Once Upon a Time in the East

by Xiaolu Guo

  An Unusual Visit

  I never knew my grandparents’ names until the day the local government sent someone to our street for the census. It was the end of 1970s. The One Child Policy had just been announced, and the government had started to pay attention to identity registration. My grandparents couldn’t even recognise their own names printed on the form, of course, let alone write them. Everyone in the village called my grandfather ‘Old Guo’, which gave only his family name. And my grandmother was simply ‘grandmother’ to everyone, or sometimes shi – – which means ‘wife’. It never occurred to me that my grandparents had personal names, nor did I ever bother to ask what they were. Being nameless in this respect was common for an old woman like my grandmother at that time. So when household registration started in Shitang at the end of 1978, it was a very confusing moment for everyone. The government not only needed the exact details of people’s identities (including name, age, place of birth, political status, children, etc.), but they also had to name each street with a metal plate and add numbers to each door so the postmen could find every house, and the government could keep an up-to-date record of every family and their movements.

  In those few weeks, we kids followed the census officials from door to door, giggling and laughing at their curious activities in the village. When the two officials approached our house, I was so excited that I sat straight down beside my grandmother. My grandfather was not at home and I thought I could help my grandmother answer some of the big questions that they might ask her.

  The two men wore grey Mao suits, glasses and chain-smoked. One of them was probably the leader, as he looked older. The younger one had thicker glasses and acted like a secretary or assistant. He had a row of ballpoint pens in his top pocket and carried a dozen registration sheets. They sat opposite us, on the bench where my grandfather usually sat. Then the older one asked my grandmother:

  ‘How many people live in this house?’

  ‘How many?’ My grandmother stared at the man, thinking for a bit. Then she answered with a question: ‘When?’

  The man was a little confused and in turn questioned her: ‘What do you mean when? It’s a simple question, how many people live in this house?’

  Then the assistant suggested: ‘Two? Three?’

  My grandmother looked a little offended by what they had asked. But she was a humble woman, so she explained with her simple words: ‘But, officer, you should ask which year. I have lived in this house for the last fifty years and the number of people has always been changing. You know, there have been at least five or six people living in this house at any time: my husband and I, my son and his wife, then my grandchildren, sometimes my mother’s family’s cousins. Now, it’s different. My son left us a long time ago. My mother’s family barely visits. When my son got married, he and his wife left with their child. But I am still waiting for them to come back and live with us. Maybe they will come tomorrow. Maybe they will come back during Moon Festival. I don’t know. So it’s not that simple.’

  The two officers gaped at my grandmother and then looked at each other in dismay. The assistant was going to write some numbers on his sheet, but he consulted his boss first. ‘So should I write six or two?’

  The other cursed the younger man. ‘You are playing flute to a cow, little brother! Granny just doesn’t understand our question.’

  By this point, I was growing impatient, so I gave the answer: ‘Three, officer. Three! My grandfather, my grandmother and me are the only ones living in this house.’

  The officer praised me and his hand went into his pockets. He took out a piece of candy and gave it to me. I popped it into my mouth at once.

  ‘So tell me everyone’s name,’ the assistant continued as he wrote on his form. ‘What’s your granddaughter’s name and age?’

  Before I could answer for myself, my grandmother began: ‘Guo Xiaolu. She is five.’

  ‘But we need to know her exact date of birth.’ The assistant stopped writing and looked up. ‘When’s your birthday, little girl?’

  I stared at him blankly. Birthday? I had never heard of such a concept. I was born already, why would I need that now?

  ‘When’s your granddaughter’s birthday, granny?’ the boss asked, stamping out his cigarette. He then lit a new one.

  ‘I don’t know exactly,’ she answered. She looked as confused as me, then added: ‘She was given to us when she was nearly two. There were no papers with her.’

  ‘What is your name, granny?’ the assistant chirped.

