In the spring of 1942, in Wangjiatuan, Jiaodong, Shandong Province**
The last faint flame in the stove licked at the cold bottom of the pot, casting a flickering light on Wang Zhao's sweat-damp temples and the bloodstained hands of Granny Li, the midwife. A frail, kitten-like cry rang through the earthen house, thick with the smell of blood and woodsmoke, breaking the bitter chill of Jiaodong's early spring night.
“It's a girl!” Granny Li wrapped the tiny, wrinkled newborn in a piece of rag and placed her in Wang Zhao's damp arms. “Sister-in-law, another child in the family. What a blessing!” Exhausted, Wang Zhao managed a smile. Her fingers brushed the baby's sparse, soft hair, but her gaze drifted toward the deep darkness beyond the window. Another mouth to feed, in these turbulent times when Heaven had turned its back on them... Her husband, Wang Youtian, crouched in the kitchen doorway, silently smoking his dry tobacco. The glow in his pipe flickered, lighting his deeply lined face, heavy with worry. They were running out of firewood, they had no seed for spring, and just the other day, the Zhang family in the eastern part of the village had been robbed by fleeing defeated soldiers... To his ears, the girl's cry weighed like a stone on his heart.
Wang Youtian silently tapped out his pipe and went into the yard to chop the few remaining stalks of old sorghum. He named his daughter Yun, hoping she could be like a cloud in the sky, light and free to drift far away, unlike them, nailed for life to this parched land ravaged by war.
Little Yun grew up amid the choking smell of dry tobacco, her mother's low, hoarse lullabies, and the unceasing whir of the old spinning wheel in the corner of the room.
It's so pitiful. It hurts my heart to look at it😫
Recommended, the author's writing skills are profound and simple, the description is delicate and true, and the description of the details is lifelike, as if the picture is unfolding before your eyes