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

by Chen Huiqin

  I went again, this time on a weekday. I took the day off work. Because it was a weekday and Shezhu was busy at work, I asked Meifang, wife of one of my cousins, to go with me. We went earlier that day, and it was less crowded. We still had to line up but got the service before lunch. I provided the shaman with the necessary information, which was my father’s name, the date and year of his death, his age at the time of his death, and the location where he passed away. The shaman lit an incense stick and whispered certain chants. After a while, she said, “Here he comes, a tall man.” My father was a tall man. In fact, his nickname was “Long-legged Ah Di.” Then the shaman became the liaison between my father and me, that is, my father talked to me through her.

  My father said, “Thank you, children, for coming to see me.” I replied, “Speaking of children, how many do you have?” Father replied, “I only have one and it is you. I regard you as a son.” Meifang quickly asked, “Why do you say that you only have one child? Then who am I?” Father smiled and said, “You are a relative of mine.”

  By that time, I had become emotional and started to sob. My father said, “Don’t cry. I am fine here. This is a very rare opportunity and let’s talk.” I asked him where he lived. He replied that he lived in a temple and got his food there in exchange for his service. I asked why he lived in a temple and what kind of service he provided there. He replied, “Don’t you remember that I am a Daoist priest?” I then offered to send him a house so that he did not have to live in a temple. He replied, “That would be a lot of trouble. I have lived in the temple for so many years that I am now used to living there.” But I insisted. So he finally said, “You could do it, but don’t do it in a loud and fancy way.” He lowered his voice and added, “Be practical and include some money in the house.”

  The language used by the shaman was characteristic of my father. He was calm when he talked to me and courteous when he talked to Meifang. When he advised me not to do things in a loud and fancy way, that was typical of my father. Although Father was a master of rituals and ceremonies, he preferred substance over formality.

  I contacted a married couple in Zhuqiao Town who specialized in zhaku, making paper houses for the other world. Just like tailors and carpenters who go to work in customers’ homes, paper-house makers also work in customers’ houses. The couple came to our village house and made a paper house with bamboo sticks, reeds, and paper. It was a two-story house with a lot of details such as a guest hall, bedrooms, a kitchen, and a bathroom. The couple also made furniture, which included two beds, a desk, and a chest with drawers in the bedroom; sofa chairs and a TV set in the guest hall; and a gas stove and a refrigerator in the kitchen. They also made a washing machine and a car for my father. Basically, whatever we the living had or desired to have was available in the paper house.

  It took the couple three full days to make the house. Since I was still working in the dining room of Jianbang Chemical Machinery Plant, I contracted the work out to the couple. That way, I did not have to entertain them with lunch or dinner. I asked Little Aunt to come to our village house and fold paper money while accompanying the couple who made the house and the furnishings. I bought tin-plated paper and Little Aunt folded a lot of paper money.

  Every day of the three days, I went to work during the morning. When I got off work in early or mid-afternoon, I bought afternoon snacks for the paper-house makers and my aunt and delivered them to our village house by taking a bus. In late afternoon, I returned to our urban apartment on the last bus of the day so that I could go to work the next morning.

  We chose a weekend to deliver the paper house to my father. My husband and I, my children except for Shezhen and Zhou Wei, and my grandchildren all went to the village house and attended the ceremony. Little Aunt, her family, my cousins and their families all attended the ceremony. I asked Bai Yingzhou, who had learned to be a Daoist priest from the same master as my father had, to preside over the ceremony at which the paper house, which contained the furnishings and the paper money, was delivered to my father. The ceremony featured chanting by Bai Yingzhou. Candles and incense sticks were lit. We offered a table of food, wine, and fruits. We walked around the paper house and the car parked outside the house three times before setting them all on fire. Our grandson Chen Li was only about four or five years old, so we held him in our arms when we did the walking around. Our granddaughter Beibei was old enough to walk on her own.

