by Chen Huiqin
My husband visited Shezhen in Beijing and met Zhou Wei and his family for the first time. He came home and told me that Zhou Wei was indeed a pleasant and thoughtful young man. It was Zhou Wei who gave detailed directions to my husband to get to the Agricultural Exhibition from Shezhen’s school. My husband visited Shezhen’s campus, ate meals at her dining room, and met some of her colleagues, who spoke highly of her. He came home and told me everything about her workplace.
That same year, Shezhu came home and told me that a young man working in the same factory, the Farm Machine Plant, had shown her a lot of unusual fondness. She told me who this young man was. Although I did not know the young man, I knew of his mother, who had the reputation of being a very tough woman. I told Shezhu that this was not a suitable family for her to marry into, because she had too soft a heart. When her feelings were hurt, all she knew was to cry. She would not fight back. I was afraid that she would be easily hurt as a daughter-in-law in that family.
A few days later, Shezhu’s master came to visit me. The master said with confidence that the young man was smart and pleasant. She tried to persuade me to give my consent to Shezhu. The master added that Shezhu was also fond of the young man. That is, the attraction was mutual.
My husband was more open-minded than I. He said that we parents should leave such decisions entirely to our children. He added that our daughter was choosing to live the rest of her life with the young man, not the mother of the young man. I also realized that Shezhu was not happy with my decision, although she did not fight back or argue with me. So I gave in and told her that I was no longer blocking the development of the relationship.
Then on the first day of the tenth month on the peasant calendar (shiyuezhao), I held a ceremony to remember Grandmother. This is the day people make offerings to a loved one who died within the previous year. Little Aunt and some other relatives came for the ceremony. After lunch, at which we made offerings of food and burned paper money for Grandmother, I stayed home because I had relatives visiting. About mid-afternoon, I was making a snack for my relatives when one of my neighbors came and told me that somebody other than Shezhu was working in our family plot. It was her boyfriend, Ah Ming.
I had cut the rice on our family plot the day before and planned to bundle up the rice stalks and bring them to the threshing ground after my relatives left. Shezhu was aware of my plan when she went to work in the morning, so she brought Ah Ming with her to help bring in the rice. They rode their bikes straight from work to our family plot without making a stop at my house. After the relatives left, I joined them in the field. That was the first time I met Ah Ming.
BUILDING ANOTHER HOUSE
One day in November of 1980, I was working in the fields when my husband came on his bike to see me. This was unusual, so I was puzzled. He called me out of the field and told me that he thought we should raise our old living quarter into a two-story house in order to get another bedroom on the second floor. When I asked him why he was in such a hurry, not even waiting until I returned home in the evening, he said that he had received a letter from Shezhen that day, informing us that she and Zhou Wei planned to get married the following January and to come home together during the Chinese New Year holiday. My husband said that when Shezhen and Zhou Wei came home, we needed at least one more bedroom. He explained that it would take time for new walls to dry.
I agreed with my husband. He started to buy building materials such as bricks, pre-fabricated concrete beams, wood, and glass for windows. We hired brick masons and carpenters, and building began before the month of November ended.
We carefully took down the old house, which was between the two-story house and the extension, and re-used the bricks and wood beams in the new building. Although we did not tear down the two-story house, its roof was affected because it had to be connected with the new house. Consequently, our bedroom on the second floor could not be used during the construction. We closed the warping shop temporarily, removed the warping frame and its related equipment, and turned the guest hall into a big bedroom. We all slept on the floor with a thick layer of dry rice stalks as a mattress.
Ah Ming was of great help. He was a strong young man and attended to various matters on the site on our behalf. Our son, who was attending college at the time, came home during the weekend and brought some of his classmates to help. Many of our relatives, friends, and neighbors helped to mix mortar, to bring bricks and mortar to the brick masons, and to raise the roof beams. A few women helped me to prepare lunches, mid-afternoon snacks, and dinners for the artisans and helping relatives and neighbors. On the day when the roof beams were raised, we hired a professional chef, who cooked a banquet dinner for us.
