Ten minutes later, the Japanese soldiers had surrounded all twenty-odd haystacks and were plunging their bayonets in on all sides. All came out bloodied, yet the piles of hay remained quiet, without even a single straw shaking. The interpreter started yelling, saying, “Come out quick if you want to live; we’re setting these on fire.” No movement, no words. The haystacks could swallow any number of secrets and wouldn’t let anything back out. Gasoline was splashed onto them, and the flames roared like lions and tigers. The Japanese troops leaned on their rifles, watching as the hay turned gold, then red, and finally black, wisps of gray ash quivering in the remains, dancing in an icy gale. The air smelled of burned flesh. The soldiers, starved for many days, bent over and threw up bile. They didn’t have to look any closer to understand the results of this massacre. They weren’t pleased with themselves at all but for some reason felt angry, distressed, frightened. In the end, they weren’t even brave enough to tear open the smoking mounds but quietly wiped the still-wet blood off their bayonets. All the girls in the village had been exterminated. They had been prepared for that, but the resignation and silence with which these girls had accepted death stunned the Japanese out of their wits. They gave up their plans to pillage and torture the rest of the villagers, and simply departed. This was the most bizarre act of resistance they encountered during the entire invasion.

At this point, Hongmei found her eyes too swollen with tears to see the words clearly. She’d never imagined she could be so proud of her village. These more than two hundred young women who’d given up their lives had not affected her so much till this moment, nor had she found their sacrifice this meaningful. Was she endowing them with significance? Or had this already been present but she’d only just discovered it?

The man’s only response was: I have no words in the face of such a story.

She wanted to tell him that she’d never shared this history with anyone, not even her husband. No idea why. Perhaps until she’d understood its meaning, it had been only one of many stories about the Chinese resistance. She’d never told Glen because she’d lied to him, as she had to so many others. She always invented a birthplace—Inner Mongolia or Tibet, far better than this ignorant, closed-off village. She’d told Glen she was from the Yellow Mountains, hoping that imposing landscape would erase the pettiness of her little village.