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

by Chen Huiqin

  The four-day affair demonstrated the filial piety of the two daughters and their husbands. Relatives and neighbors sang praises, commenting that my husband’s sister had raised filial children and left this world in splendor and elegance.

  About two months after my sister-in-law’s death, in January 2006, Little Aunt passed away at the age of eight-six. She had been bedridden for some time. When I visited her a couple of weeks earlier, she was mentally alert but physically weak. Her son-in-law is a medical doctor. Because he took good care of Little Aunt while she was bedridden, she did not suffer from any bedsores. She and the bed she slept in were always immaculate.

  Little Aunt did not give birth to any children. She and her husband raised the daughter they adopted from Big Aunt, her own elder sister. This daughter married matrilocally and had a son and a daughter, both of whom carried her father’s surname.

  After Little Aunt died, her daughter and son-in-law held a grand funeral service. It was also a four-day affair, including everything that was done at the funeral service for my husband’s sister. I had always been very close to Little Aunt and regarded her as one of my dearest elders. I attended the four-day funeral service and paid my last respects to her at the West Gate Cremation Station.

  Little Aunt lived a long and good life and left this world with splendor and elegance. Relatives and neighbors all said that although she did not have any biological children, her funeral service showed that she had filial descendants.

  15

  All Our Children Are “Plump Seeds”

  WHAT my children and grandchildren do in their professions is beyond my imagination, but I am proud of them. My husband compared our children and grandchildren to crops we grew in the fields. He said that in every batch of harvested grain, there is chaff. But he said with pride that every one of our children and grandchildren is “a plump seed” (fig. 15.1).

  BEIBEI’S WEDDING

  Beibei, Shezhu’s daughter and our granddaughter, graduated from college in 2004. She got a job working for a Japanese company in urban Shanghai. Her job was related to mechanical designing, which was what she was trained for in college. Commuting between her Jiading home and her workplace in urban Shanghai took a few hours every day. Beibei thought of renting an apartment near her workplace, but we worried about her safety. After all, she was an innocent young girl, although we all believed that Beibei was mature enough to take care of herself. Then Xiao Xie and Shebao said that Beibei could live with them if she wanted.

  That was a good arrangement. Beibei lived with her uncle’s family during the working week. She returned to her parents’ Jiading home over weekends. She did this for about a year. Within that year, Beibei got accustomed to a regular professional schedule, made friends in urban Shanghai, and became a regular member of Shebao’s family. Furthermore, Beibei and Chen Li got along well. Beibei is an avid reader and loves cartoons. Chen Li has the same interests. Every time they came to visit us, I heard them talking about books and cartoons. They often turned on the TV in our Xincheng home and watched cartoon programs together.

  On New Year’s Day of 2005, Shezhu was shopping in a local market when she ran into a woman she had gotten to know when she was in accounting school in the early 1990s. They had not seen each other for more than ten years. This woman said that her husband usually did the daily shopping, but that day, she had decided to do it. They chatted for a while. Shezhu remembered that this woman had a son who was a very good student and was about the same age as Beibei, so she asked the woman about the boy. The woman said that her son had graduated from Jiaotong University and was working in urban Shanghai while doing graduate work for a master’s degree. Shezhu told her about Beibei. They also learned that neither of their children was engaged or married at the time.

  Shezhu liked this smart and capable woman. After Shezhu got the basic facts about her son, she thought he must be very smart. Jiaotong University is one of the best schools in Shanghai and one has to score very high in order to enroll there. So Shezhu called the other woman and proposed that the two young people meet and get to know each other. The woman liked the idea very much. When the mothers told their respective children about the proposal, the young people agreed and obtained each other’s cell phone numbers.

  The young people talked on the phone first and decided to meet in person. They had no idea what the other looked like. Since the two families both lived in Xincheng and the two young people knew where Xincheng neighborhood’s administrative building was, they decided to meet in front of that building. After they met, they went to a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant in downtown Jiading and had coffee. Beibei came back and told us that the young man’s name is Minjie.

