Fanshen

by Hinton, William ; Magdoff, Fred;

  Just as I became accustomed to the lice I also became accustomed to other aspects of village life that had at first upset me: shaves from an itinerant barber whose hot but far from sterile towel made no distinction between eyes half closed with trachoma and eyes as yet unharmed; once-a-month baths in the public bathhouse at Changchih where the flotsam washed from countless earlier patrons floated in an oily film on the steaming pools, where men relieved their bladders in one corner of the room and spat wherever they found it convenient; meals taken in the hovels of the poor where one shared chopsticks with people suffering from incurable disease and swallowed down, day after day, the dreary boiled corn dumplings called ke ta; daily encounters with privies in which night soil accumulated the year round and gave off such fumes of ammonia that tears started in one’s eyes and the stomach churned.

  Eating out was the real test. When we first arrived in the village the attack on Little Ch’uer had caused a general retreat. Team Leader Hou, fearing for our safety, had asked us to take our meals with the rest of the cadres in the District Office. But as the days went by, tension abated. After a couple of weeks Hou decided that we could eat out as the rest of the team members had already begun to do. Each day we took millet tickets issued to us by the University and gave them to a poor peasant’s wife in return for our noon meal. In this way we gradually became acquainted not only with the most active poor peasants in the village, but with their homes, their wives, their children, and their less active relatives as well.

  Some of these homes were as spotlessly clean as a dirt-floored, earthen-walled, paper-windowed North China hut could be made. The floors were swept, the k’angs dusted, the bright-colored quilts neatly folded back against the wall of the sleeping quarters, and the round-bottomed cooking pot, the bowls, and the chopsticks scoured until they shone.

  In other homes we found the opposite condition. The dwelling of Tseng Chung-hsi, former puppet policeman and a peasant who had lost both house and land in the Anti-Traitor Movement, may serve as an example. Tseng was the informer who had betrayed So-tzu, Lai-pao, and Fu-yuan to the puppet captain in the Long Bow fort and so was blamed by the entire village for the deaths of the two resistance heroes. That he was still alive seemed incongruous, especially when one recalled the violence of the post-liberation reaction against puppets and collaborators. However, we found him not only alive but in possession of land and housing handed out to make up for that which he had lost. That the new equalled the old was doubtful. Tseng’s whole family lived in a cramped shed that was divided into two equal parts. On one side were housed the farming implements and carpenter’s tools that enabled him to make a living. Several chickens roosted on these implements and spread their droppings at random on the floor. On the other side six people ate and slept—Tseng, his wife, two daughters (aged one and 13), and two sons (aged three and seven). The room was a shambles, smoke-blackened and cluttered with scraps, wheat roots, broken tools, crocks, and rags. On the narrow k’ang that filled the south end of the living space lay the eldest daughter. She lay under a grime-covered quilt; through its holes portions of her emaciated limbs protruded. She coughed, spat blood, and coughed interminably. For a year she had been immobilized there, near death from turberculosis. The rest of the family slept beside her, shared food and utensils with her, and breathed the same air she breathed in that stagnant, smoke-filled hell.

  The odor of decay all but overpowered us as we came through the door. In addition to the strong aroma of baby urine that rose from the floor, the pungent scent of chicken dung wafting in from the adjacent room, and the swirling smoke from the wheat-root fire, the air was saturated with the rotten smell of the girl’s lacerated lungs. Tseng’s 30-year-old wife, thin, careworn, her face already wrinkled like that of a woman twice her age, served us lukewarm corn dumplings in bowls caked with the dried leavings of many a previous meal. For lack of any other resting place, we sat on the k’ang beside the dying girl and ate.

  I knew that the bowls, the chopsticks, the very air that we were breathing was infected with tuberculousis, but I had to carry on as if nothing were amiss. This was a test of stamina such as every land reform worker went through. Unless one were willing to share the trials of other people, one did not deserve their trust. I thought to myself, “If Ch’i Yun can take this, I can too.” One glance in her direction indicated that she was completely oblivious to her surroundings. She was eating her dumpling as if it were a sugar bun, and talking to Tseng’s wife. She soon learned the woman’s maiden name, where she came from, how much Tseng had paid for her, whether she had ever been to a village meeting, and what she thought of the Women’s Association.

