The autumn tiger roasted the evening like a cage. I squatted in front of the stove door to add firewood, and the flames licked the bottom of the pot, making my face hot. Grandma was sitting on the threshold of the kitchen house, shaking the cattail leaf fan in her hand one after another. The "rustling" sound of bamboo strips rubbing against each other, mixed with the chirping of insects in the rice fields in the distance, was more disturbing than the noise of cicadas.