  After our village relocation in 2003 and the reburial of my parents’ remains, I wanted to know how my parents were doing in the other world through a shaman. This time, I decided to call on my mother. When I mentioned my idea to Shezhu, she enthusiastically supported me. This time, we learned that there was a shaman in a village in Huating Town in the northernmost part of Jiading District. One morning in late fall of 2004, Ah Ming drove Shezhu and me to the village. When the car got to the village, we learned that the shaman’s house was on the other side of a bridge. We drove to the bridge, but found that the bridge did not accommodate motor vehicles. Ah Ming dropped us there and went back to attend his business in urban Jiading. Shezhu and I walked across the bridge and to the shaman’s house.

  Just like my last visit to a shaman, many people had arrived earlier than we had. We decided to wait. I noticed that next to the room where the shaman worked was the family kitchen. A middle-aged woman was picking and cleaning vegetables for lunch. Shezhu and I went over and talked to her and offered her our help in the kitchen. We learned that the woman was hired to cook lunches for the shaman and her family. After some conversation, the woman offered to help us. She went to the shaman and asked her to see us next. The shaman agreed. Because there was a line of people waiting for the service, the kitchen helper explained to the waiting crowd that we had arrived very early in the morning and went out to get breakfast. With her help, we jumped the queue and received the service before lunch.

  After I gave her the information about my mother, the shaman said that it had been a long time since my mother’s passing and it might be difficult to find her. Quite often a shaman failed to find a dead relative for a family. When Shezhu and I went to call on my father but failed to get the service because we got there too late, we witnessed such a case. A family came to call on a son who had died hundreds of li away from home and the dead body was not shipped home for burial. The shaman tried hard to find him but failed.

  The shaman lit an incense stick and whispered chants. We waited silently. After a long while, the shaman said, “Here she comes, wearing a long gown of blue-color fabric [shilinbu].” Through the shaman, my mother called me “Ah Lin.” My nickname is Linshe. Shezhu asked, “Then who am I?” My mother replied, “You are Ah Ni, Number Two.” Shezhu is my second child. I then asked, “Mom, where do you live?” She said, “I live in the house you gave to your father.” She then added, “I do not leave the house often. These days, people wear modern clothes, yet I am still wearing the old shilinbu long gown. I feel embarrassed and so do not leave the house.” After my mother died, she was cremated wearing an old shilinbu long gown. I promised my mother that I would send her some new clothes.

  After I heard what my mother said, I felt really bad. She had lived her entire life frugally and refused to accept new clothes in life. When she passed away during the crazy years of the Cultural Revolution, I did not even have the opportunity to make her a set of new clothes. So she left this world with that old shilinbu long gown. After the visit with my mother ended and the shaman had come back to this world, I told her that I wanted to do something for my mother and asked her for advice. She said that I could perform a day of chanting (daochang) for my mother in a nearby temple.

  I started to plan a ritual for my mother when we learned that Shezhen was coming home on a sabbatical leave in January of 2005. She was to stay with us in Jiading for almost half a year. She told us that she was doing research about our home village. I decided to perform the ritual for Mother in the spring of 2005 so that Shezhen could also participate in it.

>   In preparation for a day of chanting in a nearby temple for my mother, I bought a set of clothes, a pair of shoes, and a pair of socks; I knitted a hat with my own hands; and I bought tin-plated paper and folded a lot of paper money.

  In early spring of 2005, I contacted the Wuxing Temple (Wuxing Si) in Waigang and scheduled the ritual day for my mother in May. When I called the temple, all the weekends of the spring season had been booked, so our scheduled day was during the working week. When the day approached, Shebao said that he could not leave his factory on that day and asked me if he could be excused from the ritual. I replied that he did not have to attend and that his factory business was more important. On the chosen day, my husband and I, Shezhen, and Shezhu took a taxi and arrived at the temple before eight in the morning.

  At exactly eight o’clock in the morning, six monks began to chant. We followed the instructions from the head monk in kneeling down and kowtowing to my mother. After a round of kowtows, we sat in the same room where the monks chanted. One session of chanting took forty-five minutes and ended with our participation, again kneeling down and kowtowing to my mother.