  Ch’i Yun was magnificent. She was doing her job. The least I could do was to eat the corn in front of me.

  Eating out brought us into touch with people in a way that a thousand meetings never could, and soon we became fast friends with a score of peasants who looked forward to our coming and vied with each other in issuing invitations.

  Prominent among these was the old woman whom we had noticed winding cotton so intently as Little Li read the Announcement to the Peasants in Chief-of-Staff Hsu’s loft. At every subsequent meeting she sought us out, filled us in on the background of the people who appeared before the Provisional League for classification, and related to us all the latest gossip from the southwest sector of the village. At the same time she took an active part in the meetings herself. Ch’i-Yun decided that this woman was a genuine “active element” who could play an important role in the events to come and asked the District Office to arrange a meal in her home.

  This old lady’s married named was Wang. She was known to most of the villagers as Old Lady Wang, but because her husband was very old and no longer able to work, some ignored him altogether and called her Jen-pao’s mother, as if she were already a widow. Jen-pao was the 18-year-old son whom she was sending through high school at the county seat on the proceeds of her spinning and weaving.

  When we showed up for our first meal, Old Lady Wang never stopped working and never stopped talking.

  “Every day that I work,” she said, “I can earn ten catties of millet. Why should I waste time at all these meetings? Well, I want to know more and I think all poor peasants must fanshen. One can’t just worry about oneself any more. If we don’t unite none of us is safe.”

  That she wasted time at meetings was something of an exaggeration. We knew that she never came to a meeting without some work in hand and spent her time furiously reeling, stitching, or spinning. But we did not challenge her statement. No doubt at home she accomplished twice as much.

  She proudly showed us her loom which she was threading in preparation for a new bolt of homespun cloth and boasted of all the skills she possessed such as spinning, weaving, fluffing cotton with a taut-stringed bow, and making shoes. She was one of the few women in the village who still knew how to weave at a time when that ancient art had suffered almost total extinction due to the cheap imported and coastal manufactured textiles.

  The old lady told us how she had come from Shantung Province more than 20 years before, after her first husband had died. She, her mother, her brother, and her daughter ran out of money on the road. They tried to sell the little girl for enough cash to continue. A buyer was found, but when the time came to leave the child behind, both the grandmother and the child cried so bitterly that the man thought better of the deal. He returned the child and gave the family enough wheat flour to last them a few more days. But tragedy trod the heels of luck. Even before the wheat had been consumed, the little girl fell ill and died.

  The surviving wanderers from Shantung finally arrived in the mountains of Shansi as outright beggars. A distant relative arranged for Old Lady Wang to marry the laborer, Wang-shen, a man 20 years her senior. It was either marry or starve to death, so the handsome young widow consented. The match was ill-starred from the beginning. She was so badly treated by Wang’s brother that her own mother and brother walked out one day in protest and were
never heard from again.

  “I did not hate him,” Old Lady Wang said of the brother, who had long since died. “It was the old society that made him cruel. In the old society everyone oppressed others.

  “During the famine year I peddled beancake. My pants wore so thin that people could see my p’i ku (buttocks) through the holes and made fun of me,” she said. “Now things are much better. We got an acre and a half at the time of the distribution and 30 bushels of corn and millet. We also bought half a donkey, and I got an old felt mat for the k’ang for five ounces of grain. The cadres didn’t want me to have it, but I got it anyway.”

  In spite of her improved condition, Old Lady Wang thought that she had not really fanshened. With only two sections of house, how could she take in a daughter-in-law when her son married in the fall? There would be no place for the girl and the land would hardly yield enough to support them. And what would happen when she had grandchildren? “The only other thing that worries me is the fate of my mother and brother,” she said, wiping away involuntary tears. “They left so long ago! I often weep when I think of them.”

  But the tears soon dried on her cheeks as she got out her bow and began to prepare some raw cotton for the lining of a padded suit.

  ***********

  Old Lady Wang’s home, though small, was often used for meetings. It was centrally located. It contained no small children underfoot who might disrupt the proceedings, and it was always neat and clean.