  After that meeting, Beibei and Minjie talked on the phone often. They worked during the day and called each other in the evening, which was the time Chen Li and Beibei used to talk or watch cartoon programs on TV. So Chen Li was very unhappy about the long phone conversations between Minjie and Beibei. Chen Li was still young and did not understand courtship.

  Shezhu did not intervene and trusted Beibei’s ability to decide for herself. One weekend, when Beibei came for a visit, I said to her that there was no such thing as a perfect match. Every person had his or her own personality. If she was 70 percent happy about who Minjie was, that should be enough. I said further, “If you do not think there is potential in developing a meaningful relationship, then let Minjie know. Do not mislead him. Once he gets deeply involved in what he thinks is a serious relationship, it will hurt to learn otherwise.” When I talked, Beibei nodded. Then she said, “Grandma, I know that.”

  At the same time, Beibei found a girlfriend on the web. How she did it is beyond me, but I know that this friend was from Sichuan and was also a college graduate. When the girl told Beibei that she was coming to Shanghai to prepare for a graduate exam for the famous Fudan University, Beibei decided to move out of her uncle’s house and rent an apartment to share with her friend in urban Shanghai. Before this friend arrived in the city, Beibei found an apartment near her workplace and near Fudan University. When this girl arrived in Shanghai by train, Beibei and her parents went to the train station to pick her up. Since this friend was coming to Shanghai for the first time, she had a lot of luggage. Ah Ming used his car to help her move the luggage to the apartment Beibei had rented.

  During one long holiday, Beibei invited her friend to spend the holiday in her Jiading home. Shezhu also invited us to her house. That is how I met Beibei’s friend, a very nice girl. I told Shezhu that she did the right thing to invite the girl to her house during the long holiday. The girl reminded me of Shezhen, who lived and worked far away from home. Shezhen told me that when she was a student, she was invited by her friends to their homes over holidays. What Shezhu did was our family’s way of paying back the society that had been good to us.

  When we met Minjie in person, we liked him. He was very modest, intellectual, and gentle. I found him a very sincere young man, became very fond of him, and treated him as one of my own children. I am aware that I am an old woman and an earthy person. But anytime Minjie came to visit us, he liked what I cooked. That made me very happy.

  Beibei and Minjie became engaged in the spring of 2006. Minjie’s parents held an engagement banquet in a restaurant in urban Jiading. My entire family was invited to the banquet.

  Shezhu and Ah Ming are very open-minded people. Some people of their generation with only one child, a daughter, insisted on keeping the daughter at home, that is, to have the daughter marry matrilocally. Shezhu and Ah Ming did not believe that raising a child was for the purpose of carrying on the family name. Instead, they wanted Beibei to find a husband she loved and live a life she wanted. Ah Ming’s mother, however, thought that Beibei should marry matrilocally. Ah Ming told his mother, “You are being closed-minded. So long as the two young people are happy, we are happy. Beibei is our daughter and she will forever be our daughter. Any children she will bear will be our grandchildren. It does not make a dif
ference what surname the children will take.”

  At that time, Minjie was working at General Electric Company (GE) in Shanghai. He became aware of a job opportunity at GE that fit Beibei. He told Beibei, who applied for the job. She was interviewed and got the job.

  It is still our local practice that the young man’s family prepares a house for the engaged couple, so Minjie’s parents looked for an apartment to buy in urban Shanghai. After much searching, they were unable to find an appropriate and affordable one. Then one weekend, Shezhu and Ah Ming were in Pudong on an errand. Ah Ming had done a project in that part of Pudong. He drove to show Shezhu a very nice residential complex. There, they saw an apartment for sale. They asked a real estate agent to show them the apartment. They instantly liked it and believed that Beibei would also appreciate it. GE Shanghai was located in Pudong. They called Beibei, and she came immediately and fell in love with the apartment.

  With Minjie’s parents’ agreement and support, Beibei and Minjie decided to buy the apartment. Shezhu and Ah Ming contributed a large sum of money toward the purchase. They said that they did not think that preparing a house for Beibei and Minjie was entirely the responsibility of Minjie’s parents. They would do what they could to help the two young people establish a home. I believe Shezhu and Ah Ming were doing the right thing as parents, and I admire the open-mindedness and generosity they showed in this matter.

