Dragon Seed: The Story of China at War by Pearl S. Buck Page A

there were pleasure boats of carved wood and there were great temples and several fine pagodas. These were the old things.
    Since the revolution there had been no more kings and emperors but still there were rulers and these too built fine new palaces and houses of a new sort where water came out of the walls and fire lay waiting to burn at a touch in the lamps and they took the people’s money too and gave it back to them freely in feasting and pleasure, and so there were still gaiety and good living and great new shops opened themselves everywhere and there were things now to be bought in this city which a few years ago had not been seen nor even heard about. Common fellows who pulled rikshas or carried loads on their shoulders could now buy self-burning lights to hold in their hands at night instead of candles in paper lanterns, and no winds could put these lights out. Such things kept the people merry, for who knew what new thing tomorrow would bring before their eyes? And all knew that these good things came from across the sea, and so the people admired those foreigners who made such things and thought them good men and to be admired. But this was before the flying ships came over the city.
    Today Ling Tan heard men say sullenly on the street and in a tea shop where he stopped to refresh himself and his son, that they had rather do without all other good things from abroad if they were to have such evils as this, that their city was to be ruined.
    “Where is the ruin?” he asked the waiter, and then he was amazed because the waiter burst into loud weeping.
    “I had a little house of earth and straw leaning against a rich man’s house on the Street of the North Gate Bridge,” he said, “and his house and mine are gone, and I do not know who is dead in his house but all in mine are gone, and I would have been with them had I not been here, and I wish I were with them! I had two little sons, born in two years.”
    Ling Tan gave him an extra coin for comfort and then he and his son went toward that street to see for themselves. When he reached the place nothing he had heard could have made him ready for what he now saw. A score of men working for a hundred days together could not have done what here was done in the space of a breath drawn in and out again. He stood gazing, for the street was full of bricks and mortar and beams and dust, and upon these rough heaps mourning people dug with their hands and with pieces of iron and a few with hoes, and even as he watched a great wail went up from a woman who saw her husband’s foot show out from between the ruins others had uncovered.
    “Would I not know his foot anywhere!” she wept, and it was all she could know, poor soul, for when they dug still further, there was no more of him than this and a bit of leg.
    Staring at what he saw with his heart beating in his bosom until his body shook, Ling Tan suddenly heard a violent retch and turning he saw his son vomiting.
    “It is too much to bear,” Ling Tan said, “and I do not blame you. Have it up, my son, for if it goes down it will poison you.” So he waited while the lad had up all he had eaten, and then he led him away to the tea shop again to wash his mouth and to take into his emptiness a little hot tea. He saw that the proud boy was ashamed of his weakness and he was gentle with him and said:
    “It is no shame to be sick at such sights as these. A man if he is honorable ought to be sickened and angry. Only wild beasts cannot know shame at what has been done here to innocent people.”
    And they both sat very heavy and silent and Ling Tan the worse because he could not keep from asking why this destruction had come about and what was its meaning. Even as he sat wondering and asking himself there came into the tea shop a young man, and he was one of the students who were everywhere these days among the people, and when he saw twenty men or so in the shop he climbed on a bench and began to talk to them.
    “You