by Weijian Shan
My frozen feet refused to warm up for a long time even under the cover of the quilt. I felt so cold that I curled up in a ball. Just when I was about to doze off, I felt something jump into my quilt and crawl right under my right shoulder blade. I pressed it with my shoulder and the thing wiggled violently. Then I realized it was a rat that must have been searching for a warm place. I had no idea what rats did on a frozen lake, maybe to eat the tiny seeds found in stalks of reed. I pressed hard on it, trying to kill it with my body weight. I did once kill a nest of rats in my bed by crushing them to death back in the company barracks. But this one got away.
I tossed around and could not sleep for the whole night. Either I felt very cold on my shoulders, or my ears were hurt from the cold. Whichever way I turned, it was uncomfortable. The next morning, I could not open my eyes, as they were frozen shut with a layer of frost over them. I had to gently cover my eyes with my hands to thaw out the frost. Our shoes, which we had left on the ice floor, had all frozen in place. We should have put some reeds under the shoes to prevent them from getting stuck. At night, since nobody would go out of the shack to urinate because of the extreme cold, some people had relieved themselves in a washbasin, the same one we used to fetch food and to wash ourselves. The urine in the basin was already frozen solid. We had to light a fire with the dry reeds under the basin to free the solid piece of yellow ice and throw it out.
It was time for breakfast, but none of us wanted to get out of our beds because outside it was so cold. Platoon Leader Liu got up and brought back a washbasin of warm mizi porridge and wotou. After eating, we felt warm enough to get out of bed. I quickly put on my clothes and ran out. Even though the sky was clear, it was extremely cold. My nose hurt.
I went out to see an endless forest of tall reeds on the lake. I ran around for a while in an effort to warm up. The ice under our feet was solid and slippery. A few of us took turns using a hoe to break through the ice to fetch water from below. It took a long time. The ice was as solid as marble. Finally, we got through, and we could reach water, but, just as the day before, very few of us wanted to wash our face with this icy cold water. Those who did only did so out of habit.
Going to the toilet here was much more pleasant than the open-air toilet in our company camp, which was far from our sleeping quarters, stinking to hell and so full of frozen feces that one had to stand and squat on top of them to do one’s business. Here I could just walk into the reed forest and do my business anywhere without having to worry about stepping onto anything. But it was so cold.
A few of us went to build outhouses, one for men and one for women, on the shore later in the day. The makeshift outhouse had a simple design. We needed to dig a small ditch in a circle, and then we planted reeds in the ditch to form a wall. But the earth was frozen solid. I swung the hoe all the way over my head, but the impact only marked a white spot on the ground. Halfway through our work, the freezing wind began again. Here in the Gobi winter, if there was no wind, it was barely bearable. When the wind blew, the wind chill could be killing. It took us half a day with three breaks in between to finish building the outhouses.
* * *
Each of us was given a tool to cut reeds. It was a sturdy rectangular frame made of strong wooden bars on three sides and an iron blade at the bottom. The edge of the blade was rather dull, but it served its purpose. The short wooden bar of the rectangle opposite the blade served as a handle. There was another wood bar across the middle of the frame for reinforcement, so it would not wobble. The length of the frame was just about as tall as a person. To use it, one would hold the handle, lean the blade on the surface of the ice against the root of the reeds, and push the frame with all one’s might. The edge would cut down the reeds, many of them with each push.
After we collected our tools, we were divided into work teams. Then we set out onto the frozen lake. We would cut down the reeds, collect them from the icy surface, bundle them together, tie the bundle with crushed reeds, which became soft and could bend like rope, and then pile the bundles into stacks for later collection. We piled bundles of reeds very high on ice sledges and then pulled the sledges to the pulp mill some 50 kilometers (∼30 miles) away. The minimum quota for each of us was half a metric ton (∼1,000 pounds) of reeds a day. Of course, we were encouraged to make a bigger contribution to the Party and the country if we could.