  There was a silence. Then both of the men looked at my grandmother, taking long drags on their cigarettes, their bleary eyes like needles in the haze of their exhalations.

  ‘I have no name,’ she replied.

  ‘What do other people call you?’ The boss didn’t seem at all surprised by her answer. They already knew that very few old women had names in our village.

  My grandmother just shook her head.

  ‘Is it fine with you if we just write your name as Guo Shi?’ the secretary enquired.

  It must have sounded reasonable to my grandmother, since Guo Shi literally meant ‘wife of Guo’. And I saw my grandmother nod her head.

  But the boss was not happy with this outcome. He turned to his assistant. ‘Don’t you remember what the chief said to us about this yesterday? It’s feudalistic to call a woman merely someone’s wife. We can’t do this again or we’ll be sacked.’

  ‘Before my marriage,’ my grandmother began hesitantly, ‘my parents called me Second Sister, because I was the younger daughter in the house.’

  ‘Second Sister? That’s no good,’ the boss officer said dogmatically.

  ‘So what shall we do?’ The younger man raised his head from the registration sheets and looked grave.

  ‘We have to find out this woman’s real name!’ the boss cried firmly. Then he turned to my grandmother and leaned towards her as if she was now a very important person.

  ‘Listen, granny, do you have any papers related to your family? Any original household registration papers?’

  ‘Papers?’ My grandmother shook her head. ‘Maybe my husband has some.’

  ‘Where is your husband?’ the man said.

  ‘Oh, he’s out. He only comes home to eat.’

  The two men looked at their watches. It was just after lunch, so my grandfather wouldn’t be back until late.

  ‘Show me where he keeps his papers.’ The officer was now looking really annoyed.

  My grandmother didn’t move. And I knew why. So I explained: ‘My grandfather would be very angry if anyone entered his room. He would beat us.’

  The assistant gave me a glance, not impressed by what I had said.

  ‘What’s your husband’s name? And age?’ the officer said.

  ‘Guo Liangcai. He will be seventy-two this year,’ my grandmother said.

  I was very surprised. Because this was the first time I had heard my grandfather’s full name. I didn’t expect him to have such an ordinary name, just like all the other men in the village. Suddenly, he seemed different to me. His name was like a new hat.

  ‘Which liang and which cai?’ The assistant raised his pen, but hesitated. In Chinese many different characters have the same pronunciation yet are made up of different characters, and you had to be educated to know which character to write.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ my grandmother answered. ‘I only know that his name is Guo Liangcai. You know we can’t write.’

  Now the assistant was beginning to get very frustrated. He looked at his boss for instruction. But his boss seemed to have lost his patience too. He choked on his cigarette and then asked: ‘And I suppose you don’t know your husband’s exact birthday either?’

  My grandmother’s eyeballs rolled upward, as if she was hoping an answer would fall from the heavens. I knew she was really thinking, since thinking always had that effect on her small, damp eyes. Then she said: ‘I know that he was born around the ninth day of the ninth moon. But that is acc
ording to the lunar calendar, officer.’

  ‘Well, we have to find out the date in the Western calendar,’ the secretary said with a weary voice. ‘We don’t use the lunar calendar any more in our registration documents. It’s our new policy.’

  He started on his fifth cigarette. The whole kitchen was full of smoke. My eyes felt itchy and I had to rub them constantly. Then I heard one of the men say:

  ‘Have you got some tea, granny? We could wait for another ten minutes, maybe your husband will appear.’

  My grandmother stood up and poured some water from the bucket into the wok. Since she barely washed the wok (in order to save oil and any leftover nutrients from the previous dish), I could see that the water in the wok had turned a brownish tinge. But my grandmother could not see this. She replaced the lid and set the water on to boil as the men smoked, oblivious of us.

  ‘I really can’t do this job, brother! You can see for yourself, most people here are illiterate and don’t know how to write their names. And even if they showed us their family paperwork, they wouldn’t even be able to point out their own name on the page. What’s the point of the census? It’s totally inaccurate!’

