Rape? "What do you think, is it a rape or not?" No reply, everyone in the class was apprehensive, perhaps too exhausted to provide an answer. Perhaps, we were shy, embarrassed by the question. No, I do not think that we were bashful, perhaps we were just plain lethargic and lazy to say anything. "Alright, I shall read for you this passage and you'll tell me your opinion." And so it goes, with the clarity and distinctive voice that Dr Holden was equipped with in his reading aloud to the class. Grandma rode the donkey down this path, leisurely and carefree, while, from deep amid the sorghum the stalwart young man raised his voice in a serenade that skimmed the top of the field. She was drawn to the serenade, her feet barely touching the tips of the sorghum plants, as though riding a green cloud.... The man placed Grandma on the ground, where she lay as limp as a ribbon of dough, her eyes narrowed like those of a lamb. He ripped away the black mask, revealing his face to her. It's him! A silent prayer to heaven. A powerful feeling of pure joy rocked her, filling her eyes with hot tears. Yu Zhan'ao removed his rain cape and tramped out a clearing in the sorghum, then spread his cape over the sorghum corpses. He lifted Grandma onto the cape. Her soul fluttered as she gazed at his bare torso. A light mist rose from the tips of the sorghum, and all around she could hear the sounds of growth. No wind, no waving motion, just the white-hot rays of moist sunlight crisscrossing through the open cracks between plants. The passion in Grandma's heart, built up over sixteen years, suddenly erupted. She squirmed and twisted on the cape. Yu Zhan'ao getting smaller and smaller, fell loudly to his knees at her side. She was trembling from head to toe; a redolent yellow ball of fire crackled and sizzled before her eyes. Yu Zhan'ao roughly tore open her jacket exposing the small white mounds of chilled, tense flesh to the sunlight. Answering his force, she cried out in a muted, hoarse voice, "My God . . . " and swooned! . Grandma and Granddad exchanged their love surrounded by the vitality of the sorghum field: two unbridled souls, refusing to knuckle under to worldly conventions, were fused together more closely than their ecstatic bodies. They plowed the clouds and scattered rain in the field, adding a patina of lustrous red to the rich and varied history of Northeast Gaomi Township. My father was conceived with the essence of heaven and earth, the crystallization of suffering and wild joy.