A couple of times, with her eyes glistening, she’d respond, “Let me tell you, it wasn’t easy!”
Our neighbors, especially Mother’s female friends, made a big thing of Grandma’s being a “faithful widow.” It was true that Grandpa had died a long time ago and that Grandma had never remarried, but her widowhood never struck me as anything unusual. Families portrayed in revolutionary propaganda movies always had a tough, gray-haired grandma figure wearing a loose blue garment with buttons on the side and patched-up holes on the sleeves. Of course, in the movies she would be a fervent revolutionary who faced the enemy guns heroically to protect her children and other comrades. There was never a grandpa.
In the spring of 1974, on a class field trip to a village outside Xi’an, some friends and I came across a crumbling stone arch with faded Chinese characters standing lonely amid piles of garbage. My teacher said it was a chastity arch from the nineteenth century, erected in honor of a young widow who remained faithful to her husband after his death. My teacher pointed out that it was a testimony to the suffering and oppression of women in feudalistic society, where they were regarded as “possessions.” Noticing that we looked baffled, she explained by citing a different story, which was a familiar plot in traditional opera.
In the city of Suzhou during the sixteenth century, a young woman lost her husband. Grief-stricken, she vowed to take care of her in-laws and make raising her son her sole purpose in life so that her husband’s bloodline could continue. However, her loneliness became too much to bear, and she flirted with her son’s tutor who turned her down out of righteousness end lectured her on the importance of being faithful. Ashamed of her lapse, she chopped off two of her fingers to express her remorse and determination that her son should come first. In the and, her son passed the imperial exam and rose to a high government position. Touched by her story, the emperor crowned her a noble mother and she became an example for other women to follow, sustaining a rigid Confucian moral code that put men before women and deprived women of happiness.
“Confucian moral code” meant little to me, but the story sounded a lot like Grandma’s life, though my father never attained a senior government position and Grandma never received any recognition as a noble mother from Chairman Mao. I wanted to learn more about Grandma’s life, of which I had heard only fragments. In the evenings, after I was done with homework, I would beg her for stories. She was at first a little surprised and embarrassed, perhaps even suspicious, that I was suddenly interested in her story. “There is nothing to tell,” she would say. “It was so long ago and I don’t remember.” But when she was in the right mood, she would let herself wander and tell a story. I became entranced by her Henan accent. Sometimes she kept talking long after I had fallen asleep.
Grandma was born in the Year of the Tiger, which comes every twelve years and, knowing that, my sister Wenxia and I calculated that it must have been 1902. My sister had rummaged through Father’s files and found our family registration document, which listed her birthday as April 14. Grandma said she made that up because people in the rural areas didn’t pay much attention to a girl’s birthday when she was young. When she arrived in Xi’an, the Public Security Bureau wouldn’t accept that as an excuse so she plucked a date out of the air. “It’s a lucky thing not to remember your birthday—you can live forever,” she said.
Her parents were farmers in a village in Wen County in northwest Henan. They owned some land, which seemed the standard to measure one’s family wealth. Her only childhood memory involved the binding of her feet. She was six when her mother began wrapping her feet tightly with cotton bandages. A younger sister began the same ordeal four years later, even though the practice was banned when the revolutionaries toppled the Qing Dynasty in 1912. Grandma said the most insulting thing that could be said about a woman was “She has ugly big feet.”
“Most well-to-do families would bind their daughters’ feet,” she said. “With big feet, a girl would never find a husband.” The first three months were excruciatingly painful, even though her mother claimed that the bones in her feet were soft and relatively easy to bend inward without having to break them. Grandma could scarcely leave her bed and passed the time learning to sew and knit. Her feet became badly infected, so each time her mother rewrapped her feet, she would put thin shards of porcelain against Grandma’s soles, tighten the bandages, and make her walk around to drive the shards into her flesh. The idea was that drawing off the blood and pus would make her feet even smaller. Grandma would sometimes pass out from the pain, but her mother would not relent. After soaking Grandma’s feet in herbal water, her mother would put the bandages back on, tighter than before. “I cried a lot,” she said. A lifetime later, her feet are wrapped with strips of wide cloth in the morning and unwrapped at night, though in winter she often left the strips on for extra warmth.