To tie each bundle tight, we would wrap the rope made of broken reeds around the bundle, pull the two ends of the rope in opposite directions with all our strength, using our knees to push the reeds together before securing the rope with a knot. It was a backbreaking job. The crushed-reed ropes were also sharp on the edges and could cut our hands through our gloves.
Soon we learned that this stop-and-go method was too inefficient. We would never be able to meet our quota of a half-a-ton per person per day. We devised a better way to work with each other. For a while, I would do the cutting by pushing the reed cutter as hard as I could, one step at a time, felling the reeds to one side. Xiaotong would collect the reeds, bundle them, and tie them up before stacking up the bundle. When I got tired, we would rotate, so he would do the cutting and I would do the bundling. This division of labor meant that at any given time we needed only one reed cutter. That saved the burden of having to carry two cutters onto the lake every day. It also increased our productivity.
We were fed two meals a day while assigned to cut reeds. The breakfast consisted of wotou, salty vegetables, and thin porridge, none of which was appetizing. I had to force myself to swallow five wotou every morning in order to get enough energy to last the day. It was so cold inside our shack that the food was cold before I was able to finish. Eating breakfast was so uncomfortable that it took serious effort just to eat and swallow food.
We would go to the lake after breakfast and come back for dinner. No food or water was provided to us during work. There was the ice, of course, which was the only source of fresh water. But without any tools, it would be impossible to break off any to chew. One could die of thirst staring at the millions of gallons of frozen water under one’s feet. On the first day of work, we did not know to bring a sharp tool for digging up ice, but we soon learned.
That first day on the ice, Liu Xiaotong and I worked hard. Soon, I was sweating from head to toe. Even my underwear was completely soaked. We did not want to soil our clothes with sweat because washing them would be a serious undertaking. We typically wore the same clothes for weeks at a time. Now that I was hot, I removed my cotton jacket. Soon I was only wearing my undervest. Finally, I removed my undervest too. Bare-chested, I was steaming in the cold air. Now I was working half-naked on a frozen lake in subzero temperatures, pushing the reed cutter with all my strength, one step after another.
By about 2:30 p.m., I felt colder and colder even though the sun was at its warmest. I was running out of fuel because my stomach was empty. Soon, I was almost completely out of energy, and chilled through to my core. I put my clothes back on, one piece after another. But no matter how hard I worked, I felt cold. I began to shiver uncontrollably. We didn’t have a watch so we didn’t know exactly what time it was. But we could tell it was 4:30 or 5:00 p.m., time to call it a day. An official blow of a whistle signaled the cutoff time. But we had to wait for a long time before that whistle finally came.
When we got back to our shack, we were completely exhausted. I was so hungry that I felt as if my stomach was touching the inside of my back. We were all so looking forward to the dinner today because of the promised two liang of lamb meat in our soup.
When the soup was brought back from the kitchen, we saw only a few pieces of diced lamb meat. We asked incredulously, “Where is our two liang of meat?” We speculated that the cook must have given all the meat to the company leaders to suck up to them. When we later asked the political instructor what happened to the promised meat, he said he meant meat soup, not chunks of meat. Yes, we should have known better than to believe his promise.
* * *
The good thing about working in the reeds was that they helped to block out the never-ending wind. It felt quite pleasant with the sun over our heads. When we took a break, we could lie on the stack of reeds we had just piled up and enjoy the warmth of the sun.
But one could easily get lost in the forest of reeds. Once inside it, you could not see anything but reeds all around you. So deep into the lake did the reeds grow that even if you walked in the right direction, toward the shore or toward the center of the lake, you could walk for a long time without emerging to reorient yourself. If you walked in the wrong direction, say parallel to the shore as opposed to perpendicular, then you would never get out. The lake was about 50 kilometers (∼30 miles) long and oval in shape, and you could walk in circles forever.
