by Li Cunxin
Years later my niang confessed, “I was outside your fourth aunt’s door and my heart bled each time you screamed. The sound of your cries was like a thousand sharp knives cutting into my guilty heart! Several times I banged on your fourth aunt’s door, trying to take you away. Thank the gods for your fourth aunt’s determination. She just ignored me.”
My fourth aunt wasn’t really sure whether this bai fang would work either. She nearly gave up many times that day. But she knew this was the last chance they had to save my arm.
By the end of that day I had lost my voice completely from screaming. But my aunt’s determination saved my arm. The infection slowly went away. A large scar remained, and in years to come, in moments of crisis, I would always touch it. It would become my link to my niang and a reminder of her love.
Three years later, my niang gave birth to her seventh son, my youngest brother, Cungui, who we called by his nickname Jing Tring. My parents knew they couldn’t provide enough food to feed the sons they now had, and as far as I can remember there was never enough food. Meat, seafood and eggs were all on a strict quota system, along with oil, soy sauce, sugar, salt, wheat and corn flour, rice and also coal. Every family was allocated a very small quantity of these items each month, but often they were not available at all.
We ate a lot of dried yams. They were the easiest things to grow, so most of our land was used for yams. I was often woken up at five o’clock in the morning by my niang to go to the yam fields with my big brothers before they started school for the day. We each carried a shovel and a bamboo basket made by our dia, to dig for any yams that might have been overlooked by the peasants during harvesting. We were cold and hungry but the hope of those yams for breakfast always kept us going. Often the fields had already been turned over by others in equally desperate circumstances, and we returned home with empty baskets.
During summer, every family’s front yard and roof were covered with slices of these yams drying in the sun. They looked like snowflakes. Some people even laid them out on the street. But if rain came, you had to quickly pick them all up, for if they got wet they soon went moldy. Once they were dried, the sliced yams would be stored in a huge clay pot in my older brothers’ bedroom or in our dia’s attic.
Dried yams were our basic food for most of the year. We occasionally had flour and corn bread for a treat, but those were my niang’s special reserves for relatives or important visitors. We had dried yams, steamed or boiled, almost daily, week after week, month after month and year after year. Dried yams were the most hated food in my family, but there were others in the commune that could not even afford dried yams. We were luckier than most. We were luckier than the thirty million who starved to death. Dried yams saved our lives.
One year, I remember that our commune experimented with growing peanuts on a few small pieces of land, but it was a disappointingly meager crop. After the peanut field had been harvested, a group of boys my age, about five or six years old, followed some of the older boys with spades and bamboo baskets, trying to find peanuts in the ground that, like the yams, might have been missed by others. None of us found many peanuts after hours of earth churning, but on the edge of the field one of the boys discovered a rat hole, a lucky find for starving boys! He immediately started digging. We gathered around him as if he were a magnet: rats always stored food for winter, so we were all excited and envious of the boy’s find. We knew not to kneel by the rat hole because local superstition told us that if we did the rat tunnel would disappear. So the boy dug as fast as he could, with his ass in the air. Several times he nearly lost the tunnel because the rats tried to block it. Then he found that it branched out in different directions, and soon he discovered three stores: one of peeled peanuts, one of half-peeled and the third of unpeeled peanuts. We never saw the rats; we thought they had a secret escape route.
That lucky boy gathered almost half a basketful of peanuts, but secretly I felt sad for the rats, losing their food like that. They too might die of starvation that winter. What a cruel world, I thought, where we had to compete with the rats for food.
Mealtimes in my family were always sad for my niang. There was often nothing for her to cook. We would look at what little food there was on the wooden tray and, out of respect for our elders, always wait for our dia to start. One day, when my niang served dinner, it was clear there was not enough food for everyone.
“I don’t feel hungry,” our dia said casually. “I had a rather big lunch today. You all go ahead.”
Each of us had our chopsticks in hand, ready to swarm on the food. But we hesitated. Our niang was next in line. She quickly gave our dia an annoyed look and made “zhi, zhi, zhi” sounds with her tongue. “Don’t you dare not eat! Your health is our entire family’s security. We will all only be drinking water if you starve yourself to death!”
“I really mean it. I’m not hungry,” our dia protested innocently.
“Don’t annoy me, you liar!” our niang admonished, and she picked some food up with her chopsticks and put it in our dia’s bowl. We started to eat only once he took the first bite. Our parents always ate their food slowly to allow us more food. On many occasions our niang told us to leave the best food for our dia because he was our main breadwinner. But our dia always made excuses and told us we should give the best food to our niang: if not for her we would all have only “northwest wind” for dinner.
We rarely ate meat. Once a month we would wait in long lines at the market for the fattest piece of pork available. Our niang would extract lard from it to use for cooking later, but everyone else wanted the fat pork too, so we didn’t get it very often.
One afternoon, my niang heard that the meat shop in our commune was selling pork, but only for a few hours. She borrowed one yuan from my fourth aunt and told me to run to the meat shop as fast as I could in case they ran out, which they often did. It was a good half hour away. There were three long lines of people waiting by the time I arrived. An hour later I handed the cashier my money and our ration card, and I was given a small piece of fatty pork. I was so excited! I knew my niang would be happy with such a fatty piece.
