Old Tian, a middle peasant in his seventies and an unofficial village elder, became a frequent visitor. Although he could not read, he was thoroughly versed in the folktales. His political and social beliefs came from his understanding of tradition and folklore, and the other villagers had great respect for his erudition and opinions. His crony Gao, who could read, was regarded as an intellectual in the village. His clothes were always carefully patched, his chin and head clean-shaven.
“In my lifetime I have seen quite a few dynasties change. They rose and they fell,” said Old Tian, stroking the wispy thread of beard on his chin. To him all the rulers of modern China were still emperors.
“So there was no difference between them?” asked Malvolio Cheng, comprehending both the words and the dispassionate tone in which they were spoken.
“No. They all sent their inspector-generals to Longxiang. The landlords entertained them with banquets and gave them presents. After that, they said they were satisfied with what they saw, and they left. Nothing changed.”
“But this time we come to be your friends, not the landlords’,” I interposed. “We are your guests, not the landlords’.” I was annoyed that they completely ignored me in their conversation and seemed to take it for granted that young women should be seen—if at all—but not heard.
“Once in my native place … um … erh …” Gao paused and thought for a while, unhurried. “It was more than twenty years ago that there came some imperial inspector-generals. They talked like you do and they dressed like you too.” He pointed the stem of his pipe at Malvolio Cheng’s cadre-style jacket to emphasize the point. He was answering my question through Cheng. “They came to talk to us. They seemed to be nice people. But the landlords came back with their militia, and that wasn’t all. An army came from Changan with shiny new arms—an all-conquering host, like the Emperor’s army of old. Your guys with rusty old guns were no match for them. They had to clear out. We found ourselves in deep water. Everyone who had accepted land was called a rebel. The landlords settled accounts and killed us like flies. I was lucky. I have long legs and could run faster than they. In fact, that’s how I came to settle here.”
“I well understand your misgivings. In more than twenty years I have worked with the peasants in many places.” To bring me into the conversation Cheng turned to me and added, “That was during the civil war period. Every time we moved into a new area and took it from the warlords and the Guomindang, we tried to help the peasants get back their old lands. But as soon as the Guomindang army reoccupied a place they undid what we had done and gave the land back to the landlords. For a time it was a seesaw struggle, and in some places it was a terrible time for the peasants.”
Taking Malvolio Cheng’s cue I added, “But this time the landlords and their gangs are finished for good. And what’s left of that ‘heavenly host’ has run away to Taiwan along with Chiang Kai-shek.”
They did not deign to answer my assertion and there was a moment’s pause. Later I learned that they had never even heard of Chiang Kai-shek anyway. They only knew about the local Guomindang military governor whose name was Ma.
“Now we have come from Changan,” remarked Cheng, slowly withdrawing his pipe from his mouth. It was shrewdly said. There was an immediate but hardly perceptible change in their attitude. Old Tian stroked his beard, while his crony Gao hunched his shoulders so that his neck disappeared into the collar of his jacket. But they did not so much as exchange glances. Changan was the capital of the great Tang dynasty; it had rivaled Rome at the peak of its glory. To these men Changan was the symbol of governmental power. Their imagination could picture no city greater or more powerful than Changan. Nanking or Peking meant little to them. Who came from Changan must have solid backing. They were the people to be reckoned with.
“Have you seen the old palace?” Old Tian threw his companion a significant look. He had put a question to test our worth. How it was answered would establish or discredit our credentials.
Cheng more than rose to the occasion. He moved from the kang to the center of the room. With eloquence and gestures in the style of the traditional storytellers he described the palace. Outshining even our very imaginative Xian guide, his words and actions unfolded before us the full splendor of that edifice: the marble terrace and vermilion halls, the emperor and his generals and ministers, courtiers and palace beauties promenading in their gorgeous costumes. He changed his expression, voice, movements, and gestures as he changed his roles, conjuring up an enchanting picture of the ancient capital. He ended by connecting this ancient glory to the center of the new provincial government. The two elders were so fascinated by his narrative that when Chen turned to me for corroboration and asked, “Isn’t that so?” they looked straight at me for the first time since I had entered the little room. I nodded my head.
“Did you see the Hua-qing hot spring?” asked Old Tian. This was another important question. “When Yang Gui-fei went there in the middle of the night she saw fairies bathing in it.”
“No,” corrected Gao, the younger man, “Yang Gui-fei bathed in it first and then became a fairy.”
“Both are believable,” admitted the older one, a little put out.
“She bathed in it,” said Cheng, nodding in my direction.
“Yes, I did,” I exclaimed joyfully.
They stared at me with new interest. It was obvious that my status had risen in their eyes. It was as though they expected to see multicolored clouds appear any moment beneath my feet to carry me away. They hastened to say good-bye. They could hardly wait to spread the absorbing news they had received.
“Please come to our meeting tomorrow. We’ll be reading the new land reform law to you.” Cheng bowed to them and they returned his bow.
