Daughter of Good Fortune: A Twentieth-Century Chinese Peasant Memoir

by Chen Huiqin

  Mother’s father, my grandfather (Waigong), worked as a year-long hired hand (changgong) for a rich family with the surname of Zhou in Zhou Family Village (Zhoujiazhai). One night a baby girl was born in the Zhou family but died within a couple of days. On the same day, Grandmother gave birth to her fourth child, a girl. Grandfather offered the Zhou family his newborn girl for adoption. The family accepted the offer. The baby was adopted when it was three days old and grew up drinking the adopted mother’s milk. Zhou Family Village was on the west side of the Xijing River (Xijing He), a river that flowed in the north-south direction on the west side of our village. Therefore, I refer to her as West River Aunt (Hexi Niangyi).

  The Zhou couple who adopted my West River Aunt did not produce any children of their own. After having adopted my aunt, they adopted a boy and raised him. When the boy and my aunt were old enough, the parents had the young people married and made them legitimate inheritors of the family property. They were able to do so because my aunt’s adopted father was the only biological son in the family. He had an adopted brother, who had been given only one-eighth of the family property. Further, this adopted brother did not have any children either, and had also adopted a girl. The extended Zhou family was rich in property but was poorly blessed with posterity. West River Aunt and her husband, however, would have four sons and one daughter.

  West River Aunt and her husband, my uncle (Yifu), were hard-working farmers and good managers. They worked in the fields together with hired laborers. Nobody could idle time away because they were there working by them.

  West River Aunt and Uncle loved children and their first child was not born until I was ten years old. When I was little, quite often, Aunt or Uncle would come and get me to spend a few days at their house. They would send me with a bamboo basket to gather chicken eggs in the grain barn. They opened the grain barn during the day and laid a lot of dry rice stalks there for chickens to lay eggs. Aunt and her family ate well, with every meal containing rice and meat. Laborers working for them also ate meat and rice with them. Poor people in nearby villages competed for an opportunity to work for them. Theirs was a landowning family known for good food as well as hard work.

  Mother had another younger sister, and this one was given to a family in Song Family Village (Songjiacun) as a child bride. Poor families did not see why they should spend limited resources on a daughter who was destined to be a child bearer for another family. Poor families with sons were worried that they would be too poor to get a wife for their son and so were willing to raise an adopted girl as their son’s future wife. Song Family Village was on the east side of our village, so I refer to this sister of my mother’s as East River Aunt.

  The Song family had East River Aunt and their son married. But the son never agreed to the marriage. He was a professional cook and worked for families far and near. After the marriage with my aunt, he stayed away from home and eventually married another woman. His father vowed to kill him if he ever returned home, so he rented a house away from his village and had a son with the wife of his choice. East River Aunt was a capable woman and her in-laws liked her and regarded her as the lawful daughter-in-law. With her in-laws’ support, she adopted a daughter and raised her. She never married again.

  Mother’s elder brother worked as a year-long hired hand for a well-to-do family in his own village. My uncle (Niangjiu) and his family were so poor that nobody wished to send their daughter to suffer such poverty. Grandfather died young. Grandmother did manage to buy a wife for Uncle, but the woman did not stay long. She sneaked out one day, taking with her my uncle’s clothes, the only valuable items in the house.

  After the brief marriage, Uncle was again a bachelor working as a hired hand for the well-to-do family. The man of this family was sick with tuberculosis. His wife became sexually attracted to my uncle, a tall young man with a strong body. Unfortunately, Uncle got a venereal disease from the woman. The disease exposed the affair, and Uncle was kicked out by the family. Since he did not have the money to get any treatment, Uncle almost died from the disease. It was his strong body that helped save him from death. After that, he worked as a hired hand for my West River Aunt’s family until Liberation.