She was ecstatic. She immediately cut the pork into small pieces and started to cook them to extract the lard. I was her wind-box pusher. The delicious fragrance and the sound of sizzling pork made my tummy rumble. She was in high spirits. “What a good piece of pork! This amount of lard will last us a while,” she said, and handed me a bowl with a small piece of pork crackling in it. “Don’t burn your tongue,” she warned. The crackling melted in my mouth—nothing in the world could taste as good.
My niang also cut up a cabbage to cook. “This will be a nice surprise for your dia!”
That night, when the cabbage dish was served, we could actually see the traces of precious oil floating in the sauce! My second brother found a small piece of pork in the cabbage too, and put it into our dia’s bowl. Our dia immediately passed it to our niang. Our niang passed it back to him. “Don’t be silly!” she said, “I especially cooked this for you. You need it for your strength at work.”
My youngest brother was sitting next to our dia. Our dia turned to him and said, “Jing Tring, let me see your teeth.” Before our niang could say anything, he put that piece of pork into my brother’s mouth. There was silence, and a long, sad sigh from our niang.
It was always like this. Often a small piece of meat in a vegetable dish would be passed from person to person because it was so scarce. Seven pairs of hungry eyes would look at our parents, begging for more. But no begging words were ever spoken because we all knew how difficult it was to get any food at all. There was simply nothing more to cook. My parents didn’t know where the food for our next meal would be coming from.
To survive, my niang worked every spare hour she had in the fields, as well as cooking and looking after her boys. She cooked three meals a day, every day. We never dreamed of going to a restaurant. There was only one restaurant in our area anyway, and it mainly served the government offic
ials. Often my niang had to bury her pride and borrow food from relatives or neighbors. She was an extremely resourceful cook and could make delicious dishes from anything, except dried yams. I hoped never to see another piece of dried yam as long as I lived. They looked whitish before cooking and turned pale gray afterwards. They had no taste and stuck in our throats, so we normally had a bowl of hot water to help get them down, or if we were lucky we would get a bowl of watery rice, wheat or corn congee. Congee is like thin porridge, with very few grains in it.
I loved watching my niang cook while I pushed the wind box. This was a special time for me. I could talk to her alone then, and have a little bit of undivided attention. I was her favorite wind-box pusher, the fastest among my brothers to make the fire. I was also the most patient. My joy and sadness fluctuated along with my niang’s. She would be in such a happy mood when she had oil, seafood or especially if she had a piece of pork. I would ask her many questions about the cooking, and I learned when to add certain spices and how to be a good cook.
Food wasn’t our only problem of course. Even the water we used had to be boiled. We were not allowed to drink unboiled water. We were told that unboiled water from the village wells could give us worms. My brothers and I all had worms many times throughout our childhood. We would get knotted stomachs and bad pains, and our parents would wake us up and give us some sweet medicine to chew. We called them “the vomitable worm killers.” They came in the form of candies shaped like miniature pyramids. The first taste was bearable, with some sweetness, but after five of them I wanted to vomit. And I was only halfway there: I had to eat ten of them! My poor older brothers suffered even more, because the older you were the more worm killers you had to chew. We took them at night while our stomachs were empty and the worms had nothing to eat except the vomitable worm killers. After that, for the next few days, we had to be on a strict diet of warm food, warm water, no sweet, salty or oily food, and no seafood. That meant only one thing—dried yams, meal after meal. Sometimes the worms didn’t come out for days and we had to repeat the whole process. Most of the time the worms came out still alive, usually many of them and all about a foot long. The older brothers hated their younger brothers for this horrible ordeal because we, most likely, caused the annual drama by not washing our hands regularly. They had no choice but to go through this process each year.
But despite our poverty, our parents always taught us to have dignity, honesty and pride. Never to steal or do things that would harm others. Our good family name was most sacred and should be protected with all our might.
I tested this one day when I was playing at a friend’s house. I was about five. Sien Yu was the same age, and his uncle, who lived in the city, had brought him a small toy car when he’d visited the day before. It was the first time I had ever seen a toy car. I had never seen anything more beautiful in my life! Sien Yu let me play with it for a while. I loved it so much. When he went inside to get a drink, I took it and ran home.
“Where did you get that?” my niang asked suspiciously.
“I . . . I found it on the street.”
She knew I was not telling the truth. No one in our area could afford to spend money on a toy. “Who did you just play with?”
“Sien Yu,” I replied.
She took my hands firmly and pulled me back to Sien Yu’s house. She said to his mother, “Sien Yu’s niang, is this your son’s toy car?”
Sien Yu’s mother nodded.
“I’m sorry, I think my son has stolen your son’s toy car,” my niang said.
“Don’t get upset,” Sien Yu’s mother replied. “Your son is too young to understand.”
