Hongmei said, You’re probably going to be disappointed again—I’ve worked hard all my life to get as far from that village as possible. I left that place for the last time nine years ago and made up my mind never to go back. The day I left, when I walked past the commemorative plaque by the entrance, for some reason I stopped and read it. Two hundred thirteen girls died in a single night. I’d never looked at their names properly. The year after they passed away, my mother came into this world. That winter only female babies were born, as if to make up for the dead ones. I said those names out loud, each as unsophisticated as my own. My aunt was the sixth one, and my great-aunts were numbers eighty and eighty-one. All the girls, with only three surnames between them, aged between six and eighteen, had died on one night.

Those young women, who were called “dead losses” while they were alive, were all murdered on a rainy night in November 1937. Even the Japanese troops were stunned into silence. They entered the village that evening, searching every home for Chinese soldiers, food, and young women. Only old people and young boys were left. One of the men lost his temper and stabbed his bayonet into a haystack—Hang on, have I told you about our village haystacks? Many good things, bad things, terrifying things took place beneath those haystacks. They stood there all year round and knew many secrets: shameful relationships, family rivalries, unavoidable abortions. The blade came out, and everything changed. There was fresh blood on it, faintly emitting steam in the early winter night. He stabbed again, and this time the blood dripped off the silver blade. Yet the haystack didn’t so much as quiver, didn’t let out a single sound.