  ‘There is a positive side to it, brother, even if our resources are limited,’ his colleague tried to soothe him. ‘At least the government can gather information about the number of children. After all, the government’s main concern is population control.’

  ‘So I suppose we don’t need to give them any packages today?’ The assistant looked at his boss, as he reached for his bag.

  ‘No. No need,’ the officer answered wearily.

  At that age, I didn’t understand what they meant by ‘give them any packages’. Only many years later did I realize that they were talking about distributing condoms to married couples to stop women getting pregnant.

  That afternoon, the men drank two cups of oily green tea, and ate my grandmother’s red-bean cakes, which were as hard as rocks. But my grandfather didn’t return home in time. As the dusk was falling outside in the street, the two men dried their cups and stood up.

  ‘We might come back tomorrow, or another time, granny,’ the assistant said. They had finally stopped smoking.

  My grandmother and I watched them disappear into the twilight, both of us wondering what these government men really wanted from us. We could offer them nothing apart from my grandmother’s oily, dirty tea and inedible cakes. Even now, decades later, I wonder occasionally what they wrote about us on those registration forms. It seemed that millions of people’s lives were turned into arbitrary, accidently created fictions, made up by the state. The real lives of the people were unimportant to officialdom.

  The Child Bride

  After the visit by the two government officers, I became quite curious about my grandparents’ stories. I now knew my grandfather’s real name, but not where he was from, and I knew even less about my grandmother.

  ‘If your name was Second Sister before you married my grandfather,’ I asked her, ‘you must have a family name? Like my family name, Guo?’

  ‘We were the Liang family.’

  ‘Liang?’

  ‘Most people in Peach Knot Village were related to the Liang family. I had many cousins and uncles before I left Peach Knot to marry your grandfather. But I don’t know how they are doing these days.’ My grandmother paused, and then added slowly: ‘… or whether they are still alive.’

  ‘Peach Knot? Were there peach trees in your village?’

  ‘There used to be lots of peach trees. But they were all cut down, and we planted tea and rice instead.’

  ‘Oh.’ I was disappointed. Peaches were my favourite fruit. It was hard to grow peaches in Shitang because they rotted quickly in the humid hot air. I usually only got to eat two or three during the festival season when the villagers donated fruit to the Buddhist temple on the hill. I would go to the temple once the ceremonies were over and steal most of the offerings from a grand porcelain bowl in front of a statue of Buddha. My focus was on the peaches and dates especially – they were the sweetest.

  ‘What about your older sister? Where is she now?’ I asked. My grandmother had never spoken about her own family to me.

  ‘She married into a family not far from Peach Knot.’

  ‘And did she have children and grandchildren?’

  My grandmother shook her head. From the doorway, I could see the afternoon sun casting long shadows across everything outside in our street. She got up and started preparing our dinner, bringing the conversation to a close.

  But I persisted. ‘Why didn’t she have any children?’ I was surprised. As far as I knew, every single woman in Shitang had many children, and once she became a grandmother, she had plenty of grandchildren too.

  ‘She had a ghost marriage.’ My grandmother fetched a small axe and began to chop some wood behind the stone stove.

  ‘A ghost marriage? What’s that?’

  ‘When she was very little, maybe only three or four years old, she was engaged to a man who was fifteen years older than her. But by the time she had turned fourteen and they were supposed to get married, he had died from some illness. Our parents and his parents would not break the arrangement, since his parents promised to give us a donkey for the marriage. So on the day the wedding was supposed to take place, we went to their village to get the donkey. My sister was wearing a red dress and sat in the front room of their house. Once all the relatives were gathered, my sister knelt and bowed three times to her parents-in-law with a framed photo of her dead husband beside her.’

  ‘Oh. So she got married to a picture …!’ I imagined a young woman in her red gown lying on a bed, in the dark, beside a framed photo. At least the photo wouldn’t beat her! ‘Did your family get the donkey afterwards?’

