Tunnel Warfare: The Cellar at My Home Connects to the Whole Village

There's a way out beneath the stove.

The Japanese have arrived. Li Shitou's mother lifts the iron pot off the stove, revealing not a vegetable cellar but a tunnel his father had spent sixteen years digging.

At first, it was only big enough for the family to crouch inside. Later, the tunnel beneath the stove connected the whole village: Aunt Liu's millstone, Ergouzi's old locust tree, the ruined temple at the village entrance. Lift any patch of ground, and there was a road underneath.

Later still, the tunnels of seven villages joined together. Pickles from Gaozhuang, dried jujubes from Zaozhuang, and coarse salt from Wangzhuang were traded in the underground market. A country telephone grew from a single wire into a network. Cui'er sat at the central station, receiving and sending messages from all seven villages at once.

The Japanese had blockhouses, listening devices, and poison gas. But underground, there were trapdoors, lime-soaked cloth, and shovels for digging back toward them. The blockhouse was blown up three times. The tunnels were flooded, smoked out, and filled with poison gas, but they never gave way.

This isn't the story of one hero. It's the story of a whole village, one shovel of earth at a time, fighting to stay alive.

The stove is lifted, and the wind still blows from below. The tunnels are still connected.