"Liu Wen-tsai, landlord and despot, with prayer beads in his hand but a heart more cruel than a wolf's, orders an old man's son to be seized on the pretext that the family has not paid all they owed.  Ready to burst with anger under this dark, sunless system, the peasants swear:  'There will be a day when we will settle all the accounts of wrongs and hatred with you!  We will smash this system to pieces!"

In this scene, the text for which hints for the first time of the coming revolution, the peasants seemed poised and ready, as if for a struggle, and they are looking forward "into the future."