by Paul Huang
Most Chinese peasants eat rice three times a day, or about one pound per person per day. In China, the word for food is rice. “Have you eaten rice yet?” means “have you eaten yet?” And the time when that question is asked would define the meal. That question at 6 PM would mean have you had dinner yet. The same goes for breakfast and lunch.
Grandpa had two thousand pounds of rice stored in his secret emergency rice bin. That was probably sufficient to survive a two-year drought. This store did not include their normal, everyday supply. Most peasants would be lucky to have a six months supply to carry them through the winter. For most peasants in China, it was a hand-to-mouth subsistence lifestyle. They lived on what they produced. And if you had a year or two of reserves, you considered yourself lucky and fortunate, wealthy even, especially if you have a surplus to sell.
There were two outhouses about thirty feet from our living quarters near the rear wall. The outhouses were hidden by trees and bushes and they were as far away from the well as they could possibly be, a safe distance of 70 feet. This distance ensured a safe and uncontaminated water supply. Nevertheless, water was always boiled before drinking. Once the ancient wise men connected sickness and disease with contaminated and unclean water, the tea ceremony was created to promote boiling water before drinking. What started out to be health issue turned into a social ceremony. Everybody drinks tea or just plain hot water.
Before our arrival, my grandparents were the only ones living there. All of their grown children had left. No one in the family wanted to continue farming. It was hard, boring work with a limited future. The only thing you had to look forward to was more of the same—year after year until you died. My father had taken the competitive exams and scored high enough to get into Yenching University. He would never return.
In this part of rural China, the biggest building in the village was the warehouse where the grain was stored. Next to this stone building was the grain merchant’s house. His house was the center of the village. From here, the merchant could ship the grain grown by the surrounding farmers throughout China. (More likely than not, through Jin’s shipping network.)
There were no stores here or a village center simply because the people lived on their self-contained farms. They produced what they needed. And what they didn’t produce, they traded with friends and neighbors. Thus, the farm houses were scattered hither and yon, a few on the river, but mostly inland. Most peasant farmers in the area lived in small one to two room houses. Many of these farmers leased land from my grandfather.
The biggest public facility was the village elementary school, which was up river about a half mile beyond my grandfather’s compound. The school system here was rudimentary. It was a public/private organization; the government provided the facilities and a basic annual salary to the teacher. When I was there, we had a teacher and an assistant to care for thirty children in a one-room schoolhouse. The number of teachers during any given year would depend on enrollment.
The private aspect of the system was this: according to Confucian tradition, it was the teacher’s duty to discover, encourage and promote students with above-average potential. In my father’s day, his teacher recognized his potential and thought that he was university material. Once this potential was made known to my grandfather, then it was his duty to hire the teacher to cultivate my father’s potential. The teacher would tutor my father in the classics and calligraphy to pass the various exams.
A good teacher, like Confucius himself, would spend his professional life teaching others to achieve greatness. Great teachers were selfless men intent on forwarding the careers of others. But like all human endeavors, not all teachers are selfless. Nevertheless, teaching was and still is a respected and admired profession in China. A renowned teacher could make a decent living. In this ideal system, the teacher, the student and society in general benefited.
Grandfather Huang was a taciturn man accustomed to delivering short directives and commands to his wife. Aside from ordering food and asking for more tea, he did not talk to her. The talk, mostly about nothing in particular, was generated by my grandmother. And she talked incessantly, stopping only when she was putting food into her mouth but commencing once more even while chewing. She had a captive audience at mealtimes, and she was not about to waste her opportunity to exercise her vocabulary. But, the moment my grandfather started to speak, she would instantly fall silent. And he didn’t talk very often.
Since neither Mom nor I understood their local dialect, talking was not an easy pastime. Communication was through hand gestures supported by an occasional word or two.
Most of the time, grandfather would disappear into his workroom. He came out at mealtimes. He referred to her as his “Low Pau” or “Old Wife” in peasant Cantonese. It was a derogatory and uncouth term used by the coarsest of peasants. She was not allowed into his workroom.
Initially, Mom winced whenever she heard “Low Pau”, but after the first few days, she got used to it. To avoid any in-law unpleasantness, we generally stayed in our room, exiting only when grandma called us to eat.
This was the first time that Mom had met her in-laws. And it was clear to the both of us that my grandmother was more of a servant than a wife. She was ignored and treated in an off-handed, dismissive manner. It was unpleasant and awkward to watch.
A few days later, I heard an airplane flying overhead. I ran out into the middle of the courtyard scanning the sky for the source of the sound. At the time, just seeing an airplane in the sky was an earth-shaking event. I knew that this was a Japanese reconnaissance plane that made regularly scheduled flights over Chinese territory. During our trip upriver, we saw these planes regularly. They followed a predictable and rigid schedule. The flights were meant to spy on Chinese troop movements and to instill fear and intimidation. But before I could spot the plane, I felt an arm grab me around the waist, pluck me off the ground and carried me on the run into the kitchen. As she ran, my grandmother kept uttering a constant stream of tearful and fearful gibberish that I did not understand. Before I could react, she dove under the kitchen table and smothered me with her body. What frightened me was not the airplane, but her unexpected actions and uncontrollable fear. I struggled to get free, but by that time, the plane was gone.
