In winter the land is frozen and still. A cloudless sky shines off snow-covered rice paddies, reflecting light so bright, you have to shield your eyes. I lean into a stinging wind and trudge north up Red Flag Road, to a village named Wasteland.The view is flat, lifeless, and silver fresh. The two-lane cement road slices through the paddies like the courses plowed across frozen
Award-winning screenwriter and author Geling Yan has written more than 20 novels and short story collections about China, many adapted to film or TV, including Coming Home and The Flowers of War, both of which became feature films directed by Zhang Yimou. But the novel Little Aunt Crane was one of her most difficult to complete, the seasoned Chinese-American writer admits.
Seventy years ago today, thousands of Japanese settlers mostly women and children found themselves trapped in an area then known as Manchuria, or Manchukuo, the name of the puppet state the Japanese military established in 1931. Abandoned by their army, 80,000 Japanese civilians died in northeast China, roughly equal to the number who perished after the United States dropped