The spring of 1951 came exceptionally late.
The lingering winter of the north still held sway over this vast black land. The bitter wind, sharp as a knife, swept up the unswept snow on the execution ground and slapped it against the face, bringing a bone-deep chill. Zhang Suzhen stood with her back straight on the makeshift public trial platform. Beneath her ragged cotton coat, her slender frame trembled slightly in the freezing wind. Below her, a sea of people stretched beyond sight, tens of thousands of eyes fixed on her.
“Kill Tuolong! Avenge our dead neighbors!”
“May the female bandit rot in hell!”
“A life for a life!”
Curses, sobs, and roars surged together like a raging flood, threatening to drown her. She narrowed her eyes slightly, her vision blurred by days of interrogation. The thirty years of her life had been as brief as a dream and as long as several lifetimes. From child bride to bandit chief's wife, then to the infamous Tuolong of Manchuria, she had crossed seas of blood and climbed mountains of blades. She had also drunk bowl after bowl of liquor and taken her revenge with wild abandon. Now, it would all end.
So be it, she murmured to herself. Debts must be repaid in the end.
The presiding judge stood solemnly before the platform. His deep voice rang across the open grounds through a tin megaphone: “...Zhang Suzhen, known as Tuolong, has been a bandit for more than ten years, raiding villages and towns, kidnapping and murdering people. The evidence is conclusive, and public anger is immense... She is hereby sentenced to death in accordance with the law. The sentence will be carried out immediately!”
The final moment had arrived. She closed her eyes, waiting for the gunshot that would end everything. But what flashed through her mind was a night many years ago, amid a raging blizzard, when she had secretly fed hot porridge to a critically wounded soldier of the Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army.