  It was in this house that the poor peasant Chang Lao-pao clashed with his estranged wife over his class status and exposed another of those domestic tragedies left over from the old society, tragedies that corroded the very roots of Long Bow’s social life and made a mockery of the vaunted Chinese family system so celebrated in the West.

  One might suppose that the relations between a man and his wife should have very little to do with his class status, but in this case the relationship became central because the per capita holdings of Chang’s family varied greatly depending on whether one included his wife and daughter or not.

  On March 20th, Lao-pao came before the Provisional League to make his “self report.” He was a tall man with a leathery face and deeply wrinkled skin. It was hard to judge how old he was because the wrinkles made him look 50, whereas the vigor of his movements and the fullness of his muscles indicated that he might be still in his thirties.

  Lao-pao said that in 1942 he owned three acres and supported four people. They got along well enough until the famine year. Then he took his family to Taiyuan. He brought them back in 1946. He had never owned livestock or farming implements. He said he was a poor peasant.

  “But his wife always earned her own living,” protested Old Lady Wang, well aware of what that meant in terms of sweat and pain. “Before 1942 she worked in another village as a servant. After that she hired out as a seasonal laborer and supported herself and her daughter. We can’t count them in the family.”

  “Can you get along with your wife?” they asked Lao-pao. “If not, you are a middle peasant.”

  At this Lao-pao lost his temper.

  “Call me any class you like. Call me a landlord if you want to.”

  “Let’s call his wife and ask her,” suggested Old Lady Wang.

  “She’s nothing but an old bitch,” said Lao-pao. “Why should you ask her? You’re here to class me. Why not do it according to my condition? If you don’t believe what I say, do as you like.”

  He was just like a stone. Everyone agreed on that.

  “The fact is, he can’t get on with anyone but his mother. She’s the root of the whole trouble,” said several of his neighbors.

  In spite of Lao-pao’s objections, they called in his wife.

  She turned out to be a thin browned woman, prematurely aged and clad in garments that were dirty, ragged, and many years old. They barely concealed two breasts which hung down like flaps of old leather over her stomach. Her hair tumbled in tangled knots before her face, some strands of it already grey. She talked rapidly, bitterly, but with spirit. She brought with her a wan little girl, about seven years old, but so small she might have been four. The youngster was also clad in rags. She stared silently at the crowd of peasants with her large black eyes and kept her mouth tightly shut.

  “I have no opinion about his class myself,” said Lao-pao’s “old lady.” “I’ve always been walked over by him and his mother. He’s not such a bad man himself, but his temper is short. As for my mother-in-law, I can say nothing good for her. She never spoke rudely to my face, but only clawed me when my back was turned and ran me down to her son so that we quarrelled. As for me, I worked as a servant in Horse Square, Yellow Mill, and many other places. Though they never gave me any cloth, still I made clothes for him and supported myself with my own hands. All my neighbors know that. I only speak true words.”

  “What about your class? Do you want to be classed as one family or separately?”

  “It’s all the same to me,” she said, shrugging her lean shoulders. “I have no opinion.” A sharp edge of bitterness was clearly discernible in her voice.

  When they asked Lao-pao, he said the same thing. “I have no opinion.”

  His wife disputed this. “He doesn’t want me to return home. We separated the year before last. I was out working. When I got back they had already moved into a new house and locked the door. I wanted to pack up and move there but my big box was too heavy for me to lift, so I went to his mother to ask for help. She said, ‘If you want you can move it yourself. Otherwise stay where you are. We have no place for your big box or you either.’ I knew what she meant. But since the k’ang was so big, big enough for ten boxes of mine, I asked her why she said that. Two people can hardly use one end of that k’ang. This started a quarrel. The neighbors came then. They tried to get Lao-pao to carry my box over but he refused. Since then I have lived in the old place by myself. He doesn’t speak to me when we meet in the street.”

  “Lao-pao is always in a squeeze,” said one peasant. “He dares not say anything to offend his mother, nor can he make peace with his wife. He’s just like a hand towel, always in the middle and both sides lay the blame on him. But really, he only cares for his mother and abuses and beats his wife.”