The meeting room was a large empty hall to the right of the township office. It had once been used by the local magistrates to try cases. It could hold up to thirty people, and we did not expect more than that number to attend. There would be members of the reorganized Poor Peasants’ Association, some members of the new Peasants’ Militia, and members of my study class for women. The middle peasants in general still kept their own counsel, though many of them were almost as poor as the poor peasants, but we expected that this time some of them would attend the meeting. We hoped that after hearing the land reform law read out and discussed in public they would spread the good word among their families and friends.
It was still early. The bell we hung outside the hall on a branch of a locust tree was still reverberating from its last toll, but as I approached the door of the hall I already heard a hum of conversation. Glancing around the crowd inside, I spotted Xiu-ying’s father squatting by himself in a corner, staring hard into the top of his pipe. He had not wanted to come, I knew, but at my urging Xiu-ying had literally dragged him there. His reputation as an honest, hardworking farmer would be a major asset to the meeting.
Xiu-ying’s mother was there too, sitting with a few other women apart from the men. Her little son lolled beside her with his head resting lazily on her knees. Old Tian the village elder and Gao the village sage were there, just as we had hoped, with a group of their middle peasant friends. Most had never yet attended our meetings and they carried much weight in the village. The young activists, most from poor peasant households or landless laborers, and the regulars of my study class were in full force. They squatted around the low table that supported the kerosene lantern, or leaned against the walls, the young men on one side, the girls on the other.
It was all too clear that the older men, like Xiu-ying’s father, were uncomfortable there; they were unsmiling, even sullen. Despite the chatter of the young folk, the atmosphere in the room was strained. The women were not their usual gossipy selves. They knew that they were the cause of the constraint. It disconcerted them and the older men to have men and women discussing serious matters in public as if they were all equals. It broke all traditions. And more than that, I knew quite well that most of them were still apprehensive. Be
fore they jumped on our bandwagon, they wanted to be sure that they would not be left stranded somewhere along the road, as they had been left stranded before.
The room was already stuffy. The lantern light showed a mist of smoke and body heat forming and reforming above the heads of those who sat cross-legged or squatted on the earthen floor. There was a strong and rancid odor of sweat, dirt, and tobacco smoke.
I took a seat on the floor but then edged back to rest my shoulders against the wall. My neighbor made a space for me and then twitched her shoulders in an effort to ease the itch between her shoulder blades. A louse was biting her. I smiled at her understandingly and then inwardly braced myself. In the heat of the room my lice—my newest affliction in Longxiang—would surely come crawling out of the seams of my clothes and make a meal of me too.
Someone—by the looks of the hand that held the door, a woman—stood outside. She opened the door, peeked in, and then closed the door again timidly, but it flew open abruptly when the Broken Shoe brushed her aside and sailed into the crowded room. When she took a seat with the other women, they all squeezed together not so much to make room for her as to put a distance between her and them. The Broken Shoe had handled this sort of situation before. She made herself comfortable and paid no attention to them.
Cheng opened the meeting by reading out the land reform law as we had promised, explaining some of the more difficult passages as he went along. When he had finished there was a short pause as neighbors in increasingly audible whispers asked each other questions and made comments on those portions that had caught their attention. Wang Sha and the Xian Party leader had drilled it into us until Cheng and I knew it almost by heart, but for most of the peasants it was too much to take in all at once.
After an animated discussion, the group around Gao the village sage fell silent. Gao cleared his throat and, when Cheng turned to him, said with typical circumlocution, “Some people didn’t quite catch that part about the rich peasants.”
Turning back the pages of the pamphlet before him, Cheng answered readily, “I’ll read it again. Here’s what it says: ‘Protect the property of rich peasants including the land they till themselves or rent out. However, under certain special circumstances, part of the land or all of the land rented out may be confiscated if the authority higher than the provincial government gives its approval.’ ”
“What are those ‘special circumstances’?” Gao pressed the point.
“For example, if a rich peasant has committed crimes.”
“Only then will he lose land?”
“That’s the law.” Cheng gave it a moment’s thought.
“Otherwise rich peasants can keep everything they own.”
After another buzz of conversation, Gao spoke again in a tone of great gravity: “But I have heard that in some places rich peasants are being attacked along with the landlords. Is that so?”
Cheng gave me a quick, sidelong glance which said, “Don’t speak unless you’re sure of what you are saying,” and then answered Gao’s query.
“Ordinary rich peasants should not be troubled,” he said. “Perhaps in the case you have heard about they were mistaken for landlords. They leased out some land or they lent out money at high interest. Sometimes there is not a very clear-cut line between such a rich peasant and a landlord. And sometimes hotheaded people act before they investigate and they do what should not be done.”
“Is there always a clear-cut line between rich peasants and middle peasants?” interjected the Broken Shoe mischievously, as the other women gazed at her with astonishment at her boldness in a conclave of men. Yet we all knew she was saying out loud what everyone else had in their heads.
Old Tian immediately took up the cue despite its source. “In our village, we have all sorts of peasants: poor peasants with just a bit of land, tenant farmers, landless farm laborers, middle income peasants, rich peasants, and a few landlords. When the land reform starts and the landlords lose their land, rich peasants will naturally get worried. It might be their turn next. If rich peasants are attacked, we middle peasants, of course, will fret.”
