The sky was a dazzling white, the sun hung like a red-hot copper basin above the head, and there was not even a breath of wind. The loess underfoot is cracked with palm-wide openings and is bottomless. The dust raised by stepping on it can choke people for a long time and make them breathless. The weeds on the roadside have long since withered into ashes, and even the roots of the trees have been dug clean by hungry people, revealing the dense white wood, glowing with death under the scorching sun.
