army eight years, still had a good heart. He put his bread on top of mine and said, “Wait until Chunsheng gets back, and we’ll eat together.” We kneeled down in the tunnel with our heads sticking out, watching for Chunsheng.
After a while we saw Chunsheng running with his back arched, and he was carrying a pile of rubber shoes. The kid was so happy his face was bright red. He tumbled into the tunnel and, pointing at the rubber shoes that covered the ground, asked us, “Did I get a lot or what?”
Old Quan flashed me a confused look and asked Chunsheng, “Can we eat them?”
Chunsheng said, “We can use them to cook rice.”
We thought about it and immediately realized that Chunsheng was on to something. Seeing there wasn’t a single mark on Chunsheng’s face, Old Quan said to me, “This little bastard has got one up on both of us.”
From then on we didn’t fight over flatbread; we followed Chunsheng’s method. When everyone was piled up on one another fighting over bread, we took off their shoes. Some didn’t flinch, while others would kick wildly. We carried a steel helmet with us and would viciously hit those naughty feet with it. The feet that took our beatings would twitch a few times and then become stiff, as if they had been frozen. We carried the rubber shoes back to our cave to start a fire. At least we had rice, and this way we could avoid getting our asses whipped. As we cooked our rice we watched those barefoot guys half-walking, half-hopping around in the middle of winter. We couldn’t stop laughing.
The sounds of the guns and cannons came closer and closer, and it didn’t seem to matter if it was night or day. We stayed in our tunnel and slowly grew accustomed to the noises outside. Often a bomb would explode nearby. All of the cannons in our company were destroyed; we never got the chance to fire even a single shot, and already they had become a pile of worthless steel. We became increasingly bored. After a few more days, Chunsheng wasn’t even scared anymore—being scared was no use. The gun and cannon shots got closer and closer, but we always thought they were still far away. The worst was that it was growing colder by the day. At night we could only sleep a few minutes at a time before we would wake up freezing. The cannon explosions outside would shake the ground and leave us with our ears ringing.
No matter what anyone said, Chunsheng was still a child. On one occasion he was sleeping like a baby when a bomb exploded nearby, jolting him awake. After jumping out of his makeshift bed, he went outside and stood on top of our tunnel, yelling angrily in the direction of the explosions, “Quiet the fuck down! You’re so noisy I can’t get any sleep!”
As I rushed to pull him back in, bullets were already flying back and forth above our tunnel.
The Nationalist front was getting smaller by the day. Unless we were starving, in which case we would sneak out to look for something to eat, we didn’t dare climb out of our cave. Every day thousands of wounded were carried away. Our unit was stationed in the lower area of the front, so it became a haven for the wounded. During those days we spent holed up in our tunnel, Old Quan, Chunsheng and I would stick our heads out to watch the wounded soldiers being carried over on stretchers, their arms missing and legs broken. Before too much time could pass, another long string of stretchers would come by. The guys carrying the stretchers would arch their backs and, running over to an empty space on the ground near us, yell, “One, two, three.” When they got to three they’d turn the stretchers over as if they were dumping out garbage, then throw the wounded on the ground and leave them. The wounded were in so much pain they screamed out in agony—string after string of their screams and cries reached us. Old Quan eyed those men carrying the stretchers, and as they walked away he cursed them. “Animals!”
There were more and more wounded soldiers. As long as there were explosions on the front, there were more stretchers headed our way. Yelling, “One, two, three,” they’d drop the wounded on the ground. At first the injured lay in different piles, but before long the piles all ran together. They continued screaming out in agony. As long as I live I’ll never forget the sound of those tortured screams. As Chunsheng and I watched we felt wave after wave of bitter cold drive into our hearts—even Old Quan knit his brow in anger. I wondered how we were supposed to fight this battle.
As soon as night fell it began to snow. For a long time there were no more gunshots. We only heard the cries of the thousands of wounded men left for dead outside the cave. Their screams seemed like a combination of crying and laughter. That sound of unbearable pain—I never again in my life heard such a terrifying sound. The snow was like a floodwater rushing down over us, one large flake after another. In the darkness we couldn’t even make out the falling snowflakes—there was only the feeling of our bodies becoming damp and cold. The soft snowflakes would melt slowly in our hands, but before long another thick layer would accumulate.
Hungry and cold, the three of us huddled up together to sleep. By then the planes rarely came, so it was very difficult to find things to eat. Any hope of the Generalissimo coming to save us was dead; from that point on no one knew if we would survive. Chunsheng pushed me and asked, “Fugui, are you asleep?”
“No,” I whispered.
He then nudged Old Quan, who didn’t respond. Sniveling, Chunsheng said to me, “This time we’re not going to make it.”
As I heard this I could feel my tears welling up inside. It was only then that Old Quan opened his mouth. Stretching his arms he said, “Don’t talk about this depressing stuff.”
He sat up and said, “I’ve been in dozens of battles since I was a kid, and each time I say to myself: I’ve got to live. Bullets have brushed by every part of my body, but they’ve never hurt me. Chunsheng, as long as you believe you won’t die, you’ll make it.”
After that no one said a word, but we were each lost in our own thoughts. All I thought about was my family. I imagined Fengxia sitting by the door holding Youqing, and I pictured my mom and Jiazhen. I thought and thought about them until I was all blocked up inside and couldn’t breathe. It felt as if someone were holding my nose and covering my mouth.
After midnight, the cries of the wounded outside the tunnel gradually faded. I thought that most of them had fallen asleep. There w
ere only a few left still moaning in pain. Those sounds, one phrase at a time fading in and out, sounded like someone talking: You ask a question, he answers. The dreary voices didn’t seem to come from the living. And then after a while there was only one voice left crying. That voice was so soft it seemed like a mosquito buzzing back and forth around my face. After I listened for a while it didn’t seem to be groaning, but rather singing a short melody. All around it was so silent that not a sound could be heard, only that voice, eternally twisting and turning. I listened until tears fell from my eyes. After the tears melted the snow on my face, they trickled down my neck, making it feel like a cold wind had blown in.
When the sun came up there was not a sound. We stuck out our heads to look; the thousands of wounded troops who had been calling out the night before were all dead. They lay there in disarray, not moving a muscle, covered by a light blanket of snow. Those of us hiding in the tunnels who were still alive stared blankly at them for what seemed like an eternity. No one said a word. Even a veteran like Old Quan, who had seen god-knows-how-many corpses, stared dumbfounded for a long time. Finally he sighed and, shaking his head, said to us, “It’s terrible.”
As Old Quan spoke he climbed out of the tunnel and walked over to the field of the dead. Bending as he turned over this one and picked up that one, Old Quan walked among the dead. Every now and again he’d squat down to wipe someone’s face with the snow. It was then that the firing resumed, sending a series of bullets flying our way. Chunsheng and I immediately snapped out of our daze and called out to Old Quan, “Get back here, quick!”
Old Quan didn’t answer us—he just kept looking around. After a while he finally stood up, turned around to look our way and began walking toward us. As he approached he held up four fingers to Chunsheng and me. Shaking his head he said, “I know four of them.”
As soon as he finished, Old Quan’s eyes suddenly opened wide and his legs froze. Then he fell kneeling on the ground. We didn’t know what had happened—but then we saw a string of bullets shooting by. We screamed with everything we had, “Old Quan, hurry!”