“Ordinary middle peasants will surely have nothing to worry about if an ordinary rich peasant hasn’t,” said Cheng emphatically. “I am not saying no mistakes will ever be made, but there will be less danger of such mistakes being made if we all work together well and know exactly who is who. That’s what we are here for tonight. We want to know your views. What we are going to do is not an easy thing.” Cheng spread out his arms as if to embrace them all, even the Broken Shoe, in brotherhood.
“What does the law say about taking land away from rich peasants?” asked Gao the village sage, ignoring Cheng’s invitation to join the brotherhood. He did not want to talk directly about middle peasants.
“The law says that a rich peasant can keep as much of his land as he tills himself. If he has surplus land that he rents out like a landlord, then that land may be put in the pool to be shared out among the landless or landpoor peasants,” said Cheng, thumbing through the book in front of him even though he knew the answer by heart. Then he added, “But no other property of a rich peasant will be touched.”
“But after the land share-out some of us middle peasants will still have more land than most other peasants. Will that land be taken from us?”
“No, oh no,” exclaimed Cheng and I simultaneously. And Cheng added, “I’ll read that part out.” As he fumbled for the right page in his book, he leaned over to me and whispered, “Now you see why Shen and Tu have kept out of this. We’re being tested, and we mustn’t flunk.”
He found the page he wanted and read out loud: “ ‘If there is still a difference between the holdings of the middle peasants and those of the former poor peasants and farm laborers, this is permissible as long as it is not great.’ That’s clear, isn’t it? And ‘activists among the middle peasants must also be drawn into the committees of peasant associations carrying out the land reform.’ You see the difference? The landlords and rich peasants cannot join the association, but middle peasants can. You will be helping to run things.”
Old Gao took out his own copy of the land reform law from his pocket (we had passed several out among the villagers during the last few days) and compared its cover with the one held up by Cheng. Satisfied that they were identical, he started to read the page silently. His index finger moved deliberately from character to character. When once he paused and scrutinized the page even more closely, Cheng motioned to the peasant activist Little Gao standing near Old Gao to go to his help. The young man nodded and, squatting near Old Gao, gave him the sound of the character he was stumbling over.
“Sure, sure!” exclaimed Old Gao querulously. “Unite. Yes, it says ‘firmly unite with the middle peasants.’ My eyes are not what they used to be. When the light is poor and the print is small, I can’t see the characters clearly.”
“Take my glasses.” Cheng took off his spectacles and handed them to Gao. “How’s that?”
Gao, with Cheng’s spectacles hanging loosely on his nose, slowly and ponderously read out the passage in question.
When he had finished, Cheng looked all round the room and then asked, “Isn’t that fair enough?”
Once again the room hummed with the murmurs of a dozen discussions. In a momentary pause I caught the voice of the Broken Shoe. She smirked at her neighbor: “Talk is talk. Who’s to say they won’t kick us around after they’ve got what they want?”
“What do they want?” her neighbor asked doubtfully.
The Broken Shoe did not answer but got to her feet and strolled over to where Gao was reading to his cronies from his book. She stepped on a woman’s foot as she threaded her way through the crowd.
“Who do you think you are, stepping on people’s feet!” came a quick response. “It’s like a carpet, eh? Soft and warm.”
“I didn’t see your foot.”
“That’s just it. You don’t care where you step.”
“Or where you sit either.�
� The Broken Shoe thrust her face forward pugnaciously. Did she want to start a fight and disrupt the meeting?
“You stinking cunt!”
“No more stinking than yours,” and with that the Broken Shoe lunged out at her opponent. Cursing, they began to pull each other’s hair until the other women separated them.
Xiu-ying tried to persuade the Broken Shoe to leave. But she would have none of it. She yelled, “I’m not leaving! I am a poor peasant woman. No matter how much you hate me I’m still a poor peasant woman.”
Her eyes wild and her hair disheveled, the Broken Shoe plumped herself down on the floor again. She made it clear that the only way to get her to leave would be to throw her out bodily.
“Why are you trying to disrupt the meeting?” Xiu-ying turned fiercely on her.
The Broken Shoe drew back at the suddenness of this direct accusation. She frowned at Xiu-ying. “Why are you picking on me? I say things that you don’t like to hear. But they have all said things about you behind your back!”
“Our tongues are not as long as yours, though,” jeered a voice.
“So now it’s my tongue you don’t like? Why don’t you cut it off?” The Broken Shoe raised her voice again, blustering as she dodged Xiu-ying’s question. On her knees, she snatched a pair of small scissors that Cheng had used to cut the burned-out wick of the kerosene lantern and had put on the table. Holding the scissors to the corner of her mouth with one hand, with the other she mimicked the act of excruciatingly forcing open her mouth and extracting her tongue.
No one said a word.
The performance had fallen flat. Abashed, she put down the scissors and muttered sheepishly: “You don’t want me here. All right, I’ll go. No hard feelings.” There was a pause. No one answered her.
When she spoke again, her voice was unsteady. “I’ll get my share of land, eh, won’t I?”
The Dragon's Village: An Autobiographical Novel of Revolutionary China Page 11