by Chen Huiqin
The next day was her sister’s wedding day. It was also the last day before the transcript-issuing office closed for the holidays. She got up early and left for urban Shanghai again.
It was getting dark outside but Shezhen was not yet home. The last bus from Jiading to Zhuqiao was scheduled to stop at Wangjialong around 6:30 p.m. I went to the stone steps behind our house and saw the bus passing by. Then I went to the front road, hoping to meet Shezhen, who should have taken that bus home. It had become completely dark now, but she did not show up. I could no longer contain my emotions, and I went to the back of our house, away from all the guests, and burst into tears.
Shezhen had no place to spend the night in urban Shanghai and would have to come home that night. Now that she had missed the last bus, she would have to walk the eleven li from the Jiading bus station to our home in the dark. I discussed the matter with my husband and we decided to ask Qilong, one of my husband’s nephews, to go and meet Shezhen. We told him that he should ride his bike slowly and watch out for Shezhen, who could be on the road anywhere between Jiading Town and our village. If he did not see her, he should go all the way into Jiading bus terminal and wait for the arrival of the last bus from urban Shanghai. Qilong finally came back with Shezhen, who had caught the last bus from urban Shanghai to Jiading Town. I will never forget that day.
Shezhen was disappointed because she had not come home with her college transcript. She did get the letters from all her teachers, but she failed to get the signature of the current English Department chair, which was needed for the office to issue her the transcript. It was only after the Chinese New Year holidays that Shezhen finally got her college transcript. I did not understand why she was so determined to study abroad. But I knew that once she decided to do something, she could not be persuaded otherwise.
VISITING FOREIGNERS
After Shezhu’s wedding, Shezhen’s foreign friends came to visit us. My husband made arrangements to have them picked up at their Shanghai hotel and driven to our home. Three foreigners came—a woman with the name of Annina and two men, one with a brown beard and the other with a black beard. Since the men had names that we could not pronounce, we referred to them as Brown Beard and Black Beard. Shezhen told us that Black Beard was from Pakistan and Annina and Brown Beard were Americans.
They did not speak a word of Chinese and we did not speak a word of English. Shezhen had to translate all the conversations during their visit. They stayed two nights and two days. Since this was in the middle of the winter season, we all wore cotton-padded clothing. But they did not. When we realized that they were not wearing enough clothes, we loaned them cotton-padded long coats, two of which were borrowed from our neighbors. We vacated the upstairs bedrooms for them and Shezhen. The rest of us put up temporary beds in the guest hall and slept there for the two nights.
They liked the food I cooked very much. I had kept some deep-fried pork and other meat dishes from Shezhu’s wedding banquet and cooked fresh vegetables and fresh mushrooms we grew ourselves. They watched me cook and took pictures of our traditional kitchen with a brick stove.
We made several big rice cakes before Shezhen’s friends came. When they were visiting, they helped to lay out the cake pieces on the balcony in the morning. I could see they really liked that, because they took out their cameras and shot quite a few pictures of the scene (fig. 9.3).
My husband arranged for Shezhen’s friends to visit some factories and animal farms in Chengdong Commune one afternoon. The rest of the time, they went out walking in our crop fields. They toured our village and talked to people, with Shezhen translating. One old man, who had returned from Singapore before Liberation, still remembered a few English words and talked to them directly.
It was again my husband who asked a driver to take our foreign friends back to their Shanghai hotel. When they left, they told us, through Shezhen’s translation, that they had visited many places in China, but their visit to our home had been the most interesting and meaningful.
BIRTH OF GRANDDAUGHTER
Shezhu was already pregnant when we held the wedding banquet for her. She continued to work in the Farm Machine Plant during her pregnancy. One morning before breakfast, Ah Ming came and told me that Shezhu had started contractions and was now on her way to the maternity ward in Zhuqiao Town. Ah Ming’s brother was the tractor driver in his production team. In busy farming seasons, the tractor pulled a plow or a rake-roller that flattened rice paddies. In slack farming seasons, the tractor pulled a trailer and served as a transportation vehicle. Shezhu’s baby was not due for another month, so they were unprepared. The only way Shezhu, who had already started contractions, could get to the maternity ward about four li from their house, was to ride in the trailer pulled by the small tractor.