As a small boy, I shared Grandma’s tiny bed, sleeping at the opposite end. I would sometimes clutch her tiny feet in my arms. Her toes bent inward, like tiny pieces of dough flattened by a rolling pin, the feet themselves pyramid shaped, like the pig trotters that Mother sometimes cooked.
Grandma said she had several suitors at the age of fifteen. Her family was cautious and, after much negotiation through a village matchmaker, settled on the Huang family, which owned a large swath of prime farmland along the Yellow River and lived in a big courtyard house. The Huang were descended from a military officer who served the Qing Emperor Tongzhi in the 1860s.
She was seventeen when she married, so long ago that she had no recollection of what Grandpa looked like on their wedding day. Photography had reached China’s big cities but was unheard of in the countryside. When my sister pressed her about Grandpa’s looks, she said he was “short, like your father, but had big eyes and pale skin.” To her, big eyes and pale skin were the epitome of good looks. She acknowledged that Grandpa had a farmer’s bad temper, something that flared in Father from time to time, but he treated her well. “Your Grandpa would pick some apples or apricots in the orchard, wrap them in his shirt, and bring them home for me,” she said, which I took to mean, in her shy and roundabout way, that she was saying he loved her.
Everyone lived under the same roof, Grandma and Grandpa, his parents, his younger brother. Grandma gave birth to two boys. Father was born in 1928, the Year of the Dragon, traditionally an auspicious year but one that brought calamity to the family.
At the beginning of that year, a member of the Huang clan married a young woman from a wealthy family in a faraway village. “The dowry came in dozens of carts—clothing, bolts of fabric, quilts of silk, beautiful wooden cases, jewelry, several big horses.” It seemed that the family had struck gold in what everyone said was a “perfect match.” No one noticed the bride had also brought with her a cough, which worsened over time until she could scarcely breathe. A few months after the wedding, she died. Everyone said it was a tragedy, until her husband began coughing, too.
The bride had brought laobing into the village—tuberculosis. Soon Grandpa developed a cough. Instead of sending for a medical doctor, the Huang family consulted a local shaman, who prescribed the burning of incense. The shaman said a former tenant, who harbored grudges against my great-grandfather, had put a curse on the Huang family, and he tried to lift the curse with chanting and incense. Soon the house was so filled with smoke that it was suffocating.
The chanting and incense burning failed to save Grandpa, who died soon after. Grandpa had left word with his parents, saying that Grandma could remarry after his death, but if she did so, she would have to leave their two sons behind to be adopted by his brother and sister-in-law.
A feng shui master was summoned to find an auspicious spot for Grandpa’s burial, one that would drive away the deadly cloud that seemed to hang over the Huang family. Perhaps the feng shui master took too long over his calculations, because on the day of Grandpa’s burial my uncle collapsed at the cemetery. This time t
he family took him to a doctor who diagnosed him with TB. He died a month later at the age of eight. And so it went, until Father was the only surviving male of the Huang clan.
Grandma was only twenty-seven and had lost her husband and eldest son. She cried day and night; at one point, she claimed that she even lost her sight. She said that she thought of hanging herself, but my father was only four months old and she pitied him. Like a “faithful widow” in those ancient Chinese stories, she vowed to protect her son and continue the Huang family bloodline.
Father was raised in a house of widows. They banded together to share the running of the farm, hiring laborers to plant and harvest grain. They were difficult years, though there was still worse to come. In the summer of 1933, the Yellow River flooded. The dam that was supposed to protect the region collapsed and the whole region was submerged. Houses were destroyed; people and livestock drowned; everything of value was washed away. Grandma and Father climbed an old tree and waited three days for the water to recede. A relative told me that the county chief was an incompetent transplant from the south and had grossly underestimated the severity of the Yellow River flood.There was no flood relief, no rescue operations. Instead, he encouraged people to pray and promised a three-day opera festival if their prayers stopped the rain and stemmed the flood.