House building is a very tense business. We hoped that Heaven would cooperate with us by allowing a span of days with no rain and that there would be no injury or accident. Every day, I worried about the safety of all the people helping and working for us. The most dangerous activities in house building were putting up the beams and completing the roof. When all the tiles were laid down on the roof, I took a deep breath. What was left was plastering walls, which was a much less risky job.
One afternoon after the roof was up, I was preparing an afternoon snack in Zhongming’s kitchen and Ah Juan was helping me. I said that a stone had been lifted from my heart now that the building project was almost completed. Right after I said that, I heard some unusual sounds from the building site. I quickly stepped out of the kitchen and saw Ah Ming carrying a woman in his arms. The woman’s hands and legs were limp and dangling as Ah Ming rushed out to the front road. It was a speechless scene of heavy steps and hurried activity. I quickly realized that it was Ah Du, wife of one of my husband’s nephews. The limp body and the speechless scene suggested that it was a serious accident. Before I said or did anything, I fainted. I was carried to Zhongming’s bed and then came to consciousness. My relatives tried to comfort me, saying that it would not be too serious, but to no avail. I fainted time and again.
Ah Du was rushed to the People’s Hospital in Jiading in a truck that was helping with the house building. Every time I came to consciousness, I asked for details about the accident. This is what I gathered.
That afternoon, the brick masons were plastering the interior side of the roof. Wood planks were put up about two meters above the floor on the second level. Ah Du stood on the wood planks to pass up buckets of mixed lime mortar to the masons. The wood planks were not fastened and Ah Du knew that. She sat down on the wood planks after passing up one bucket. When the bucket was empty, she would stand up, get another bucketful of mortar from somebody below her, and pass it up again. She had been there doing this job for a couple of hours when she somehow got to a loose end of a plank, fell down to the floor, and became unconscious. Ah Ming was nearby and responded swiftly. He rode with Ah Du in the truck while my husband and several others rode their bicycles to the hospital.
By late afternoon, somebody came back from the hospital and told me that Ah Du had regained consciousness and had undergone several medical tests. Doctors said that she had no head injuries or broken bones, but she was asked to stay in the emergency room for the night for further observation.
I did not believe what I was told. I said, “You are telling me this just to comfort me.” I said that I wanted to go to the hospital to see Ah Du personally. My husband and relatives realized that I would not believe them unless I saw Ah Du myself. So the truck driver made another trip and drove me to the hospital.
There, I saw Ah Du in the emergency room. She broke into tears and said to me, “Xin Mama, it was all my fault”1 because she had learned that I passed out in response to the accident. I asked her how she was feeling. She responded that she was a bit dizzy. She said that the doctors told her that her dizziness should be temporary and would disappear gradually.
I was relieved a bit but remained worried for quite some time. For several months after the incident, I checked with her often, asking if she was still feeling dizzy.
Indeed, she had not suffered any serious concussion or head injuries. In time, her dizziness disappeared. Only then was I totally relieved.
The house was completed by early December. In those days, both the interior and exterior walls were covered with lime mortar. It took a long time for the walls to dry. I remember that when Shezhen and Zhou Wei came home for the Chinese New Year at the end of January, the walls inside the new house were still a bit wet.
After the building was completed, we had two bedrooms on the second floor. I set up the warping shop again in the guest hall on the first floor. Parallel to the guest hall was another big room with a cement floor and big glass windows on both the north and south sides. Our kitchen and dining room were still in the extension we built in the early 1960s. On the second floor, we built a bathroom between the two bedrooms. Before this, the chamber pot had been placed inside the bedroom with no further privacy. Now the chamber pot was inside the bathroom. With the doors closed, we now had privacy while relieving ourselves.