I jumped onto the back seat of Ah Ming’s bike and we rushed to the maternity ward. There, Shezhu gave birth to a baby girl naturally and smoothly. The baby was born one month before her due date. The nurse asked if we wanted to have her put in an incubator due to its early birth. I said no, because the baby came into this world with a loud and strong cry. We saw the baby after she was cleaned. She was tiny, but she was very active, with her legs and hands kicking and moving. Ah Ming and Shezhu trusted my opinion and did not put the baby in an incubator.
Before Shezhu breastfed the baby for the first time, I cooked some bitter herb (huanglian), dipped a cotton ball into its liquid, and rubbed it onto the baby’s lips. We did that to all our babies when they were born. When a baby comes into this world, it should taste the bitter flavor first so that it won’t be picky about food in the life that follows.
Shezhu’s milk ducts were very tight. She had milk, but it would not come out. I asked Ah Ming to suck at her breasts. It was very painful and Shezhu cried. I told Ah Ming that it had to be done. He sucked until milk came out. At first, the milk was mixed with blood. Having a baby and raising a baby is not easy; it is quite a sacrifice. Shezhu produced very good milk. The baby was tiny, but healthy.
Ah Ming and Shezhu asked Shebao to come up with a name for the baby. Shebao came up with two names. One was the official name, Yang Xi, Yang being Ah Ming’s surname and Xi meaning the morning sunshine. The other was a nickname, Beibei, which means “flower bud.”
When Beibei was one month old, Shezhu brought Beibei to our house for the first time. According to local customs, as maternal grandmother, I was not supposed to be the first one to hold Beibei on her first visit. When I saw Shezhu approaching our house with Beibei in her arms, I asked one of our neighbors to take the baby from Shezhu. Only after that was I able to hold Beibei.
When Beibei was born, the government policy of “one child one family” was already in place. Being the only child, Beibei received much attention from her family. The family held a big banquet to celebrate her first birthday. In addition to the usual food for a banquet, Ah Ming also bought steamed buns (mantou) and sure-to-rise cakes (dingshenggao) for the occasion. Both were traditional foods carrying good wishes for the new baby. The common gift for a child’s first birthday banquet was fresh noodles, which are symbolic of a long life. My husband and I brought ten jin of fresh noodles to the banquet in a big bamboo basket.
Ah Ming’s family rented a big portrait of the Longevity Star. The portrait had one long-bearded smiling man sitting in the middle, with many plump-faced smiling babies surrounding him. On the morning of the banquet day, they placed a square table in the middle of their guest hall against the north wall. Above the table, they hung the portrait of the Longevity Star. On the table, they arranged piles of steamed buns and rice cakes and uncooked noodles and glutinous rice flour. Special longevity incense sticks and huge red candles were lit on the table.
Ah Ming helped Beibei kowtow to the Longevity Star on a soft mat while we and other guests gathered in the guest hall and watched. The table of food under the Longevity Star portrait remained there and incense and candles continued to be lit for the rest of the day.
Lunch followed the ce
remony. The most important meal was the banquet dinner, which had many dishes, but the most essential one on a child’s first birthday banquet was the noodle dish, again for the symbolic wishes for a long life. Bowls of noodles with glutinous rice balls were delivered to each family in the village as “helping-child noodles.”
When I returned home after the banquet that evening, I brought back a basket of the longevity noodles. The next day, I cooked them with glutinous rice balls and delivered them bowl by bowl to the families in the West and East Compounds. This was to prepare our neighbors for Beibei’s potential need for help when she came to visit us.