Despite the girls burning down their shack on the ice, we discovered that building a fire on the ice of the lake was not dangerous enough to melt the ice completely. Because heat rose, the ice under the fire would not melt too much. We were usually not permitted to light a fire close to reeds, lest we set the reeds on the entire lake on fire. Most of the boys were smokers and they smoked during breaks, but there was never a fire. I used to think that if we were to get lost, I would start a fire anyhow to send out a distress signal, even at the risk of starting a larger fire. For that purpose, I always carried a box of matches. But it never came to that.
* * *
In the patches of thicker reeds, the job was getting harder, requiring the full physical strength of a strong boy. I was assigned to work with HaBai, the boy from Hohhot, and Yang Shengchen from Beijing. HaBai and I each carried a cutter. Shengchen was responsible for gathering and bundling the cut-down reeds. If he could not keep up with us, we would stop to help him. We began to work with abandon. Shengchen was capable. He could gather and bundle all the reeds that the two of us cut down. When the whistle blew for break, we had already done 58 bundles. One bundle weighed 15 kilograms (∼30 pounds). There were three of us, so we needed to do 100 bundles to meet our quotas. When we finished tying up 100 bundles, I felt starved and exhausted.
For the girls, the walls of reeds with stubbles on the surface of the ice were like brick walls, impossible to push the cutter through. The company leaders decided to mix girls with boys in teams. Two girls joined three of us boys to form a five-person team. Yan Chongjie and I were responsible for cutting down the reeds. Shengchen and two girls were responsible for gathering, bundling, and stacking up the reeds we had cut down. It surprised me that Chen Fengqin, one of the two girls, was almost equally as fast as Shengchen. She rushed this way and that, working hard to gather and bundle reeds without a pause and without even raising her head. She impressed us all.
During the break, the girls gave us a few mantou, white-flour steam buns. That was a treat as we rarely had them and even if we did it was for dinner. It seemed they only ate half their ration and saved the rest to share with us. We were touched knowing how precious these were when we didn’t have enough to eat every day.
But not everyone worked hard. The other girl in our team, whom I only remember by her nickname, “Half Alive,” did not make much of an effort. She had acquired her nickname, in fact, because people thought she looked half dead at work. Of course, people used her nickname behind her back. She just didn’t really care to make an effort at work; and cared less about what people thought of her. She went about in her lazy and leisurely ways, contributing little to our collective efforts. She would stand in a corner, expressionless, weaving ropes with reeds slowly and endlessly. That was all she did, while careful not to cut her fingers. We often lost sight of her because we had moved ahead cutting reeds.
Reeds, when cracked as necessary to soften them up to make into ropes, could cut like a blade. Shengchen’s hand was so deeply cut that blood was spurting out. I checked the wound and found the skin on his finger was cut through, exposing the fatty tissue. I tried to stop the bleeding but couldn’t. It was fortunate he had some bandages with him, so I roughly dressed his wound and let him return to the camp.
We were short-handed without Shengchen. But the other girl, Chen Fengqin, was such a workhorse. I was pushing the cutter and she was right behind me collecting reeds I had cut down. I exerted all my effort in the hope of creating a distance between her and me, so that I could steal a break to catch my breath from time to time. But no matter how hard I worked, I just could not shake her off my tail. I felt frustrated that I couldn’t outdo her, but I had to admire her for being so able and so dedicated.
We continued the same routine every day, going onto the lake after breakfast and returning to our shack as dinnertime neared. This was the hardest work I had experienced thus far. Every day, we came back to our shack exhausted. As the days progressed, we cleared an ever-larger swath of reeds, so that we could see the surface of the lake from the shore all the way to the horizon. As we expanded our battlefield, the clearing became wider and wider. We couldn’t cut down all the reeds. There were places where the remaining stubbles from past years were so thick that it wouldn’t be worth the effort. Now we didn’t have to worry about getting lost, but we had to walk farther and farther out on the ice in search of reeds to cut.