  When I became aware of things, I saw with my own eyes how poor a family my mother came from. Grandmother’s house had a leaky roof. Two of the bedroom walls were collapsing and I could see the outside while staying inside. In winter, snow came through the collapsed places into the bedroom. Grandmother’s bed was placed in the corner away from the collapsing walls and under the part of the roof that leaked the least. Uncle’s bed was easily movable, allowing him to move it around to avoid dripping water from the roof.

  In the kitchen, Grandmother had a run-down brick stove. Brick stoves had to be rebuilt from time to time, for bricks and mortar cracked from daily cooking. But Grandmother and Uncle could not afford to buy new bricks and mortar. They kept the stove, for its wall was where a portrait of the Kitchen God was pasted. For cooking, she used a movable stove (xingzao), a big earthen vat with a side opening for fuel. A wok would sit on the wide opening of the vat to get the heat from below. That was where Grandmother cooked her meals.

  Grandmother owned three-tenths of a mu of land.2 She grew vegetables, beans, rye, and a bit of cotton on it. She used the cotton to clothe herself and her son. The land also served as the family burial ground. When you did not have enough land, not only did you not have enough to eat, but you also had a shortage of fuel for cooking. The main source for cooking fuel in our area in the old days was crop stalks. That was another reason Grandmother used the movable stove to cook, for the movable stove was more efficient in fuel consumption.

  When I was little, I liked the food Grandmother cooked on the movable stove. I thought it tasted more delicious. As I got older, I realized how hard life was for Grandmother and Uncle. Today, when I think of poverty, I think of the life they lived before Liberation.

  ANCESTRAL COMPOUNDS

  My paternal ancestors were rich people. They moved from North Hamlet (Beicun) to South Hamlet (Nancun), where they built two compounds, the West Compound and the East Compound. They were side by side, facing the south. A house needed to be near a river for washing purposes, so the compounds were built on the south bank of the Zhangjing River (Zhangjing He). On the western side of the West Compound, my ancestors had a branch river dug up. This branch river ran from the Zhangjing River southward and turned eastward on the southern side, covering about one-third of the width of the West Compound.

  In the old days, the location of a house and the way a house was built were determined through consultation with geomancy (fengshui) masters. I do not know what the geomancy masters said, but I see two practical reasons for digging the branch river. First, it provided earth to raise the site on which the houses were to be built. In fact, the West Compound I grew up in never had water come in, not even when other houses in our village were flooded in severe storms. Second, the branch river provided occupants of the compounds secure access to river water for washing purposes. In the old days, thieves and robbers usually used boats for transportation, so access to water behind the house in the Zhangjing River was dangerous.

  The West Compound had four main quarters connected by two guest halls and two side rooms with a sky well (tianjing) in the middle. The sky well was an open space with a drain for rain water. Adults also used it to dump laundry water. The sky well was also space for the occupants to dry washed clothes on bamboo poles. When it rained, adults got the washed laundry into the guest halls.

  My nuclear family occupied the northeast quarter of the West Compound. Father’s brother, my uncle (Bobo), and his nuclear family lived in the southwest quarter. The northwest and southeast quarters as well as the rooms on both sides belonged to my father’s cousins. The guest halls were shared spaces for large furniture such as a loom and for ceremonies such as weddings and funerals. Ancestral tablets, which were wood blocks recording the names of our ancestors, were also placed in the guest ha
lls. Father’s family owned another two rooms in the East Compound, which was where my paternal grandmother slept.

  Inside the rear guest hall, the one connecting my nuclear family’s quarter with the northwest quarter, there was an inscribed wooden board two and a half feet high by six feet long. On the board were three Chinese characters: Dun Hou Tang, Hall of Honesty and Sincerity. The board was an official present to our ancestors. It must have been presented at the time when the compound was built, for it was an integral part of the second beam on the north side of the guest hall. The inscribed board was shown most prominently when an important ceremony took place inside the hall. The inscribed board showed a kind of recognition of our family by the officials in the earlier days.

