Divided into 4 parts.

1: Surviving

2: Finding the Elephant Saddle

3: Nostalgia for Comrades

4: Digging the Elephant Mound

Modern-Shen Shixi's "The Last War Elephant" Original Text:

West Shuangbanna used to have a mighty (lǐn) and awe-inspiring elephant soldiers. The so-called elephant soldiers were soldiers who rode elephants into battle. When the soldiers rode elephants to kill the enemy, the elephants used their trunks to split the enemy and their hooves to step on the enemy, and a large group of elephants pounced on the enemy like a mountain, which was overwhelming.

In 1943, the elephant soldiers fought a battle with Japanese invaders in Xishuangbanna on the banks of the Taoluo River. After the battle, the ghosts threw down more than seventy corpses, our more than eighty war elephants all shot to the ground. People dug a huge pit by the side of the Daluo River to solemnly bury the fallen war elephants.

While carrying the carcasses of the elephants, people found a male elephant covered with blood still panting, so they transported it back to the village and cured its wounds. The villagers never asked him to carry anything, and he wandered around the village all day long, asking for a bunch of bananas in the east, and drinking water from a spring in the west.

It is called gǎ (gǎ) carboxyl (suō), and the person in charge of raising it is Bononding.

Twenty years passed, and Gǎ Carboxyl was more than fifty years old. He looked very old, and spent his days lying in the shade of a tree, doingze off (kē). One day, when it was lying on the ground and refused to eat, you had to grab it by the nose and shake it for a while before it would open its eyes with difficulty and look at you. Bonontein said to me, "The sun is going down, the fire pit is going out, and Garcar is going to walk the path of the Yellow Springs."

The next morning, Garcarpa was suddenly very hyper (kàng), two eyes burned red, see Bonondin, vomit (ōu) vomit softly roar, the elephant hooves stamped on the ground sharply, the tip of the nose pointing to the attic of the heap of miscellaneous things, as if wanting to get the attic of something.

There was half a bucket of grain seeds and two bunches of corn in the attic. Thinking it was in better spirits and wanted to eat, I threw the two bunches of corn down. The gazelle hooked it with the tip of its snout and flung it out of the elephant room as if it were throwing garbage (lā), and continued to roar with its head thrown back in agitation. The broken gabion (miè) mat inside a saddle-like thing, I carelessly kicked it downstairs.

Unexpectedly, Ga carboxyl saw, all of a sudden quiet, with the nose blowing away the dust above, the tip of the nose for a long time in the above rubbing (suō), the eyes of the tears, as if to see a long time to meet an old friend.

"Oh, so it wants its own elephant saddle." Bonondin realized, "This is the saddle it was wearing back then, when I was treating its wounds, I unhooked the elephant saddle from it and threw it into the small attic. Alas, it's been exactly twenty-six years, and it still remembers it so well."

The elephant saddle was left with bullet holes and what appeared to be flecks of blood, mixed with a peculiar odor of leather, smoke, battle-dust, and blood; and in the center of the saddle there was a lotus-shaped seat cushion surrounded by a ring of silver bells and adorned with apricot-yellow tassels. Twenty-six spring and autumn in the past, the elephant saddle has been worn out, still shows the heavy and noble; Ga carboxylic draped on the elephant saddle, adding a heroic and heroic temperament.

Bonon Ding frowned and said sadly: "It is going to leave us to go to the elephant mound (zhǒng)."

The elephants are a very spiritual animal, each herd of elephants has an elephant mound, except for the cross of the unfortunate violent death (bì) wilderness, they can accurately predict their own death, in the death of the god of the half a month or so before the death, will walk alone to the distant and mysterious elephant mound.

The news that Gacheng was leaving spread like wings throughout the village, and men and women came to see Gacheng off. Many people sobbed uncontrollably. The village chief tied a white scarf around the neck of Gacheng, and four black cloths were tied to the four elephant legs. Elderly people and children brought bananas, sugar cane (zhè) and glutinous (nuò) rice (bā) poop, to the mouth of the carboxylic acid, it did not eat anything, only drank a little bit of water, and walked around the cottage three times.

Sunset, the sky is pale, in a sigh (xī) boo (xū) sound, GarCarx began to go on the road.

Pononding and I quietly followed Garcarxa, wanting to see what was going on. We walked all night and at dawn, we came to the bank of the Taoluo River. It stood on the pebbles of the river bank and gazed longingly at the clear waves of the river.

