Lian had walked beside some of these families, listened to them exchange news and rumors. In low voices they repeated what they’d heard about cities taken over by the Japanese. They debated the safest routes, which ones skirted occupied territories, which towns had refugee centers. Their voices grew heavy with longing as they spoke of their homes, of doors that opened onto laneways, of whitewashed walls and gray roof tiles. Of meals eaten at large round tables noisy with crockery and bickering children. Of springtime when fields glazed over with green, lush with anticipation of the harvest to come.

Parents whispered in dark corners, trying not to wake their children. They hoped for news that the Japanese had been repelled. They wanted nothing more than to retrace their steps and rebuild their lives. Yet they also knew if they returned it would be to piles of rubble. The houses where generations of their family had lived and died were gone. If their houses and shops still stood, they would’ve been looted, emptied of furniture and goods, and stripped of the keepsakes that had given their owners joy.

Lian recognized many of the refugees. The young peasant couple who shouldered carrying poles, the dangling baskets filled with their belongings and two children. The family that took turns, men and women both, carrying their grandmother on their backs, her bound feet tapping against their hip bones as they walked.

There was the young couple, once proud owners of a small shop. They had nothing now, both home and livelihood gone. They huddled in a corner, his hands around a steaming bowl of hot water. The bowl was beautiful, a fine blue-and-white porcelain. It was undoubtedly their own, a cherished piece they couldn’t bear to leave behind. The husband passed the bowl to his wife but it slipped out of her hands and shattered on the slate floor. The woman began to weep, picking up the shards as though they were precious gems.

Suddenly, Lian could barely breathe, gripped by the knowledge that such scenes, and worse, were being repeated tens of thousands of times across China. She stumbled away from the guesthouse, her heart weighted with sorrow, loss, and rage. The young couple, those families, they would never be the same. China would never be the same.

She stopped running when she reached the waterfall pool. She sank onto the stone bench. Spray from the waterfall fractured sunlight into small rainbows. It was all ridiculously, inconsiderately beautiful. She was still sobbing when Liu Shaoming found her. He didn’t say a word, just sat down beside her.

“I’m tired, that’s all,” she said. She shrugged, hoping the casual gesture conveyed how little her tears mattered.

“Everyone’s tired,” he said, “tired and sad. We wouldn’t be human otherwise.”