  At the end of the first session, the lead monk read aloud a previously prepared document that contained my name and my husband’s name, our residential address at the time, and the date, month, and year of the chanting ritual. After reading it, he lit the document and burnt it.

  There were three sessions of chanting and kowtowing in the morning. We had lunch in the temple cafeteria, which offered all-vegetarian food. There were three more sessions in the afternoon. At the end of the all the chanting sessions, the clothes, the paper money I made, and three gift boxes from Shezhen, Shezhu, and Shebao were thrown into a huge urn on the temple grounds and burnt as a way to deliver them to my mother. The monks again chanted at the burning ceremony while we stood near the urn.

  By the time we did the ritual for my mother, remembering ancestors with such a ceremony in Wuxing Temple had become a very popular practice. The temple had regular monks working there, sold gift boxes, and accepted reservations. The temple charged us 1,000 yuan for the day of service.

  I do not know if the other world really exists, but I would like to believe that my mother and father know I miss them and remember the love they bestowed on me. They gave me my life. We were poor when I was little. Yet I never felt deprived of anything while growing up. They helped me raise my children. They saved in every way for me and for my family. I know I will never be able to pay back what they did for me, but I am doing my best to show them my appreciation.

  AMITABHA

  Since the revival of traditional practices in the 1980s, fortune-tellers, shamans, monks, and Daoist priests have all been very busy people. Temples are crowded places, particularly on the first and fifteenth day of the lunar month and on festivals such as the birthday of Guan Yin, the Bodhisattva of Mercy and Compassion, which is the nineteenth day of the second month on the lunar calendar. On the eighth day of the twelfth month on the lunar calendar, people donate rice and other foods such as red beans, lotus seeds, and dried dates to local temples, which in turn cook winter eight porridge (labazhou). Everybody can eat such porridge at a temple free of charge on that day. Or one person can go to a temple and take some home to share with the family. The porridge is believed to be blessed.

  I do not like to do things in a fancy way or to follow fads. Besides, I do not ride a bike, so must take public transportation to get to a temple. I worked until I was sixty-six years old. While I was working, I did not have free time to go to a temple on the first and fifteenth day of the lunar month. I, however, do believe in the existence of the Buddha, who watches us and looks after people of good conscience. There was a story about a man surviving a shipwreck in a vast sea. The story said that when the ship was wrecked, he sank into the deep sea. Seashells wrapped around his body and floated him up. The seashells were sent by the Buddha. The Buddha saved him because this man’s mother had been a sincere and kind person who said Amitabha at home every day. I do not know if such an event really took place, but I like the moral of the story.

  In the early 1990s, I began a daily chant of Amitabha. My husband and I were living in the downtown apartment. At first, I filled a Sprite bottle, whose top part was cut off, with sand and used it as an incense burner. I put the Sprite bottle, or my incense burner, on the desk in our bedroom. One day, a relative came for a visit with his baby son. The little boy was not yet walking or talking, so he held him in his arms. I showed them the apartment, since they, like most of our relatives, still lived in the village. When we were in the bedroom, the little baby pointed in one direction and uttered some sound. I asked if the baby wanted something, and the baby’s father said that he wanted the Sprite bottle. Recently, I learned that this baby is now an employee at the Volkswagen auto factory in Anting Town. He is twenty-one years old. I use that incident to calculate that I have been doing the daily chant of Amitabha for about twenty years.

  Every morning, after I got up, brushed my teeth, and washed my face, I lit an incense stick, stood it in the incense burner made of a Sprite bottle, clasped my hands in front of me, and chanted Amitabha for about a minute. Soon after I started, my children saw me doing this and gave me support. Shezhu bought me a copper incense burner and Xiao Xie bought me a porcelain statue of the Guan Yin Bodhisattva. To protect the wooden desk from hot incense ashes, I used an enamel tray and put the incense burner and the statue of the Guan Yin Bodhisattva in the tray.