  ‘We took it home after eating a big meal at their house. But my sister had to stay and serve the family for the rest of her life. When we left with the donkey, my sister cried so hard it was as if she was going straight to hell that night. My mother and I cried too. Only my father left without saying anything, pulling at the donkey. That was the last time we saw my sister.’

  I pondered upon this for a while. What was better, I wondered: to live with a ghost husband, or with a real live grumpy violent husband who barely came home? I thought long and hard, but couldn’t decide. Then, suddenly, I remembered the donkey.

  ‘How about the donkey? Is it still alive?’

  ‘No, the donkey died a long time ago. It died before my father married me off to your grandfather. My mother died a year after the donkey.’

  ‘Oh …’

  My grandmother was wiping her eyes with her dusty and blackened hands. I didn’t know if it was because dust from the stove had got into her eyes or if she was crying. She then put the chopped pieces of wood into the stove and lit the fire.

  ‘Did you get a donkey when you married grandfather?’ I asked eagerly.

  ‘Don’t be silly. Have you ever seen a single donkey in Shitang? What would you want animals for if you live right next to the sea? There’s no land here. Too much water. If people here saw a donkey they would think they had met a dragon, or a donkey-dragon!’

  My grandmother now stopped wiping her eyes and returned to the story. ‘My father and I had never met your grandfather, but someone came to our village looking for unmarried daughters. He told us a fisherman needed a wife and he could give us some bags of yams and rice if my father agreed to marry me off. So my father said yes, even though I was still a young child. The man went back to Shitang first to inform your grandfather and also to prepare the yams and rice for us. And we waited. We waited for years for him to return, but no one showed up. My father was so angry he nearly went looking for another family to take me.’

  The image of an angry father was forming before my eyes: he looked just like my grandfather, his eyes bulging as he brooded on his pipe in a dimly lit kitchen. ‘Why was he angry? Because you were getting old?’

  ‘No, I was still young. I was only
twelve.’ My grandmother rose from the stove, began to chop a long belt of kelp, and threw the pieces into a wok of water.

  I wondered about being twelve years old. I had just turned five and I would be married off just seven years later if we were to follow this tradition. Perhaps I would get two donkeys, even though the animals would belong to my grandparents and not me.

  ‘It seemed like we waited a lifetime,’ my grandmother continued. ‘But finally the man came back to Peach Knot and he brought a sack of rice and three bags of yams on a horse cart. He said to us: Guo Liangcai, your future husband, was pleased with the marriage proposal and urged you to come to Shitang as soon as possible.’ My father was relieved. We packed all the clothes I had: two shirts and the mended trousers that had belonged to my dead mother. We steamed some buns and off we went. It was early morning. My father and I carried all our stuff and followed the man. I didn’t realise your grandfather’s home was so far away. The horse cart didn’t come with us — we couldn’t afford it, so we just walked. We walked across the mountains, along dirt paths. I remember seeing a peacock in the bush. I tripped, because my feet ached so much. I sat down in the dirt, holding my aching feet and watching the peacock running away from us. My father said it was a good sign. The peacock is your husband. He is waiting for you. I almost burst into tears because my bound feet hurt from so much walking. On the first night, we had to sleep by the roadside and were bitten by a swarm of mosquitoes. By the second day, we had already eaten all the buns and we were still very hungry. My father was furious with the man, because he had promised us it would take us only one day to walk to Shitang. We walked and walked, and on the third day we arrived. As we came down from the mountains, I caught a glimpse of the sea. I was so frightened. It was the first time I had seen so much water! There was water everywhere! And those waves! Then a gust of salty wind blew against my face and I thought I couldn’t breathe! I was so scared! How would I survive here with such a strong sea wind and bare rocks everywhere under my feet? But my father assured me that there was much more food in a fishing village. He made me believe that life would be better in Shitang compared to Peach Knot.’