In this story by Pearl S. Buck, the widowed matriarch of a small Chinese village is too old to flee when it is bombed during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Left alone, she tends to a dying Japanese pilot and refuses to allow his body to be defiled by Chinese soldiers fleeing an advancing Japanese army. With help from her “Old Demon” (the Yellow River), she single-handedly stops the advance, saving her family and thousands of other villagers. Themes include family, change, the unpredictability and power of nature, the brutality of war, humanity, sacrifice.
It is likely that the story, which was first published in 1939, was inspired by a real event… the 1938 Yellow River Flood. An irony of the story and the 1938 Flood is that the river, which annually threatened death and destruction, was instrumental in destroying a threat and saving lives and livelihoods.