  Beibei and Minjie got married in March 2008. Although the two families consulted each other in choosing the wedding day, Minjie’s parents still delivered a formal proposal to Shezhu and Ah Ming. In the envelope that contained the formal proposal, Minjie’s parents included two sums of money. The larger sum, known as a wedding gift (caili), was to help Beibei prepare her dowry, such as jewelry and clothes. The smaller sum was appreciation money to thank Shezhu and Ah Ming for having raised Beibei. Shezhu and Ah Ming accepted the formal proposal and the appreciation money but returned the larger sum of money to Minjie’s parents. Shezhu and Ah Ming said that they wanted to prepare a dowry for Beibei.

  The wedding banquet was held in a hotel in Jiading. In the old days, we had to hold wedding banquets in cold weather to keep food fresh since we had no refrigeration. Nowadays people choose to get married in warm weather because the bride wears a wedding gown made of very thin material and the groom wears a suit and tie.

  Beibei and Minjie hired a company to run the wedding ceremony. This company provided a makeup service for Beibei on the wedding day, took photos of the wedding day events as well as videotape them, decorated the wedding hall inside the hotel, and provided a professionally trained ceremonial master for the marriage ceremony. Holding the banquet in a hotel and hiring a company to run the wedding ceremony were new to us.

  Shezhu helped Beibei shop for wedding clothes. Ah Ming drove them all the way to Suzhou, where there were many famous wedding-clothes stores. There, they chose the styles and had wedding clothes custom-made. Beibei chose an all-white wedding gown, an evening gown that glittered in candlelight, and a traditional-style dress of red satin with woven flowers. Shezhu also helped Beibei prepare quilts for the bed in the Pudong apartment. In addition, Shezhu bought many sets of bedsheets with pillowcases as appreciation gifts (huantun) for those who would give meeting-ritual money (jianlitian) to Minjie at the wedding. The appreciation gift has evolved greatly. In the old days, it was a homemade apron; then it became a face towel; now it was a complete set of bed sheets.

  Shezhu also prepared a suitcase, known as the golden chest. Into the golden chest she put underwear for Beibei, socks and shoes for both Beibei and Minjie, and a lot of goodies for a bridal suite party such as walnuts, dried longans, peanuts, and sugarcane. This is also part of traditional practice, representing the parents’ wishes for a happy marriage and many children. Sugarcane was significant in the golden chest because it rises joint by joint and therefore symbolizes good wishes for success in life. Shezhu also put some money in the suitcase to help the newlyweds start a life together.

  In addition, Shezhu made a descendants’ bundle (zisunbao), which contained the traditional contents of shoes and hats for potential babies, and two bowls of raw rice, dry dates, and peanuts. They all represented best wishes from the parents. The day before the wedding, Shezhu wrapped the selected items in a piece of homemade cloth. Sticking out in the middle of the bundle were fresh leaves from an evergreen plant. The evergreen leaves again symbolized good wishes.

  On the wedding day, the makeup artist came to Shezhu’s house early in the morning to prepare Beibei. Beibei had two bridesmaids—one of them was her cousin from her father’s side and the other was her friend from Sichuan. They came early that morning and helped in Beibei’s preparation.

  I regarded Beibei’s wedding as a grand event and even had my hair permed. On the wedding day, my husband and I went to Shezhu’s house at about nine thirty in the morning. At about ten o’clock that morning, Minjie, handsomely dressed in a suit and necktie, came to Shezhu’s house to take the bride. He poured tea for Beibei’s elders, including me. According to the instructions of the ceremonial master, Beibei, now dressed in her red-satin clothes, closed her bedroom door. Minjie knocked on the door, asking to marry Beibei. He was allowed into the bedroom by the two bridesmaids only after he gave them each a red packet of money.

  After Minjie obtained Beibei’s positive response, we all went together to the big hotel for the lunch banquet. The banquet was grand and huge in scale. Shezhu and Minjie’s parents held the banquet together. They invited a total of fifty tables of guests and each round table seated ten people. The banquet hall was divided into two sections, one for guests from the bride’s side and the other for those from the groom’s side. Dividing the two sections was a long corridor. In the front of the huge banquet hall was the main table for the bride and groom, Shebao, who was a representative of the bride’s family, Chen Li, who carried the descendants’ bundle, Beibei’s paternal uncle, who carried the golden chest, the bridesmaids, and the groom’s best men.