Disaster struck again in 1938 when invading Japanese troops marched into Henan, and the region was rife with bandits and Japanese collaborators who looted grain and livestock and robbed the villagers of their valuables. Without any men, the Huang family was an easy target. “Bandits broke into our house, snatching grain and valuables,” Grandma said. “They used wooden sticks to knock on the floor and walls. If they heard any hollow sound, they would dig a hole to see if we had hidden anything.
“When a family is in decline, even the animals want to leave,” she said. “We owned ten big horses. Before the Japanese troops arrived, we hid them in a secret garden behind the house. As the troops were passing, the horses started to whinny and the soldiers seized them all.”
There was little food and the wheat never had a chance to ripen. Peasants picked the fields clean of wheatgrass, which they ground for juice or dried and ate as a powder. The family’s priority was to keep Father nourished, often at the expense of everyone else.
Soon Grandma realized that the family would face starvation if they stayed put. She decided to take Father and make for a city in Shanxi Province, which meant walking several hundred kilometers on bound feet. Grandma’s sewing skills served her well. During the day, Grandma made clothes for wealthy families; at night, she slept in an abandoned temple with her relatives and fellow villagers. When a wolf snatched away a three-year-old boy playing outside the temple at sunset, and all the adults could find were his bloodstained and tattered clothes, she and Father returned to her home village, which offered no sanctuary. In the spring of 1942, not a single raindrop fell in the region. Starvation was widespread. In the autumn, a plague of locusts ate everything that was left. Grandma said they lived on grass roots and tree bark. Others lived off the recently dead or the passing strangers they trapped, killed, and cooked. Half of the surviving Huang family died, including both her in-laws. Mother took Father, who was now twelve, and fled Henan.
During the hardest times, Grandma and Father begged on the streets, until they contracted typhoid and lay racked by fever in an old crumbling temple. A woman living nearby saw them when they crawled out to beg and took pity on them, leaving food and drinking water each day for Grandma to find.
It was Xi’an, the capital city in the neighboring province of Shaanxi, that finally offered Grandma and Father a refuge. The invading Japanese never reached Xi’an. The fertile land and mild climate made a haven for Henan refugees. For a rural woman who had never seen a lightbulb, the big city was baffling. Through fellow villagers, Grandma found work as a maid to the owner of a large jewelry store, Mr. Ren, who needed help looking after the children of his wife and his concubines. Grandma and Father moved into a small one-room house adjacent to a spacious courtyard mansion in the eastern section of the city. Grandma cooked, washed clothes, and nursed Ren’s children. I remember Grandma as a proud woman, and I asked how she handled the transition from sheltered daughter of a wealthy rural family to a maid. “I did it for my son,” she said. “Only a parent would understand.”
Grandma gained a reputation as a tough and capable woman, but there were limits. When one of Ren’s concubines accused her of stealing a gold ring, Grandma grew angry in her denial, mortified by the attack on her character, and the concubine slapped her so hard she fell unconscious to the ground. Rather than leave, Grandma stood her ground. Three days later, the concubine found the ring, which she had simply misplaced. She never apologized. Whenever Grandma talked about the incident, her bottom lip would tremble. She and Father lived under Ren’s protection for fourteen years, raising five of his children. The job provided an anchor for my teenage father who was eager to start out on his own, working during the day and attending school at night.
When the Communist government was established in 1949, all their suffering turned out to be a blessing. Grandma and Father were classified as poor peasants, true proletariats, and all the opportunities of the new society were open to them. Father was given a job at a textile factory. In the late 1950s, the government took over Ren’s jewelry stores and he became an employee. He could no longer pay for Grandma’s help, but Father had a stable income and she felt it was time to retire as a maid.