TRIP TO BEIJING
We learned from Shezhen’s letters that she had been allotted an apartment right on the campus of her university. In September of 1982, I decided to visit Shezhen in Beijing. That same month, my husband was going to Guangzhou on a business trip. Today, we can buy a train ticket or a plane ticket in a travel agency just down the street, or our children can buy a ticket on the Internet. In those days, we had to go all the way to the train station in Shanghai to get a train ticket. So my husband got me a ticket when he got his. We also decided to leave on the same day. That way, I could go with him to the train station. At the station, he took a train going south while I got onto a train going north.
Shebao had written down Shezhen’s Beijing address on a piece of paper, and I carried it with me. We sent Shezhen a telegram informing her of the train I was taking and the date and time it was scheduled to arrive in Beijing. The train coaches were numbered and the telegram also told Shezhen the number of my coach so that she would meet me on the platform inside the train station.
This was the first time I had taken a train. Since I had never traveled far away and alone, I was a little nervous. The train stopped at many places and the ride was more than twenty hours long. Whenever the train made a stop, people went down to the platform and bought local products from vending stands. Or they went onto the platform to stretch their legs. Since I was traveling alone and worried about losing my things, I did not dare to go onto the platform throughout the trip.
Among the things I brought with me was a bag of rice, about twenty jin. Beijing was in the north. I knew northern people received only a small portion of their monthly grain ration in rice. The rest was wheat flour and cornmeal. I planned to stay for two or three weeks and did not want to exhaust her limited supply of rice.
Sitting next to me on the train was a man traveling on a business trip. At mealtimes, he said to me, “You go ahead and eat. I will look after your things. When you come back, I will go and eat and you look after my things.” He added, “You go first, because I want to have a beer with my meal and it will take me more time.” That was a good arrangement. Other than going to the bathroom, the mealtimes were the only times I was away from my luggage.
Sitting on the train for more than twenty hours was very tiring. I was so tense that I did not close my eyes the entire night I spent on the train. When I got to Beijing, my legs were swollen.
When the train approached the Beijing train station, I became very nervous. I did not know if Shezhen had received the telegram. I thought to myself, if the train arrived and Shezhen was not on the platform, I would not know what to do. Although I had her address written down, I did not know how I could find the way to her place. I did not speak the Mandarin dialect, so I could not communicate with anybody in Beijing.
I had a window seat. As the train slowed down and approached the platform, I rolled down the window and stretched my head out to look. When the train stopped, I saw Shezhen jumping on the platform, having already spotted me. I was so relieved.
I was glad to see Shezhen’s comfortable apartment with its own kitchen, bathroom, and little balcony. During my stay, Zhou Wei’s parents invited me to their apartment and treated me to a dinner. One day, Zhou Wei’s little sister came to Shezhen’s apartment with a dish that their mother had cooked. I still remember the dish, which contained seaweed, peanuts, pieces of lotus root, and other items stewed together.
Shezhen and Zhou Wei took me to the Summer Palace, the Beijing Zoo, Tiananmen Square, and the shopping street called Wangfujing on weekends. At the zoo, we walked past a snake cage. Shezhen’s face turned pale when she saw the snakes. It reminded me how frightened she was by snakes and leeches when she worked in the fields in Wangjialong. I was happy that she no longer had to deal with such things.
Zhou Wei bought me a ticket to take the train back to Shanghai. Shezhen and Zhou Wei accompanied me all the way to my seat inside the train coach. Zhou Wei was a very thoughtful person. He bought a padlock and a chain. He chained my travel bag to the seat and locked it. Zhou Wei said, “Now, Mom, you can move around in the train, get down to the platform if you want when the train makes a stop on the way, and go and eat your meals without having to worry about losing your bag.” It worked very well. On my return trip, I was no longer nervous and moved around when I wanted.
When the train pulled into the Shanghai train station, I was not as worried. Shezhen had sent a telegram to her father, whose trip to Guangdong had been much shorter than mine, informing him of my arrival. The young man sitting next to me on the train was from Shanghai.