  At the lunch banquet, Shezhu took Minjie, accompanied by Beibei, to pour wine and soft drinks for all the guests on Beibei’s side. As Shezhu introduced Minjie to Beibei’s relatives, Minjie addressed them each accordingly. Relatives such as Beibei’s uncles and aunts handed Minjie meeting-ritual money wrapped in red paper. Shezhu, in turn, immediately delivered a set of bedsheets to each of the gift-giving relatives. Xiao Xie and others helped by handing pretty packages of bedsheets to Shezhu as she went around the tables with Minjie.

  After lunch, we went to Shezhu’s Helen house, which was the ancestral home for Beibei. In that house, Shezhu and Ah Ming had prepared a bedroom for Beibei. They had also prepared tea, coffee, nuts, and candies in the living room to entertain everyone. While we sat down to rest and chat in the living room, the makeup artist helped Beibei change her hairstyle and clothes in the bedroom.

  In the middle of the afternoon, Beibei emerged in her pure white wedding gown and was a beautiful and elegant bride. Beibei and Minjie, while holding each other’s arms, walked outside and down the steps of the Helen house toward a car that was decorated with fresh flowers and the Chinese character of double happiness. Walking in front of them were a little boy and a little girl, who scattered flower petals. Relatives and neighbors said that the scene reminded them of wedding ceremonies held by rich families they had seen on TV. At the side of the decorated car, Shezhu helped Beibei change into a pair of red leather shoes. Then the bride and groom entered the decorated car. The red color represented good luck. Putting the red shoes on in front of the public conveys the mother’s best wishes to her daughter.

  At this point, a bonfire of dry soybean and sesame stalks was lit right outside the house and firecrackers were set off. The car with Beibei and Minjie led a fleet of eight shining cars. Sitting in the other cars were bridesmaids and best men; Shebao; Beibei’s paternal uncle, who carried the golden chest; Chen Li, who carried the descendants’ bundle; and the flower boy and the flower girl.

  Th
e fleet drove straight to Minjie’s parents’ house, which was in Xincheng. I did not go with them, but I know what happened there. Minjie’s parents burned a bonfire and set off firecrackers when the bride and groom arrived. They prepared tea, coffee, and other treats for the bride and her guests. Chen Li would deliver the descendants’ bundle and Beibei’s uncle would deliver the golden chest.

  By dinnertime, the eight cars had taken the bride and the groom and their entourage to the hotel. All the guests by now had been seated at the tables. In the middle of the wedding hall, along the long corridor, a red carpet had been laid down. Halfway down the red carpet was an arch decorated with fresh flowers.

  With the ceremonial master announcing the start of the ceremony, music began to play. Minjie walked from the raised platform in the front of the hall toward the arch while Beibei walked from the other end of the corridor toward the arch, holding her father’s right arm. At the arch, Ah Ming formally gave Beibei to Minjie. When Minjie and Beibei walked arm-in-arm toward the raised platform, Ah Ming stood at the arch with his eyes full of tears. Ah Ming loves Beibei and would do anything for her. I am sure he was happy for Beibei, but he must have been emotional when he so formally and publicly gave Beibei away.

  In the old days, it was the mother who gave the final touches to the daughter when she left her home on the wedding day, so people usually commented on the display of emotions between the daughter and mother at that critical moment. Now it was the father who was the center of the entire banquet audience’s attention as he experienced the complexity of such a moment.

  The wedding ceremony was formal and beautiful. Shebao represented Beibei’s family and spoke at the ceremony. On behalf of all of us, he thanked Minjie’s parents for having raised such an excellent young man. He hoped that Beibei and Minjie would be filial and responsible to both sets of parents. He said that he was sure that the two young people would live successful lives, making both sets of parents happy and proud. Both Minjie’s father and Beibei’s father also spoke at the ceremony. They were filled with delight and wished the bride and groom happiness together.