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6.

FATHER WU: There, now, there -- Talk to her, old wife (BEGIN FADE) I'll go prepare for the journey....

MOTHER WU: So, Jen-Ling, you see ---- Child, you are ill!

JEN-LING: No.....My head swam for an instant...

MOTHER WU: I am an old woman, Jen-Ling! Tell me --

JEN-LING: Yes, Mother Wu....Before the next Feast of Lanterns...it may be I will give you a grandson...

MUSIC: IN AND UNDER

MOTHER WU: And now in the small farmhouse with its earthen walls---only Jen-Ling and me, alone....waiting for news of our men. By night we hear the great planes overhead and to the north we see the flames of other villages burning. Then come the refugees. 

SOUND: EXCITED  VOICES - WOMEN WAILING, CHILDREN CRYING)

1ST WOMAN: The Japanese!.....They burned our village!

2ND WOMAN: My baby! They killed him with a bayonet!

1ST OLD MAN: Even my old wife was not safe from them! Ai, ai!

2ND MAN: Help us, Mother Wu! We fled without food or clothes

MOTHER WU: All that I have, we will share, Teng Chi-ho. But have you no word of Wu Fu-Hai, my husband -- of Han, or Cheng, or my other sons?

2ND WOMAN: Ai, ai, ai! That we should eat your rice and bring such evil news!

1ST OLD MAN: Wu Fu-Hai came to our village with baskets of food for your sons...That day the Japanese marched in. By night our guerrilla fighters attacked and fought till none in the village were left alive. Your five sons were in that little band, Mother Wu.

MOTHER WU: Fu-Hai....my five sons....

1ST OLD MAN: (GENTLY) You have given six soldiers to China.