  “Don’t waste your time on this case,” said Lao-pao to the meeting in general. “I know I’m just the dirty towel.”

  “Don’t force him into anything,” countered his wife. “I can live on by myself.”

  A reprimand from Cadre Liang and a sympathtic suggestion from Ch’i Yun that Lao-pao at least try to reunite his family had no effect

  “If I had such a good wife, I would kneel down before God,” said an old bachelor. He was the same man who had tried to smooth the way for the blacksmith, Huan-ch’ao. “You, you don’t know how painful is the life of a single man. You had better look at it from all sides. How will you get on after your mother’s death? You’d better take this chance to get off the stage.”

  But Lao-pao only shrugged at this too. They finally classed him as a poor peasant anyway, but as one who had now fanshened. He strode off cursing.

  His wife stayed on and, as the meeting broke up, talked to the group of women that formed sympathetically around her.

  “You can do nothing to help my family,” she said. “My neighbors have already tried many times. It is no use. It’s better this way. I live by my own work and my life is better than before. Then it was one quarrel after another. Once I asked him to get some water from the well. But he was too lazy to go. Later he got out some beans and started building a fire. I said, ‘You’re too lazy to get any water. How do you think you will cook those beans?’ He hit me so hard I fell to the floor but I pulled him down with me and only the neighbors finally separated us. If they hadn’t, one of us would be dead. Another time he cut my left arm with a spade. Once we cut wheat in the field. His mother brought food and we quarrelled. When she left he cut me across the forehead with his sickle.”

  After listening to these storie
s the women all said it was better for Lao-pao’s wife to live alone. Then she could bring up her daughter in peace. “If you return, you will only suffer oppression. Only after your mother-in-law dies can you be reconciled.”

  That there was another side to this story we heard only later. Some of the young women, less sympathetic to Lao-pao’s wife, told Ch’i Yun that the sharp-tongued woman earned money in other ways than labor, that she had conceived a child by another man, and that she had killed it with a needle after it was born. If this was true, the tragedy was only compounded.

  32

  Brothers

  And the Lord said unto Cain, “Where is Abel thy brother?” And he said, “I know not: am I my brother’s keeper?”

  Genesis

  TO THRESH the wheat from the chaff, to separate the kernel of truth from the husk of falsehood sometimes taxed the collective wisdom of the whole Provisional League. This was particularly so when families prosperous enough to hire labor came up for review. From below came tremendous pressure to push them over the line into the rich peasant category. From the more prosperous came intense counter-pressure. The cadres of the work team, whose role it was to guard the objectivity of the proceedings and to see to it that the law was followed both in letter and spirit, were pushed now one way, now another. More often than was wise they allowed their weight to fall on the side of extremism among the poor.

  This was exactly what happened in the case of Li Pao-yu, a man wiio owned six acres of land, five sections of housing, and a courtyard with 27 fruit trees. On these better than average holdings lived a family of four: Li, his wife, an adopted son, and a daughter-in-law. On the surface there seemed nothing out of the ordinary about the family, but once the work team cadres began to probe more deeply, all manner of curious facts came to light. Li Pao-yu, some said, was not a peasant at all, but a merchant who had made enough buying and selling in distant parts to purchase land in Long Bow. So unaccustomed was he to hard work on the land that six acres were more than he could handle, even with the help of a teen-aged son. He hired as much as 50 days’ seasonal labor each year to plant and gather his crops. While the hired laborers sweated in the fields, Li and his wife ran a gambling table in their home. Sometimes they joined the game; sometimes they simply acted as bankers or croupiers. And this was not all. Another rumor had it that Li’s wife had been mistress to the landlord Sheng Ching-ho. It was the many gifts which the latter bestowed upon his favorite, not peddling profits, that made it possible for the Li family to purchase land. Evidently, all of landlord Sheng’s gifts had not bought the loyalty of his mistress. It was well known that she had carried on an affair with the lusty peasant Hsiao-tseng for years. Everyone remembered with amusement how she had ended up hanging by her wrists from the gable of the village office when Pao-yu complained to the puppet authorities.