★A transformative work by Liang Xiaosheng, winner of the 10th Mao Dun Literature Prize, following "A Lifelong Journey" — crafted with dedicated focus.
★Over 90,000 reviews on Dangdang (a major online book retailer in China), with near-perfect ratings!
★After his "educated youth" literature, Liang Xiaosheng strikes again with this epic novel, depicting the compassion and righteousness of an ordinary person, revealing a life philosophy of restrained resilience.
★The story follows the legendary fate of a "coward", showcasing the wisdom of overcoming strength with gentleness and conquering rigidity with flexibility. A journey of seeking redemption amidst adversity and rising anew from destruction.

The novel portrays the controversial and doubted figure of a "coward", narrating a bizarre yet deeply moving anti-war story.

The refined and scholarly protagonist, exposes his hidden identity in a moment of desperation to save a reckless villager during a Japanese raid. From then on, he is forced into a painful predicament — feigning cooperation with the Japanese while enduring the hatred of his fellow villagers...

He resists brutality with gentleness, demonstrates strength through apparent weakness — a "coward" struggling between enemy cruelty and national indignation, yet never losing his integrity and kindness.

The novel not only reflects reverence for life, compassion for humanity, and a longing for peace but also interprets the wisdom of overcoming strength with gentleness and conquering rigidity with flexibility.

Liang Xiaosheng (original name ​​Liang Shaosheng​​) is one of the representative symbols of contemporary Chinese culture and one of the representative contemporary Chinese literary figures. He is also one of the important contemporary Chinese realist writers. He is known as the “writer of the common people” because he is good at focusing on the ups and downs of ordinary people's lives in great times. His works are characterized by a strong sense of reality and a commoner's sentiment. Together with Wang Meng, Lu Yao, Mo Yan, Yu Hua, Tie Ning and others, he has become an important window for observing contemporary Chinese society and cultural trends.

Some readers consider Liang Xiaosheng as the “Chinese Balzac,” because he is committed to writing a “social encyclopedia” and portraying the destinies of people from all walks of life. His works are often used as important texts for studying and understanding Chinese social and cultural developments between the 1980s and 2020s. His work Chinese Peach and Plum is included in the collections of many overseas libraries. His work Father is selected as a textbook for advanced Chinese courses published by the University of Washington Press in the United States.

He has so far created more than ten million words of works, including essays, novels, miscellaneous discussions, and documentary literature. His representative work, The Story of "A Lifelong Journey​", won the 10th Mao Dun Literature Prize. This novel has a cumulative circulation of more than 2 million copies and are called the “fifty-year history of Chinese people's lives”. The TV drama adapted from it caused a nationwide viewing craze as soon as it was broadcast and set a new record for the prime-time viewership of CCTV (with a total audience scale of 371 million people). Disney purchased the overseas distribution rights of the drama in the first month of its production. His another long novel Snow City is selected into the “70 Classic Chinese Novels of New China's 70 Years”.

His works have been translated into English, French, Russian, Japanese, and Italian. The author was awarded as one of the “Top Ten Writers of the 2024 Hall of Fame Annual Humanities List”. In 2023, he was named as the “Cultural Figure of the Year” among the “2022 Annual Influential People” by China Newsweek. Since 1984, his name has been listed in the "World Who's Who" in the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia.

Chapter One

On an autumn afternoon in 1944, the sky stretched high and clear, the clouds sparse. The sun hung heavy, like a sack filled with blood, reluctant to sink westward. The nation lay in ruins, its people wailing in misery across the land. On this stretch of the North China Plain — specifically, the fields between Beiping and Tianjin — the sorghum burned crimson. Along both sides of the highway, there was nothing but sorghum, redder than fire, so red it nearly matched the hue of blood. Field after field of it stretched endlessly, a vast expanse dyed scarlet. This land had absorbed the blood of countless Chinese — ordinary civilians slaughtered in the chaos of war, soldiers who had fallen in battle. First, the wars between warlords claimed countless lives; later, even more died defending this land.
Amid the sorghum stood Japanese watchtowers, rising like termite mounds in the wilds of Africa. At this moment, the dying light of the sunset spilled over the sorghum heads, staining the fields an even deeper blood-red. Inside one of the watchtowers, a young Japanese soldier gripped his bayoneted rifle as he scanned the horizon. The endless crimson sorghum below churned his stomach into knots.
The Japanese did not like sorghum — they preferred rice. This was not mere pickiness; people the world over felt the same. Back in Japan, whether rich or poor, everyone ate rice. The only difference was that the wealthy ate high-quality rice, while the poor made do with inferior grains, never eating their fill.
Since becoming occupiers of this land and garrisoning these watchtowers, the rice-loving Japanese soldiers had not tasted a single grain of it. Only the officers stationed in the county seat could eat rice — shipped in from Manchuria, or even Korea. In Manchuria and Korea, the rice seized by Japanese forces through forced requisition had to feed the Kwantung Army, and even then, there was never enough.
So the soldiers in the watchtowers had ruined their stomachs from long months of eating sorghum.
They hated these endless fields of sorghum.
But no matter how much they hated it, they still had to seize it — otherwise, they wouldn’t even have sorghum to eat.
And this was the season when they would leave their towers to raid nearby villages for grain. They watched as Chinese farmers harvested the sorghum, gathered it in threshing yards, and—under the occupiers’ watchful eyes—winnowed, hulled, bagged, and loaded it onto carts to be hauled to the watchtowers before nightfall. If they didn’t, even sorghum would be beyond their reach.