Word: tans
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...British at last had stopped cursing the Japanese for not "coming out and fighting." Slowly and possibly too late, they were learning to fight jungle warfare. They destroyed bridges, crawled through swamps on their bellies, flushed coveys of Japanese from trees and bushes. Wearing only shorts and a deep tan, the Australian "diggers" faded into the jungle, reappeared far behind enemy lines...
...second son and Jade, this son's wife, went into the free West with students, while the people of the city, rich and poor alike, began to crowd past into the country. Sometimes Ling Tan "felt more sorry for the rich than the poor because the rich were so helpless and delicate and knew little of where to find food." But the peasants disguised their broad hats with branches, and stayed at their work. Ling Tan despised all those who made war; "it seemed to him that the greatest thing a man could do in these days...
They learned, also, to ally themselves with the free fighting men of the hills, to "harry the enemy like fleas in a dog's tail so that the beast can make no headway for stopping to gnaw his rear." Ling Tan's sons wandered, but always secretly to return, sophisticated in the ways of killing. The eldest son set deep traps and coolly killed his victims with his knife. The second smuggled in firearms from the hill-men, and killed only when he had to. The youngest killed for pure joy and found joy in nothing else. Ling...
...This secret anger and this constant search for ways to kill could not but change men's hearts"; and the change-which calls forth some of the most just and serious writing in the book-deeply worried Ling Tan. In his sleepless nights he thought: "Is this not the end of our people when we become like other warlike people in the world?" And he answered himself, admitting the necessity of killing: "And yet in these days we must remember that peace is good. The young cannot remember, and it is we who must remember and teach them again...
...later pages of the novel rather sadly peter out. There is a not quite convincing effort, through radio, to give Ling Tan (and the U.S. reader) a realization that his people suffer not alone but as companions among the peoples of a planet. The last 50 pages are would-be-legendary romancing about the fierce third son and the goddess-like young woman who is found fit to be his wife and to pair off with him, presumably, as a symbol of China's Future...