Then, it stepped on the flowing river water, walked to a turtle-shaped reef (jiāo) on the stone kissed again and again, for a long time, and raised his head to the sky that round of the red sunrise, ou - ou - - issued a deafening roar. At this time, its body puffed up (péng), four legs skin taut shiny, a pair of eyes gleaming (jǒng), the roar is exciting and mournful, alarmed the fish in the river jumped out of the water.

"I remember, twenty-six years ago, this is where we lifted the GarCarboxy on shore." Bonontein said.

It turned out that Garcar was going back to the battlefield where he had once fought in blood!

The sun rose to the top of the betel (bīng) nut (láng) trees, and Garcarxa left the Taluo River and entered a grassy turnip (qìng) ditch. It came to a sudden stop on a gentle, sunny hillside.

"Oh, this is where the eighty-odd war elephants were buried, I remember it well, nuò, there is still a monument there." Bonontein said quietly.

I looked in the direction of his finger, and there was indeed a stone monument erected in the weeds, engraved with three large words in flaking gold foil (bó) and somewhat blurred handwriting: Hundred Elephant Mound.

Ga carboxyl came to the monument, chose a piece of flat grass, a pair of tusks like two iron pickaxe (gǎo), in the ground digging up. It had not eaten for several days, and after a long journey, its strength was not good, so it dug for a while and then panted for a while.

Ga carboxylic acid dug from the morning until the afternoon, and finally dug out a shallow oval (tuǒ) round pit. It slid down the pit and continued digging, using its nose to roll up the dirt and throw it out of the pit; we hid in the distance and watched its body sinking inch by inch.

The sun set, the moon rose, and it was still digging. In the middle of the night, the ridge of the gaccari sank down from the edge of the pit and disappeared, the dong dong sound of the ivory digging became more and more diluted, and the rhythm of the proboscis tossing the soil became slower and slower. When the rooster crowed for the first time, finally, all was quiet and there was no sound at all.

Bonontein and I waited patiently until the east spat white and walked over to the pit to check it out. The pit was about three meters deep, and Gar Carboxy was lying at the bottom of it, on its side, its nose coiled in the crook of its leg, and one eye wide open, staring up at the sky.

It was dead. It did not make it to the elephant graves left by its ancestors. It lay with the companions it had fought alongside.

Synopsis:

Human culture and social civilization will be renewed with the changing times, but the spiritual core of life, which is brutal competition, tenacious survival and the pursuit of glory, will never change. Therefore, animal novels have more reasons to win readers and pursue immortality.

The last surviving war elephant in the war against Japan, Ga Carboxy, knowing that his life is at an end, puts on his saddle again, comes to the bank of the Daluo River to remember the past and mourn the battlefield, and finally buries his comrades in the "Hundred Elephants' Mound", where he plows a pit and buries himself in a solemn manner.

About the author:

Shen Shixi (October 1952-), who called himself Shen Yiming, was born in Shanghai, and is originally from Cixi City, Zhejiang Province. He is now a member of the Chinese ****anization Party, with the title of Literary Creation Grade 2, and serves as a member of the Chinese Children's Literature Committee, vice chairman of the Yunnan Provincial Writers' Association, and a professional writer.

In 1969, he graduated from junior high school and went to Xishuangbanna to join the army. During the period of joining the army, he learned how to catch fish, build a house, plow a field, plant rice seedlings, and accumulated rich experience in field life.

He began to engage in literary creation in the 1980s, and his first animal novel was The Valley Infested with Elephants, published in 1980 in Children's Literature magazine. He has published more than 5 million words.

In 1997, Jiangsu Children's and Youth Publishing House signed a contract with Shen Shixi to buy out the publishing rights of Shen Shixi's animal novels for the next ten years at a six-figure price, and published the ten-volume Anthology of Chinese Animal Novels by Shen Shixi, which encompassed all of Shen Shixi's previous animal novels.

Shen Shixi's works often delve into the inner world of animals, grasp the reader's credible characteristics of animal psychology, reflecting the fate of the animal protagonist's character, and this style has made him the front-runner of contemporary Chinese animal novels, which originated in the 1980s.

His animal novels are recognized as not only good, readable and heart-wrenching, but also practicing his aesthetic experience of animal novels and fresh and unique insights into the philosophy of life. Although many of his works are advertised as children's books, many adult readers have been moved by the brilliance of his depictions of animal behavior and psychology, and the significance he gives to his animal protagonists in interpreting his philosophies.

The relationship between humans and animals, and between different species of animals, is one of the most thought-provoking aspects of his work. His depictions are grounded in science, and while some of his content is artistically crafted, the episodes he depicts offer meaningful insights into animal protection and welfare.