  When my husband and I traveled, we saw zodiac birth animals made of all kinds of materials for sale at souvenir shops. We playfully bought a Horse, which is the birth animal for my husband, and a Sheep, which is my birth animal. The Horse and the Sheep are both porcelain. After we brought them home, I put them on the enamel tray, together with the incense burner and the Bodhisattva.

  When Shezhen came back from the United States for a visit, she saw what I was doing and bought me a lacquer statue of the Guan Yin Bodhisattva. I put the two statues together and have been lighting two incense sticks each morning since then.

  I have continued this daily chant of Amitabha ever since I started with the Sprite bottle. I have not missed a day unless I was not home or could not get out of bed due to illness. Besides the daily chant of Amitabha, I light a pair of candles and a bunch of incense and burn some paper money on important occasions such as Chinese New Year’s Day, the Lantern Festival, and the Mid-Autumn Festival. I pray for the health and safety of my entire family and for bumper harvests and peace in the world. I do not do it in an elaborate way, but I do it with sincerity and devotion.

  A MODERN FUNERAL

  One of my husband’s sisters died very suddenly in late 2005. She suffered acute and sudden diarrhea accompanied by vomiting and was rushed to Jiading Central Hospital. When doctors there did not know what to do, she was transferred to a hospital in Shanghai. There, she went into a coma. After several hours of investigating and testing, while her belly swelled, the doctors said that it was intestinal cancer at its last stage. Knowing that her illness was no longer curable, her family decided to take her home. Local people prefer to go home when they become aware of the status of their illness. If one dies outside home, the dead body is not supposed to enter the house. My husband’s sister was thus taken home with life support and under doctor’s care in an ambulance. After she reached home, the doctors pronounced her dead.

  My husband’s sister died at the age of eighty-one. She left this world in such an unexpected way that everybody was extremely sad. The two daughters wept profusely. It was heart-wrenching to see the loud weeping of the son-in-law. The daughters and the sons-in-law said that death came too suddenly. They wished that they had had an opportunity to perform their filial duty by nursing her for a while. The deceased’s husband also wept. It was even sadder to watch an old man weep.

  The family planned an elaborate funeral service that ran for four days. The first day was the planning and announcement day. They contacted West Gate Cremation Stat
ion for services, eight Daoist priests to perform chanting, a band to provide music during the rituals, and professional chefs to cook banquet-style meals. Close relatives and neighbors were sent out to inform other relatives about the death and the funeral arrangements. Many relatives and neighbors helped in food preparation and in folding paper money.

  The second day was the day for relatives to call and for the dead body to be cleaned and clothed. This used to be done by a few men in the village. Now professionally trained people from the cremation station did it.

  The third day was the actual funeral day. Before lunch, eight Daoist priests chanted while family members kowtowed and paper money was burnt for the deceased. After lunch, a funeral service was performed; this included a band playing funeral music, the village head giving a eulogy, and a family representative and a relative representative remembering the deceased. Finally, there was the procession of sending the coffin to the West Gate Cremation Station. The procession was led by the band and then neighbors holding funeral wreaths. Wailing family members walked next in the procession, followed by close relatives. Two of the priests walked at the end of the procession, one beating a pair of cymbals and the other a gong.

  The procession stopped at the village entrance, where a truck and a bus, chartered by the family, waited. The truck took the coffin—attended by the daughters and their husbands, sitting on temporary benches—to the cremation station. My husband, the only living sibling of the deceased, did not go to the cremation station due to his poor health. I went on the chartered bus. At the cremation station, I represented my husband and myself in paying last respects to his sister. After the cremation, the daughter who had been married matrilocally carried the ash box home.

  The fourth day was a day of chanting sponsored by the daughter who was married out. Again, eight Daoist priests performed the ritual service. Neighbors and relatives helped to fold more paper money. Professionals had been hired to make a paper house and all the furnishings. The Daoist priests chanted while the sponsoring daughter and her husband knelt down and kowtowed. In the middle of the afternoon, the paper house, with its furnishings and lots of paper money inside, was burned for the deceased.