For the new bedroom, Ah Ming put together a radio–tea table. Ah Ming was very smart. He installed a radio under the tea table. We bought two sofa chairs and placed them on each side of the radio–tea table. Two people could sit down and enjoy music. We hired a carpenter to build a new modern bed (Zhongshan chuang). The modern bed did not have a canopy-like frame to support a mosquito net, so for the new bedroom, we put screens on the windows so no mosquitoes could get inside the room. We also bought a nightstand and put it beside the bed. This kind of furnishing was considered modern- or city-style at the time. The bedroom was furnished for Shezhen and Zhou Wei (fig. 9.1).
Outside the two bedrooms, we had a spacious balcony. Running water had arrived in the village several years earlier. Pipes were installed and we had a concrete sink built on the balcony so we had convenient access to running water upstairs.
WEDDING BANQUETS
Before the Chinese New Year’s Day of 1981, Shezhen arrived home with Zhou Wei. They were really modern people and traveled from Beijing to Shanghai by plane. When Zhou Wei arrived at our house, many neighbors and villagers came to see him. It is the custom that villagers go to see somebody’s bride or groom. That was also my first opportunity to meet Zhou Wei. I think he was surprised that so many people came to see him, but he did not seem bothered. He was a young man who had seen the world.
After Zhou Wei arrived in our house, my husband asked him to help plant two ginkgo trees behind our house. The piling of building materials, construction of scaffolding, and human activities during the construction had damaged the vegetation behind the house. After the house was built, we cleaned up the area and decided to plant a few new trees. At the time, the ginkgo tree was very popular. People believed that because the ginkgo tree provided a cooling effect, it was good for people with high blood pressure. My husband got two little ginkgo trees from one of his nephews in North Hamlet. Zhou Wei was given a shovel and he worked hard digging holes and planting the trees. The trees grew very healthily and rose straight into the sky.
Shezhen and Zhou Wei had already been officially married. Yet my husband and I still wanted to hold a banquet to announce their marriage to our relatives, friends, and neighbors and to provide an opportunity for everyone to meet our son-in-law. The wedding banquet was held on the fourth day of the Chinese New Year.
In preparation for the banquet, I made rice wine with the help of West River Uncle. We only made simple rice wine, not the raw sweet wine (shengganjiu) we had made for my wedding banquet, because the fermentation starter for the latter had to be made several months ahead of time. Zhou Wei told me that he loved the homemade rice wine. He said that it was one of the best wines he had ever tasted. After that, when I knew he was coming for a visit, I made rice wine for him. But during the hot summer months in Shanghai, the temperature is too high for rice-wine making. One time that he was coming for a visit in early June, I made rice wine in March. I squeezed and bottled the wine. When he came for the visit, the wine was still good.
We had seven tables of relatives and friends, about sixty people, at the banquet for Shezhen and Zhou Wei. I filled a water kettle with the homemade rice wine, warmed it on a coal stove, and asked Zhou Wei to pour wine for everyone at the banquet. My husband and I accompanied him and introduced him to all our relatives and friends. We also distributed wedding candies to everyone at the banquet and to all the families in the village.
My husband and I wanted to give Shezhen a special gift. She lived far away from us, so we could not buy her furniture, which was the most common dowry parents prepared for a daughter’s wedding. My husband decided to buy a good wristwatch for Shezhen. A good watch meant a Swiss watch at the time. We had heard that Switzerland made the best watches in the world. My husband had been wearing a Swiss watch, which he bought secondhand, since the early 1950s, and the watch was still dependable. Imported watches, however, were not easily available. My husband sought help from a friend who had a relative working in a Shanghai watch shop. Through this connection, we bought a Swiss watch, which cost 190 yuan, as our wedding gift to Shezhen. At the time, my husband’s monthly salary was forty-eight yuan.
The wedding banquet for Shezhu was in January 1982. In those days, young people in our area participated in collective wedding ceremonies, so that is what Shezhu and Ah Ming did. The collective ceremony, held in early October 1981, officially made them husband and wife (fig. 9.2). However, my husband and I still planned a wedding banquet for Shezhu, as we had done for Shezhen. We wanted our relatives, friends, and neighbors to know Shezhu was married.
