Iron-Blooded Mountains and Rivers

Winter, 1931. Changbai Mountain. Sixteen-year-old hunter Lin Dongsheng crouched by a stream, gripping a hunting knife. The blade rested against the inside of his forearm, cold as a snake. Three Japanese soldiers were coming toward him. He knew nothing of national hatred or family vengeance, but he remembered how the men had entered his village three days ago. Shots rang out, and Wang Laohan never stood up again. His grandfather had taught him how to kill wild boars: cut in beneath the jaw and push upward along the seam between the bones. They called it “opening the mouth.” One slash killed the officer, two more brought down the second man, and after chasing the third for two hundred paces, he finished him with a strike from behind. He had not yet learned how to write the character for “kill,” but his knife had already learned. He fled south with his grandfather and younger sister. His grandfather stayed behind to cover their escape, and after a single gunshot, never caught up with them. He slung his grandfather's hunting rifle over his shoulder, strapped on the captured Type 38 rifle, and led his sister into the snowstorm. A traveling peddler told him, “They're fighting at Xifengkou. The Twenty-Ninth Army's big-sword troops sneak out every night to hack down the Japanese. If you know a thing or two, you can earn yourself a meal.” The seventeen-year-old stood beneath the Great Wall. The knife was still the same hunting knife, but the one holding it was no longer the boy who had crouched by the stream. Keep the gun pointed outward. Never kneel. That was not just his grandfather's rule. It was the backbone of a nation standing tall in its darkest hour.