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bourgeois ideology and sentiments, particularly those by foreign authors. Lin told Manna that he had turned in a dozen books, most of which had been extra copies. She was surprised that the leaders didn't demand that he surrender all his novels. It seemed that he must have known about the imminent orders, or else he wouldn't have asked her to help him jacket the books in a hurry and closed his library right before the confiscation. Why should he run the risk of keeping them? He could be publicly denounced for doing that. Everybody knew Lin owned many foreign novels; why didn't the leaders have them confiscated? She dared not ask Lin, but she stopped borrowing books from him.

3
    In the winter of 1966 the hospital undertook camp-and-field training. For some reason a top general in Northeastern Military Command had issued orders in October that all the army had to be able to operate without modern vehicles, which not only were unreliable but also could soften the troops. The orders said, "We must carry on the spirit of the Long March and restore the tradition of horses and mules."
    For a month, a third of the hospital's staff would march four hundred miles through the countryside and camp at villages and small towns. Along the way they would practice treating the wounded and rescuing the dying from the battlefield. Both Lin and Manna joined the training. He was appointed the head of a medical team, which consisted of twenty-eight people. For the first time in his life he became a leader, so he worked conscientiously.
    The march went well for the first few days, since the roads were flat and the troops fresh. But it got tougher and tougher as they approached a mountainous area where snow often left no trace of a road. Many of the men and women began to hobble, which often drew the attention of civilians, who would watch them with excitement. Sometimes when the troops entered a town, even the spectators' sincere applause sounded derisive to the limpers and made them hang their heads. As men and women were equal, all the female nurses had to trudge along in the same way as the men did, though they didn't shoulder a rifle and at times were allowed to carry lighter pieces of equipment.
    One windless day they marched through a forest toward a village in the north. They walked for a whole day with only a lunch break. By seven o'clock they had covered twenty-eight miles, hungry and exhausted, but five miles still lay ahead. Then came the orders that they had to reach the village within an hour – "before the battle gets under way," as they were told. Instantly a forced march started, the troops running at full speed.
    Manna's feet were severely blistered from bearing a stretcher for six hours. The "wounded soldier" had been a side of pork weighing a hundred and twenty pounds. So now she could barely walk. Lin took the medical box off her shoulder and slipped its strap over his head, carrying it for her. Then two soldiers held her upper arms and pulled her along to keep up with the troops.
    Their big-toed boots were throwing up puffs of snow, and now and then a voice commanded loudly, "Close up!" or "Don't take off your hat!" In the sky ahead the Big Dipper was dancing zigzag as though the earth were turning upside down. Flocks of crows took off from the trees, flapping away in every direction and cawing like starved ghosts. Time and again a mug or a canteen dropped on the ice with a sharp clank. Suddenly a tall man fell; the seventy-pound transmitter he carried on his back hit the stump of a felled tree. The frightened Jin Tian, who was in charge of communications, helped him up while saying through his teeth, "Damn! If the machine's broken, you'll go back to your home village and eat sweet potatoes the rest of your life!"
    All the way Manna was groaning to the men who were hauling her, "Let go of me…Oh so tired. Please let me die here, in the snow… " But they dragged her along. The orders allowed nobody to be left