Afterwards, I described the guttural sounds that she made and asked Mom what it all meant. “She was probably praying to the Gods to protect us from harm.”
“But the plane never drops bombs.”
“Yes, but she doesn’t know that. This is where she’s lived most of her life. She’s uneducated, illiterate and superstitious. She doesn’t know what an airplane is. She thinks it’s some kind of black magic that the Japanese have harnessed. She is deathly afraid of the terror that these planes can rain down on her. You really can’t blame her.
“The missionaries have done a good job converting your Grandmother into a Christian. She mixes western religion with Buddhism and ancient Chinese Superstitions to create a magical prayer that keeps the bombs from falling on her house. She is just ignorant and superstitious, that’s all. It’s best to stay away from her,” Mom said.
The best hiding place was in my grandfather’s workroom. His room was really a warehouse. Stacks of bamboo baskets of all sizes and shapes stood from floor to ceiling and wall to wall. There were twelve-inch steamers for the home-sized wok and twenty-four and thirty-six-inch ones for commercial use. He was too old now to do actual farming so he sharecropped his land. But he wasn’t too old to make useful bamboo utensils. This was what he used to do during the winter months when his land sat fallow. But now, he had an annual contract to provide a steady quota of bamboo utensils to a wholesale distributor. It was good steady income for him, but more importantly, it kept him busy.
I used to sit and watch him weave. He would stand a five-foot section of bamboo on end, then split it down the middle. With his stubby sharp knife he’d cut one-sixteenth-of-an-inch thick strips down the length of the yellow fiber. Once he had a stack of thes
e long strips, he’d sit down on his stool and begin weaving.
The thin bamboo strips would slide along his callused hands at high speed. His fingers moved so quickly that it was difficult to see exactly what he was doing to make the fibers take shape. In a matter of minutes, the base of a basket was done. Then he folded the loose ends upward and began weaving the side. He alternated the vertical bamboo with the horizontal ones, and again, in a matter of minutes, the small basket was all but finished. He took a pair of clippers and clipped the excess ends, then he wove a band across the top to hide the clipped ends. During this entire procedure, he would not speak. He produced a lot of baskets in one day.
There was a zen-like quality to his work. He had the ability to sit there, all day, everyday and weave baskets—he could clear his mind of all other thoughts but the routine of weaving one bamboo strip over or under another. It never seemed to bother him that he was doing the same movements over and over. What seemed important to him was that these repetitious movements were done correctly and precisely. His focus was so intense that I don’t recall seeing him make a mistake. What fascinated me and what kept me watching him work was the anticipation of his making a mistake. But he never made one. He was a perfect human machine. In his mind, it would have been an embarrassment for him had he made a mistake. And in my presence, a mistake would have meant more than an embarrassment, but a loss of face.
The way he worked reminded me of Mr. Wu and his crew. They all had the same ability to make an infinite number of repetitive moves without letup or mental fatigue.
Interestingly, not once did grandpa Huang try to teach me how to weave the bamboo. He knew that he was teaching me by keeping me captivated with what he was doing. I suspect that had I stayed there long enough, I would have learned how simply by watching him work. At the very least, I remember enough of his work to describe it. So I did learn something, probably more than I realized.
Mom enrolled me at the nearby kindergarten to give both of us something productive to do while we were waiting for Governor Li to contact us. She volunteered to help with the children. And it wasn’t long before Governor Li summoned her for an interview.
Mom’s appointment with the governor took almost all day. The interview itself took only twenty minutes. Uncle Jin had already presented her credentials to the Governor. The meeting itself was a mere formality. She did, however, spend most of the day going to and from the Governor’s secret headquarters.
She had left on a sampan in the morning, and was expected to return by late afternoon.
After school that day, I went directly to the public landing to wait for her. When I got there, I saw three men at the landing. They were intently watching the fourth man lead a steer down the riverbank onto the clean, wet cobblestones.
Two of the older children in my group knew what was about to happen. They looked on in awestruck silence. The younger children huddled behind them for protection. Something important was about to happen.
The man leading the steer swung his right leg up and climbed onto the animal’s back. The steer flicked its tail and its flank twitched.
The man riding the steer slid a short, thick metal spike out of his tool pouch. He held it reverently in the palm of his left hand. Then he reached behind his back and withdrew a large heavy hammer from his belt. Carefully, almost gently he put the spike squarely in the center of the steer’s skull. The hammer swung through the air and smacked against the iron spike. A hollow “thonk” shattered the silence. The steer’s legs folded and the man jumped off its back as the stunned beast rolled onto its side. A second man rushed over to the fallen animal with a bucket and a knife. With one well placed cut, he severed the steer’s neck artery.