In 1956, Father married a woman who grew up not far from his native village and had been brought to Xi’an by her aunt. The woman was my mother. Father was twenty-eight then, but Grandma never let go of him. They all lived together inside a tiny two-bedroom house in Ren’s courtyard. When my older sister and I were born, Grandma took it as a sign that the Huang family might again prosper. She took care of us when Mother was away at work.
Often, to the frustration of Father, Grandma never showed any interest in the revolution that had ended her suffering and the subsequent political campaigns against those who had exploited her. Instead, she always blamed the family’s hardships on her own fate and the vengeful ghost of a former tenant who, she said, had placed a curse on the family.
In 1966, at the outset of the Cultural Revolution, Red Guards took over Ren’s courtyard house, confiscated all his possessions, and pushed his family into a corner room. The rest of the house was opened up to families of revolutionary activists. Grandma, a member of the oppressed and exploited proletariat, was offered a bigger room in the mansion and was asked to speak against her former boss at public denunciation meetings. Grandma declined both offers and insisted on staying in her little room. The Red Guards didn’t know what to do about this illiterate old lady with bound feet, this ally of the revolution. When Ren was paraded through the streets, Grandma secretly took care of his children. “After all, I had raised them like they were my own,” she said.
When I was in elementary school, Grandma constantly embarrassed me in front of my friends. My elder sister and I participated in different kinds of after-school music performances and parades to promote the latest Party policies. Grandma would wobble outside and look for us. When we appeared, she let us have it in her richest Henan accent. “You goof off outside after school, doing this revolution and that revolution, but never bother to come home and take care of your brother and sister. What kind of crap is that?” She made such a ruckus that many of our friends had come out to watch and they were all laughing. We were mortified. From then on, classmates would mimic Grandma’s actions and accent to tease us.
In high school, I was taught that a Communist society meant that there would be fewer differences in wealth, power, and status. Everyone would have all the food and clothing they needed. Nobody would be selfish. We would all want to work hard and help others. When I shared these sentiments with Grandma, she laughed at me and mocked my Communist faith. “That’s the pe
rfect dream for a lazy person like you.” She wrinkled her nose. “Just who will provide the food and clothing that everyone needs? They don’t fall from the sky, do they?” Grandma’s sarcasm made me angry, and I told Father what she had said. Father gave me a serious look and said, “Don’t listen to your grandma and don’t tell others what she says. She is illiterate and backward in thinking.” As I left the room, I heard him tell Grandma, “Watch out. He doesn’t know any better and could talk to his friends. If they report us to the authorities, they might think those were my ideas.” It was true. A neighbor’s child shared with his classmates that his grandpa had said that most of the landlords that had been executed by the government were diligent and kindhearted people. A few days later, his father, the personnel director, was under investigation for attacking the government’s Land Reform Movement.
Grandma never changed what my siblings called “her backward and nonrevolutionary ways of thinking.” After reading the story about the faithful widow, I asked Grandma if she felt she was a victim of reviled Confucianism by being forced to remain a widow all her life. I was hoping she would condemn the oppressive feudalistic system and praise the liberation of women under Communism. What I got was a look that showed she thought I was crazy. “What did I have to do with Confucius? I didn’t want my son to be mistreated by a stepfather. That was all.”
I turned to Father who, to my surprise, agreed with Grandma. “She sacrificed for my sake,” he said. A merchant from Henan once had expressed interest in Grandma when they first arrived in Xi’an. He had proposed several times through a matchmaker. Many of her friends and relatives tried to persuade her to consider his offer. “With a man in the family, it’s easier to raise a son and you don’t have to work as hard,” they said. Grandma did not relent. She was always careful about her reputation too. Mother thought the story good enough to spread around, with the unintended result that respect for Grandma went even higher. Looking back, I saw two subtly different reactions. When men praised her, it was about her sacrifice “for the sake of your father and family—so rare in these days.” While women admired her devotion, they also sympathized. “Can you imagine how tough it was for a young widow to take care of a boy all by herself? Treat her nicely.”
The Little Red Guard: A Family Memoir Page 2