With better living conditions, rural people were holding larger and fancier wedding banquets. As a result, the government issued policies that discouraged such banquets and the collective wedding ceremony was intended to replace the traditional wedding banquet. People, however, did not respond well to the government’s call.
My husband was a commune leader at the time and was expected to follow the government policy and to lead by example. We decided that the wedding banquet for Shezhu would not exceed eight tables of guests, which for us rural people was already a small banquet. So my husband volunteered to pledge at a county-wide cadre meeting. His pledge drew derisive laughter from the audience, which included urban people, to whom eight tables of guests meant a grand banquet. They usually had one or two tables of guests for a wedding banquet. Following the meeting, the county authorities criticized my husband. Nonetheless, we still went ahead and held the wedding banquet for Shezhu with eight tables of guests.
Ah Ming’s family brought over wedding gifts (caili), which included six hundred yuan and twelve pieces of homemade cloth. His family also prepared the bridal bedroom with a new bed. We prepared a dowry for Shezhu, which included a wardrobe, a desk with a mirror, a quilt chest, a clothes trunk, a golden chest, two crimson-red square stools, two crimson-red benches, three wood wash basins, a chamber pot, and a bike. Bikes had become essential in young people’s lives, because most worked in factories and depended on them for their daily commute. I helped Shezhu prepare several cotton-padded quilts for her new bedroom. She had new clothes made by a tailor, made new shoes for herself and Ah Ming, and knitted new sweaters. And, in the preceding years, she and I had made homespun cloth of various colors and patterns.
On the morning of the wedding day, Ah Ming’s family sent a boat to fetch the furnishings, except for the golden chest. I boiled eggs, dyed them red, and put them in the new chamber pot, thus making it a “descendants’ pot” (zisuntong). The cotton-padded quilts, with pretty satin covers, were strung over the two benches. Homemade cloth was put in the clothes trunk. Furniture drawers contained new shoes. The wardrobe contained new clothes and new sweaters. We put a handful of raw rice and beans into every other empty space in the furniture, to wish to the newlywed couple a plentiful life.
Before lunch, Ah Ming came, riding a brand-new bike, accompanied by his best men and several girls to escort the bride. At the lunch, Ah Ming was the guest of honor. My husband and I took h
im, accompanied by Shezhu, around the tables to meet our relatives and he poured wine for them. Senior relatives such as aunts and uncles gave him meeting-ritual money wrapped in red paper.
After the banquet lunch, Shezhu, dressed up in a red jacket, left for her new home, riding on the rear seat of Ah Ming’s bike. She brought along several of her best friends as bridesmaids. She said goodbye to me and to her father with tears in her eyes. Shebao and Hanming, one of my cousins, went with Shezhu and carried the golden chest, which contained a few pieces of basic clothing for Shezhu and Ah Ming, nuts and fruits for the bridal party, and face towels for Shezhu to give as appreciation gifts to Ah Ming’s relatives.
Sending Shezhu off to her new home was an emotional experience. Yet that experience was made much more emotional by the following incident. Shezhen had come home from Beijing right before her sister’s wedding. We were very happy that she made it home for the event. The day after she arrived home, she went to Shanghai Foreign Languages Institute to get her college transcript. Shezhen wanted to go to the United States for graduate work.
Shezhen returned home that day and was very unhappy. The bureaucrats at the school said that they had not kept very good records during the Cultural Revolution and so in order to issue her a transcript, she had to obtain written letters of grades from all the teachers who had taught her. This was not easy, because the teachers had already started the school winter vacation. The only way to see them was to go to their homes, which were in every corner of urban Shanghai.
But Shezhen was determined. She decided to collect all the necessary letters and obtain the transcript before the transcript-issuing office closed for the Chinese New Year holidays. So, the next day, she went to urban Shanghai again. When she came home that evening, she was encouraged because the teachers she had seen all remembered her and gave her excellent grades in their written notes. But she had not been able to visit all of her teachers on that one day.