The men used their buckets to collect the blood.
The butchers went about their work as if they were celebrating a harvest. They knew that for the next week or so, the entire village would feast on beef. But more than that, they would make a nice profit from selling the meat.
When Mom arrived at the landing, the butchers had the cut meat stacked neatly on large rectangular bamboo carrying trays. Even the bones of the large animal had been saved.
She saw me sitting on the edge of the cobblestone square, smiling and waving excitedly at her. She stepped gingerly ashore, trying to avoid the blood on the stone steps. She waved as she took in the sight.
Unable to contain my excitement, I told her what I had just seen.
I learned how to clean, skin and butcher a deer because of what I saw that day.
There were about thirty children ranging from kindergarten and younger to the sixth grade at the school. A teacher and her assistant ran the one room schoolhouse. The best thing about the facility was its playground. There were the usual swings and seesaws, but what made the place unusual was that a roof covered it. This was a building without any walls, just huge posts that supported the roof. During the rainy season, there was a place for the kids to play. This covered space also served as the town’s meeting place and parade ground. Touring operas, acrobats, magicians, strongman and other attractions held performances here.
One day, there was a commotion by the parade ground. A big black Buick drove onto the grounds. Instantly, the teacher had the students stand, and in drill-sergeant fashion, marched the class out of the room.
Governor-General Li, dressed in his green-tinted khaki uniform, had appeared to inspect the school. The teachers bowed respectfully a number of times, obviously honored and delighted by the Governor’s visit. The head teacher introduced the governor to the assembled children. “Good-morning, governor,” the children chimed in unison.
The smiling general walked down the line of children and inspected us. He complimented the teacher on a job well done, whispered something to her then turned and walked to his car.
The teacher marched the kids to the covered playground then dismissed the class. But she took me aside and told me to go to the general’s car. I had never been up close to a Buick before, so I ran to get a closer look. I stopped when the uniformed chauffeur opened the back door. Sitting in the back seat were Madame Li and her two young daughters. The girls were about my age.
Mrs. Li smiled and said: “It’s all right. Don’t be afraid. Come closer so that I can get a good look at you.”
I obeyed when I saw the smile on Mom’s face.
“How old are you?”
“Six.”
“How would you like to go to school with my daughters?”
I looked at Mom, saw the hint of a nod so I said: “Ho ah,” which is the Cantonese equivalent of OK.
“You think you’ll get along with them?” Mrs. Li asked as her hand swept majestically in the direction of her girls.
I nodded.
“Good,” she said. “Go on now. Go play,” she commanded.
I walked away; glancing backwards, more interested in the car than seeing the two mothers talking.
A few minutes later, the big black Buick roared away.
Mom had just been officially hired to work for the governor.
(A car in China was a big deal in those days. Very few people had them, especially out here in the remote farming districts. What’s more interesting was the fact that the name Buick stuck in my mind. It’s probably as close to a Chinese word as any English word could be. Buick rolls off the Chinese tongue. Today, the Buick brand is as popular with the wealthy Chinese as it was then.)
A few days later, we left Grandfather Huang’s house. It wasn’t difficult to say goodbye. We were four people in one family divided by a regional dialect and a socio-economic chasm. Multiply this dysfunction across a country of 540 million people and you get an idea of the barrier to progress that faced China throughout her history.
About a year later, Grandpa Huang died. The governor was good enough to have his driver take us in the Buick to the funeral. Grandpa was buried on top of a hill overlooking the ruins of an ancient temple. His coffin was lowered into his own farmland so that he could be with his property fo
rever. And he faced the temple ruins so that he could join the ancients in worship.
Grandma Huang moved in with her eldest son, a colonel in the Chinese Army. Colonel Huang was under the command of Governor-General Li. My uncle was ten years older than my father, but he didn’t do as well in school. Much of the family savings went to my father’s education, especially his sojourn at Yenching University and then Michigan. Had Dad returned to China with a PhD in philosophy from an American university, then he would have garnered enough prestige to be appointed to a high-level position in the Chinese bureaucracy. Assuming that he would pass some more civil service exams, of course.
Education and knowledge were the most valued assets that a person could acquire in life. These assets would move the family out of the country farm and into the world of the ruling elite. That was the Confucian dream: Let the smartest people rule the land.
Governor Li was a small frail-looking man. He looked years older than forty-seven. He was balding, which was unusual for a Chinese his age. His green-tinted khaki uniform always looked just a bit big on him. The material did not sit well on his small-boned frame. But he seemed to be a nice, affable man. The first time we met, he took me aside for a brief chat. I think he felt obligated to get to know his private secretary/translator’s son.
“You have to speak up,” he said, “I am nearly deaf in one ear, so I can’t hear. An artillery shell landed near me and burst my eardrum. I was in the front lines with my troops,” he told me. He probably said more, but this is what I remembered. Impressed, I told Mom about it.
“He is very proud of being on the front lines. He told me the same story,” she said.