“I’m ashamed, I’m ashamed of what my son did!” said my niang, and apologized profusely. She tried to make me do the same, but I felt too embarrassed and refused, and wished I had never seen that toy car. I wished for a hole in which to hide. I wished for thick skin to cover my face. I felt the blood rushing to my neck. I tried to escape from my niang’s firm grip. I wanted to run away and never come near Sien Yu’s house again. I hated my niang for embarrassing me like this. She shouted. She wanted the entire world to know I had stolen my friend’s toy car. I screamed and kicked as she dragged me home. “I want a car! I want a car!” I yelled.
As soon as we went inside our house, with despair in her eyes, she pulled me to her chest, hugged me tightly in her arms and sobbed. It was as though she had suffered as much humiliation as I had. “I’m so sorry to do this to you,” she whispered tenderly. “I’m so sorry we are too poor to buy you a toy car.” After a brief moment she continued. “I’m too stupid to have all of you in this cruel world! You don’t deserve this suffering!” I felt her tears streaming onto my hair. “We are too poor! The gods in heaven won’t answer our prayers, and even the devil below has abandoned us. We are born with a hopeless fate,” she sighed.
“Stop saying that! Don’t say anything!” I begged her. I hated to see her so sad.
She continued as though she hadn’t heard me. “How I wish I had the money to buy you a toy car! But we don’t even have enough money for food.”
“I’ll have enough food for you one day! I swear!” I said to myself.
She hugged me tighter as she sobbed. I didn’t know how long she hugged me, but I didn’t want her to stop.
That evening, at dinner, after she had told everyone what I had done, my dia started lecturing us. “Although we have no money, no food, and can’t buy clothes, and although we live in a poor house, one thing we do have is PRIDE. Pride is the most precious thing in our lives. Throughout our forefathers’ struggles, the Li family always had our pride and dignity. We have always had a good reputation. I want every one of you to remember this: never lose your pride and dignity no matter how hard life is.”
2
MY NIANG AND DIA
Memories of my niang and my dia are always related to how hard they both worked. Our dia was often up before five-thirty in the morning, which meant my niang had to be up even earlier to cook him breakfast. With all the cooking, washing and sewing she had to do, she hardly had time or energy to pay each of us much attention. We all fought over her love and affection, and she was constantly exhausted. She cooked every meal, made all our clothes for every season and made all our quilts and blankets too. She carried the laundry either to the stream about twenty minutes south of our house or to a dam about half an hour away up on the Northern Hill. The stream often had little water in summer, and our big clay water pot would be covered with ice in the winter. Yet she had no alternative for washing the dishes and clothes.
We always had to be extra careful that we didn’t run out of coal for cooking and heating in the middle of winter. There was a great shortage of black coal throughout China, so we never had enough, not even half-burned coal, to heat the water for my niang’s huge amounts of washing. Each family was apportioned a small quota of black coal on strict rations, but we only used it to ignite the half-burned coal, which looked like little pieces of gray sponge. This coal had already been burned once by factories or power stations, and if we saw some on the side of the road or in the garbage we would pick it up and take it home. Half-burned coal was very hard to light. It needed black coal to keep it burning. Using the wind box, my niang first lit some dried grass, which was gathered and stacked during summer. Sometimes it could take up to fifteen minutes to light the fire. On windy days, the smoke from my niang’s cooking would fill the house, and we would all wake up in the morning coughing.
The small amount of black coal that was allocated to us we would try to keep for winter heating. The temperature in Qingdao could go as low as minus fifteen degrees Celsius, and often the inside of our house felt colder than the outside. We’d mix the black coal with some dirt to make it last longer. Even heating up some water for the washing was a luxury for my niang. But our patched clothes were always clean. She took immense pride in making her seven sons look well cared for.
Every aspect of life was hard for my parents. We even had to
sleep in the same bed. Jing Tring and I slept with them until I was eleven. All four of us, head-to-toe. I hated my brother’s smelly feet right by my face, and he must have hated me more since I was taller than he was. Sometimes he’d end up on my side of the kang with the quilt all to himself, and I’d have to grab the quilt back. But I loved sleeping with my parents. It felt so safe. I often wondered why my niang always looked for her hairpins on my dia’s side in the mornings and imagined what they were up to while we were asleep. So often I tried to pretend that I was asleep in order to find out their secrets, but I never managed to stay awake.
I rarely saw a smile from my niang, but when I did, my heart would blossom like a lotus flower. I would have given anything to make her smile. Occasionally, in my naïve way, I tried to cheer her up with stories. When I was only little, my second brother had done some jobs for someone in the village and he’d paid my brother with a young goat. We put all our prayers into that goat, hoping that when she grew up she might produce some milk for us which we could sell for cash. I loved that goat. I took her anywhere I could to feed her grass and I brought grass home for her every day.
As I passed our main bedroom window one day, I overheard one of my niang’s friends telling her, “I heard there is a rare and special goat that will sneeze out a worm sometimes. This worm can cure some rare diseases. The government in Beijing would pay a lot of money for it!”
Not long after, as I was going to take the goat to eat some grass before sunset, my niang said, “Just look at this skinny goat! Do you think anyone in their right mind would give away a milk-producing goat?” I knew she was in despair over our shortage of food that day, and she was short-tempered. I tried to think of something that would cheer her up and suddenly remembered her friend’s tale about the goat.