On the eastern Henan plain in 1992, summer felt as if the sun had melted everything. The air was as sticky as syrup that wouldn’t dissolve, and every breath carried a scorching heat. The old locust tree at the village entrance, whose age no one could remember, had leaves drooping and curled in on themselves, their edges turning a scorched yellow, as if they would crumble to dust at the slightest touch. Cicadas hid among the sparse branches, shrilling as if their hearts were breaking. They were the only living things on this land that refused to surrender to the sweltering heat.