  The East Compound had a different layout. There were two main quarters connected by a guest hall, which was bigger than either the front guest hall or the rear guest hall inside the West Compound. Stretching southward were two side rooms and a sky well. All were bigger than the ones in the West Compound. Closing in the compound on the south side were five more rooms, with the middle being the Fortune Gate Room (xiangmenjian).

  Our ancestors must have entertained official guests with grand ceremonies. Adults said that the Fortune Gate Room was where the family ushered in important guests when they held a grand ceremony. After guests were formally welcomed, they would be entertained with tea and snacks in the rooms on each side.

  When I grew up, the extended family no longer expected any official guests. The Fortune Gate Room was turned into a space where a pestle and mortar was installed for all of us to pound sweet rice into flour for glutinous rice balls with sweet or meat fillings (yuantuan). My grandmother lived in the two small rooms on the west side of the Fortune Gate Room.

  There was a narrow, dark, and often damp alley between the East and West Compounds. The East Compound was parallel to the West Compound’s front half. There was no roof that covered the meeting place of the two compounds. Rainwater dropped down from the two roofs into a drain ditch in the alley. When it rained heavily, dripping rainwater splashed, wetting the narrow alley. Since the eaves of the two roofs literally touched each other, the alley was never exposed to any sunshine.

  Since the East Compound was parallel to the front half of the West Compound, there was an open space behind the East Compound. This open space was right outside my nuclear family’s quarter.

  Inside my family’s quarter, we divided the space into two rooms. One was our bedroom with two beds and the other our kitchen-dining room. In the kitchen-dining room, there was a brick stove, a square table with benches around it, and two big earthen vats, one for storing well water and the other for river water. Well water was for cooking food, while stored river water was for washing. My father had a particular way of purifying river water in our earthen vat—he would put alum in the water, stir it, and wait for silt to settle down to the bottom of the vat. He would then use a bamboo stick that had been hollowed inside to suck up the silt. Thus we always used clean water even for washing purposes.

  Right behind our quarter was a thatched house where we stored crop stalks for cooking fuel and raised pigs, sheep, and rabbits. Outside the thatched house was an earthen vat that stored night soil to use as fertilizer.

  We had to go through the sky well and the front guest hall in order to get to the stone steps to the water (shuiqiao) in the branch river, to fetch water and to wash things. This was the only set of stone steps for all of us in the two compounds. The only well, which was located on the southeast corner outside the East Compound, was also shared by all of us.

  By the mid-1940s, my father said that the one set of stone steps to the water and one well were no longer enough for all the families occupying the East and West Compounds. He decided to build another set of stone steps to the water in the Zhangjing River behind our living quarter.

  But Father ran into a problem. The open space right outside our quarter was owned by Father’s uncle. This granduncle inherited from the same father as did my grandfather. When Grandfather gambled away his inherited wealth and property, his brother kept his share and worked it. By my time, this uncle of my father’s had become a rich landowner and had to hire hands to work on the family land. He had turned the space right outside our quarter into an ox pen. He scolded Father and said that a set of stone steps behind the compound would make all the families unsafe, for thieves and robbers could get up from the river and rob the homes.

  My father gave his reasons, but his uncle would not listen. Father went ahead and had the stone steps built anyway. As time went by, the steps Father built were used by more and more people in the two compounds. The old ones were gradually abandoned, as silt built up there while silt from the river behind our house was regularly collected as fertilizer. The original set of stone steps was at the end of the branch river. Silt-collecting boats could not easily turn around there so they neglected the area.

  LIVELIHOOD

  Father finished his six-year apprenticeship as a Daoist priest at the age of nineteen. Although he helped during planting and harvesting seasons, he worked mainly as a Daoist priest. In his profession, he sometimes worked alone; many times, he worked with the Zhangjia Daoist priests. When someone in a well-to-do family died, eight priests would be hired to chant for a day, called daochang, to send the dead off to the other world with blessings. Well-to-do families also held a chanting ritual, called dajiao, around the Mid-Autumn Festival. This ritual was to remove various evil spirits from the house and ask for blessings from Heaven and Earth. In order to show sincerity, the performing priests and the hosting family ate only vegetarian food on the day.

