“So you can see how quickly Kweilin lost its beauty for me. I no longer climbed the peaks to say, How lovely are these hills! I only wondered which hills the Japanese had reached. I sat in the dark corners of my house with a baby under each arm, waiting with nervous feet. When the sirens cried out to warn us of bombers, my neighbors and I jumped to our feet and scurried to the deep caves to hide like wild animals. But you can’t stay in the dark for so long. Something inside of you starts to fade and you become like a starving person, crazy-hungry for light. Outside I could hear the bombing. Boom! Boom! And then the sound of raining rocks. And inside I was no longer hungry for the cabbage or the turnips of the hanging rock garden. I could only see the dripping bowels of an ancient hill that might collapse on top of me. Can you imagine how it is, to want to be neither inside nor outside, to want to be nowhere and disappear?
“So when the bombing sound grew farther away, we would come back out like newborn kittens scratching our way back to the city. And always, I would be amazed to find the hills against the burning sky had not been torn apart.
“I thought up Joy Luck on a summer night that was so hot even the moths fainted to the ground, their wings were so heavy with the damp heat. Every place was so crowded there was no room for fresh air. Unbearable smells from the sewers rose up to my second-story window and the stink had nowhere else to go but into my nose. At all hours of the night and day, I heard screaming sounds. I didn’t know if it was a peasant slitting the throat of a runaway pig or an officer beating a half-dead peasant for lying in his way on the sidewalk. I didn’t go to the window to find out. What use would it have been? And that’s when I thought I needed something to do to help me move.
很快的，桂林的美在我心中消失殆盡。我不再爬上山丘頂峰讚嘆它們的景致，只在意在這之中哪裡已經被日本人插上佔領的旗幟。我坐在房裡陰暗的角落，雙臂擁著嬰孩們，腳止不住顫抖地等待，在空襲警報疾響的瞬間和鄰居們一起奔進幽暗的洞穴裡，如動物般躲藏。但在那樣的黑暗裡不能待太久，體內的某個部份逐漸消磨後變成飢渴的人，渴求得到一絲光線。我聽見外面的爆炸聲，轟隆！轟隆！伴隨著碎石如雨點般降落的聲音，躲在防空洞內，欣賞鐘乳石花園內那些高麗菜和蘿蔔的興趣消失殆盡，只能想像被炸得開腸破肚的山丘就要將我掩埋，你能想像那種，不想待在洞穴內也不想出去，只希望能夠消失的感覺嗎？
當爆炸聲逐漸遠去，我們像新生的小貓輕踏著路回到城市中，然後又再一次感嘆在烈火燃燒的天空中，山林依然完好。
在一個連飛蛾都因高溫昏厥的酷暑夜晚，躺在地上的翅膀因濕氣沈浸特別沉重，我想到喜福會。新鮮空氣因過度壅擠的人口消耗殆盡，從下水道飄上二樓那難以忍受的臭氣彷彿除了我的鼻子之外無處可去，一整天不分日夜地傳來尖叫聲，不確定是逃跑的豬被農民劃開喉嚨，或是因為躺在人行道上而被警官打得半死不活的農民發出的，我沒有走上窗前確認，知道了又有什麼用呢？那個瞬間我知道自己得做些什麼事，讓我從這絕望中前進。
