Red Sorghum

we’re starving, and we don’t bend our knees when we’re freezing. Anybody who wants to give allegiance to the invader and cast off his moral courage will do so over my dead body!’
    Not to be intimidated, the other officer said, ‘Is the mission of resistance fighters to starve or freeze? No, we must be flexible and resourceful. Tolerance must be one of our stratagems. The only way we’ll win this war of resistance is by conserving our strength.’
    ‘Comrades,’ Commander Jiang said, ‘that’s enough bickering. If you have something to say, take your turn.’
    ‘I’ve got a plan, Commander,’ Pocky Cheng spoke up.
    When Little Foot Jiang heard Pocky Cheng’s plan, he rubbed his hands in delight and complimented him profusely.
    On the night when Pocky Cheng’s plan was implemented by the Jiao-Gao regiment, they ran off with over a hundred dogskins my father and granddad had nailed to the crumbling village walls, and stole the rifles Granddad had hidden in the dry well. Having carried out this phase of their plan, they went out to hunt dogs for some needed nutrition, as well as the warmth of the skins.
    That spring, as a freezing cold settled over the land, there appeared in the broad expanse of Northeast Gaomi Township an army of intrepid ‘dog soldiers’ who fought a dozen or more battles, major and minor, with the Japanese and their puppets. That included Zhang Zhuxi’s Twenty-eighth Battalion, who trembled in their boots whenever they heard the barking of dogs.
    The first battle occurred on the second day of the second month, by the old calendar – the day, according to legend, when the dragon raises its head. The Jiao-Gao regiment, dogskins draped over their shoulders and rifles in their hands, slipped into Ma Family Hamlet, where they surrounded the Ninth Company of Zhang Zhuxi’s Twenty-eighth Battalion and a squad of Japanese soldiers. The enemy’s headquarters was in Ma Family Hamlet’s onetime elementary school, which consisted of four rows of blue-tiled buildings surrounded by a high wall of blue bricks and barbed wire.
    The commander of the puppet Ninth Company was a brutal man from Northeast Gaomi with a deceptively gentle smile. Since the onset of winter, he had begun a campaign to accumulate bricks, stones, and lumber to build new quarters for his company. As a result, his personal worth, all of it ill-gotten, increased dramatically. The locals despised him.
    Ma Family Hamlet was in the northwest corner of Jiao County, bordering on Northeast Gaomi Township, about thirty li from the Jiao-Gao regiment headquarters. The two hundred Jiao-Gao soldiers waited until nightfall to set out from the village, dogskins draped over their shoulders, fur on the outside, tails dragging between their legs, and the multicoloured fur shining brightly in the fading sunlight. It was a beautiful, bizarre army of underworld demons on the march.
    Their commander, Little Foot Jiang, wore a huge red dogskin – it had to have been Red, the dog from our family – and as he walked at the head of his troops, the fur on his pelt waved in the wind. The bag hanging over Pocky Cheng’s chest was stuffed with twenty-eight hand grenades.
    Cold stars filled the night sky when they slipped into Ma Family Hamlet. A couple of dogs barked in friendly welcome,and a mischievous young soldier answered them in kind. An order from the front swept through their ranks: No more barking! No barking! No barking!
    They took up positions a hundred yards outside the main gate, where bricks and rocks were piled in readiness for springtime construction.
    ‘Pocky,’ Little Foot Jiang said to Pocky Cheng, who was sticking close to him, ‘let’s get moving!’
    ‘Number Six, Chunsheng, you two follow me,’ Pocky whispered.
    He removed the bag of hand grenades to lighten his load. After tucking one grenade in his waistband, he handed the bag to a tall soldier and said, ‘When we’ve made it to the gate, bring this to me.’
    With stars spreading their weak light over the ground and a dozen or so lit carriage lanterns hanging from the barracks, it looked like dusk in the compound. Two puppet sentries patrolled the gateway, casting long shadows on the ground. An ageing black dog ran out from behind the piles of bricks and stones, followed by a white dog, then a spotted one. They snarled and rolled on the ground, their profiles merging as they approached the gateway. In the shadows of a woodpile no more than a dozen paces from the