As night approached, in front of the fire outside the Earth Cellar in Small White Poplar Gully, the young men who could not sleep listened to Li Jianguo tell stories of the past.
"...Back then, Usman led those bandits all over Northern Xinjiang and Eastern Xinjiang, and later they even headed toward Qinghai and Gansu. Anyway, those bandits never did anything good. When they first rose up, it was to resist Sheng Shicai. Later, once that fellow grew powerful, he started looting. Wherever they went, they stripped the place of its money and grain... It wouldn't be far off to say there was no evil they wouldn't commit."
"Did they ever raid our area?" Xu Feihu asked, quite interested.
"They did. I think they fought Sheng Shicai's troops here. At the height of his power, he had plenty of men, several thousand bandits, all on horseback. They looted a lot and killed a lot of people too..."
"What happened to everything they stole? Did they spend it all?"
"I don't know about that. They probably ate all the grain. As for the money and valuables, some of it could have gone toward buying weapons from the Soviet Union back then, and later the United States, and recruiting men. They say that when Xinjiang was peacefully liberated later on, he refused to surrender when asked. At the time, an American special envoy and some of Old Chiang's agents had people among his bandits. I suppose that's where the money went."
"I heard he was responsible for Broken City too. Is that true?" Wei Zhonghua asked from beside the fire, poking at it.
"No, no." Li Jianguo had worked at many places, read plenty of books, and personally experienced the Ita Incident, so he knew Northern Xinjiang's history well. He said, "Broken