When the train rolled into the train station, I had unlocked the travel bag and lifted it onto my seat. The young man said to me, “Aunt, you have a pretty heavy bag. You go down to the platform and come around to the window. I will pass the bag to you through the window. That way, you do not have to carry the heavy bag through the crowded coach and down the steps.” I thought that was a very nice offer. I thanked him. When the train stopped at the platform, I went down without the bag. But the minute I left my bag, I started to worry. What if he was a bad man? He could have arranged with somebody outside the window to get my travel bag before I got there. I said to myself, “I have been so careful throughout this trip. Why did I trust a stranger at the last minute?”
It did not take me very long to get to the window. As he had promised, the young man was holding my bag and waiting for me to get it from the platform. I thanked him profusely. I told myself that, after all, there were more good people than bad people in the world. After I thanked the young man, I turned around. There was my husband, who had come to meet me.
After the trip to Beijing, I became acutely aware that Shezhen worked and lived very far away from me. When Shebao graduated from college in January 1983, I told him not to get a job outside Shanghai. He listened and became a research professor of electrical engineering at his alma mater, Shanghai University of Science and Technology.
THE ANCESTRAL COMPOUND IS GONE
Up until 1983, Meifang’s elder son and his wife had occupied the southeastern quarter of our old compound. Meifang, her husband, and her second son had moved out and built a house where Ah Bing’s new house was. In 1983, the elder son applied for and was granted a new homesite near his brother’s house. He tore down the old quarter and built a two-story house on the new homesite.
In 1984, Zhongming and Ah Juan decided to tear down their quarter and build a two-story house right next to our house on the west side. Their new house was to be a meter higher than ours. Traditionally, it was believed that the height of a house determined the prosperity of the family. This belief caused a lot of problems among neighbors in Wangjialong during the house-building frenzy of the 1970s and 1980s. My husband and I were aware of this belief, but decided to accept Zhongming’s design. Shebao was working as a professor at the Shanghai University of Science and Technology. We knew that most probably he would establish a home in the urban area, so our village house would be kept as our ancestral home. I also believed that prosperity depended on the intelligence and diligence of the people in a family.
Taoming, Ah Bing’s younger brother, owned the west side room. Because of the landlord label attached to the family, it was not easy for Taoming to find a wife, so he finally married matrilocally and moved to live with his wife’s family. But he still inherited the side room. When Zhongming took
down the southwest quarter, to which Taoming’s side room was attached, Taoming tore down the room and took the reusable materials away.
Taoming did not do it without a complaint. He said that it was not right for everyone to move out and leave me, a woman, behind to stay on the home site of our common ancestors. I replied that this was not true, for Zhongming, a man, was also staying behind. But more importantly, I said that I did not drive them away and they could stay on or move back to our ancestral home site if they wished. Taoming’s elder brother, Ah Bing, and his wife intervened and told Taoming to shut up. They said that they moved out willingly and for the sake of their growing family. With two sons getting married and establishing families, their original home site was simply not big enough. Although times had changed, the idea that only men were legitimate inheritors was still strong in some people’s minds.
Within ten or so years, the original compound we inherited from our ancestors disappeared. In its place were two modern buildings, one being our house (fig. 9.4) and the other Zhongming’s house. The descendants of our ancestors had built houses throughout the village (fig. 9.5). Kaiyuan’s new house was at the east end of the village, near the Coal-cinder Road; Hanming’s new house was in front of our original compound; Ah Bing’s new house was on the west side of our village, and so were the houses Meifang’s two sons had built.
NOTE
1 Xin Mama is a loosely-used term to call the wife of an uncle, who can be a parent’s brother or cousin.
10
Farewell to Collective Life
IN the early 1980s, when Zhou Wei came to visit us during the Chinese New Year holiday, I was running my own warping shop inside our guest hall. I prepared lengthwise threads and reeled them onto a beam for home weaving. Zhou Wei had never seen a traditional warping shop, so he was very curious and took a picture of me while I was drawing lengthwise threads (fig. 10.1).