What I couldn’t get over was the hunger and cold in the afternoon. Some of us would save a wotou from breakfast to take with us. But my breakfast ration was never enough for me and there would be nothing left to take. When I occasionally saved a piece, it was already frozen solid by the time I wanted to eat it, and biting was hard on your teeth.
The food was so bad that I found it hard to swallow. Yet I had to eat it to suppress my hunger and maintain energy. I was hungry and yet eating was not an enjoyment. I described this dilemma with the food given to us in an entry in my journal on Friday, December 10, 1971:
The few bowls of mizi last night gave me extreme stomach pain, waking me up in the middle of the night. It hurt so much that it was hard to bear. I massaged my stomach to ease the pain but to no avail. I couldn’t go back to sleep because of my stomachache. I had to get up to find some water. Fortunately, there was some water in the pot. I collected a bundle of reeds and boiled the water. I felt warmer after some hot water and the pain eased. I tossed and turned all night without being able to sleep.
Maybe it was psychological, but I still felt my stomach bloated when I got up in the morning. I struggled to keep up during the morning drill. It was again wotou for breakfast. I feared that my stomach wouldn’t be able to take wotou today, but I was too embarrassed to ask Dr. Yin for a patient meal. I begged Yan Chongjie to help but he didn’t think he would be able to get it for me, as patient meals required a prescription. Fortunately, Wang Juyuan heard of my pain and went to the doctor to ask on my behalf. Before breakfast time, Dr. Yin came and said he had prescribed the patient meal for me. Upon hearing it, my stomach already felt much better. The patient meal was wheat-flour lumps soup and two mantou. After eating the patient meal, I ate another wotou because I was afraid the patient meal would not last and I would feel hungry cutting reeds in the frozen lake. Even though my stomach still wasn’t full, I didn’t dare to eat any more, for fear of upsetting it again. The squad leader Wang Fuquan asked me to rest in the hut, but I declined. If I didn’t go to work, it would be too hard for the rest of our team.
Mantou, made of wheat flour, were much more agreeable to the stomach than wotou, made of corn flour. But mantou was considered a luxury; we had to eat wotou, as well as mizi, the coarse fake millet, every day.
By this time we knew to carry a sharp object, such as a knife or a sickle, when going into the lake, to dig out ice when we got thirsty. I found a new use for my sickle one day when I spotted a small dead fish, about the length of my hand, floating under the ice. I gauged that the ice there was probably no more than 30 centimeters (∼1 foot) thick because the fish was clearly visible. The sight was so tempting that I immediately set to digging it out. Making a hole in the hard ice with a sickle was no small feat. I dug and dug nonstop. By the middle of it, a small crowd of three or four peo
ple had gathered around me. We took turns to dig. I don’t know how long it took us, but it was hours. Finally, we broke through the ice and I gingerly reached into the water and grabbed the slippery dead fish. I had to do it carefully in case I inadvertently pushed it away from the hole, wasting all our effort.
Once back on shore, our little group found a spot out of sight of the others. We cooked the fish—by lighting a fire with dry reeds and boiling it in plain water melted from ice in a washbasin—without any flavor added to it, as we did not have anything to add. After it was cooked, each of us shared one small bite of it. Nobody cared to ask how long the fish might have been dead. It was delicious.
As we enjoyed the treat, someone related a story about the good food the imperial court was served long ago. He had heard the story from Hou Baolin, a famous stand-up comedian, who had told it in one of his shows. The story had it that Dowager Empress Cixi fled Beijing after the forces of eight foreign powers invaded in 1900 during the Boxer Rebellion. After a few days of bumpy travel in a horse-drawn stagecoach, food was running out and the empress and the rest of the royal family were starving. The eunuchs found some food from a farmer’s home in a poor village. It was a dish of spinach and some watery rice porridge. Empress Cixi was so hungry that she ate it all and thought it was delicious.