  Around winter solstice, Father would again be very busy chanting on behalf of families, thanking Heaven and Earth for a good year and asking for blessings for a better year. Families moving into new houses also called a Daoist priest to preside over a ceremony called zhenzhai, calming the homesite. Daoist priests were also hired by families with sicknesses that were believed to be caused by having disturbed various gods and goddesses. A priest would go to the family and perform a ritual to calm the disturbed god or goddess.

  Father’s profession was a respectable one. He wore a long gown (changshan) year-round. In summer, the long gown was made of palace textile, a thin and wrinkle-free material. In winter, the long gown was made of homespun cotton cloth. He had to wear a long cotton-padded gown inside to keep him warm. When he went to work, he carried a candle lamp made of oiled paper. The one-day chanting rituals always lasted into the evening and the host family provided the candle. The lamp was necessary because in those days, there was no electrical lighting and roads were unpaved and narrow.

  Father’s profession required sitting on hard wooden benches for twelve or fourteen hours. One year in early autumn, a heat rash on Father’s buttocks turned into a huge abscess. He was bedridden. A doctor who was famous for his expertise in treating abscesses came every day to change the dressing for Father. He would take off the wrapping and pull up a solid piece of medicine he had put in the previous day. As he did this, pus gushed out into a container he brought. He would clean the wound and put in another solid piece of medicine and then wrap it again.

  Father was bedridden for more than ten days. Mother went into the fields during the day. I was about ten years old at the time. I sat next to the bed my father slept in, brought him the urinal when he needed it, and emptied and cleaned it afterwards. I brought him drinking water when he asked for it. In early autumn, taro was in season. Mother cooked some before she went into the fields. By mid-afternoon, I got a bowlful of the cooked taro, peeled them one by one, and feed them to Father.

  In the late 1940s, Father earned ten jin of rice each day for his service.3 At that time, professionals like Father preferred rice as payment for their services, for money was very unstable.

  Like many women from poor families, Mother worked for other families as a day laborer and grew crops on a piece of land my family rented. Later, she worked on our own land. But women u
sually did not participate in transplanting rice seedlings. Female bodies had to be protected for child-bearing and child-nursing functions, for families depended on them for their continuation. In the old days, there were no contraceptive methods. Women were menstruating, pregnant, or breastfeeding babies most of their adult lives. Traditional Chinese medicine said that during any of those times, the female body was weak and should be protected from exposure to cold temperatures. Rice transplanting usually took place in early summer and the water in rice paddies could still be cold then. In fact, if the transplanting season was rainy and cold, transplanters had to wear cotton-padded vests. When they got up from rice paddies for lunch and supper, they would drink high-proof Chinese liquor to drive away the cold from their bodies.

  After we bought irrigable land, we planted rice every three years. For the other two years, we planted cotton one year and soy beans the other. We contracted out the work of transplanting rice seedlings and of irrigating our rice paddies to rich families, paying for the service. Rich families used draft animals to turn a waterwheel to bring water to the rice paddies. Many families like ours contracted out transplanting and irrigating work.

  There was another way for not-very-rich families to grow rice. They would transplant rice seedlings and use human power to bring water to rice paddies themselves. After rice seedlings were transplanted, both male and female adults in the family would pedal a waterwheel day and night to bring water from a river or a pond into the rice paddies to keep the paddies irrigated throughout the growing season. That was a lot of work.

  I started to help from very early on. We raised sheep to provide manure for our crops and for their meat and I collected weeds for them. I started to braid yellow straw when I was about seven years old. Mother and I would walk about nine li to the West Gate of Jiading to get yellow straw.4 Mother would carry six bundles on a shoulder pole and I would carry two bundles on my shoulders. We took the braided straw to West Gate, where it was checked for quality and measured by length for payment.