Fanshen

by Hinton, William ; Magdoff, Fred;

  “Maybe the wind did it,” said Li Ho-jen, who had dropped by as soon as he saw Ch’i Yun and me talking to Shen.

  Over and over again the cadres of the work team had to stress the fact that the gate was still in effect, that those who had not passed it must still go before it, that the four from the county jail had yet to be examined, that punishments for those who had passed had still to be decided, and that the movement for democracy in village life was definitely not yet finished. But the many long personal visits and the heart-to-heart talks barely dented the mood of apathy. For every peasant who took heart and began to move, another dropped back into passivity.

  Li Lao-szu, the conscientious delegate who had once been exploited by his own brother, summed up the prevailing outlook in a long soliloquy that was interrupted only by an effort to light his pipe. “What’s the use of all this talking? There are four cadres who couldn’t pass the gate but what difference has it made in their lives? They were dishonest and resisted the masses, but they live on as before. They go every day to work in the fields, and it makes no difference at all. And as for the four who returned from the county jail, they haven’t received any punishment either. Of course, they will take revenge in the future. In the struggle movement, at least we got something for our hard work. In those days, whenever an accusation was proved, a call went out from the tower for the accused to report to the village office and bring his millet with him. But now …,” he shook his head. “It is very hard to pao ch’eng yi ke tan (draw together like an egg). Even though I try to work hard and actively, when I look behind me no one is following me at all. So why shouldn’t I be gloomy?”

  ***********

  The only encouraging phenomenon in the whole village was the condition of the Communist Party branch itself The morale of the members was somewhat better than it had been. Most of those who had passed the gate were working hard to gain the confidence of the people and had hopes of being able to do so. In the meantime, however, they were far from bold when it came to leading and criticizing. They waited for the rank-and-file peasants to move first; they dared not speak emphatically about anything for fear it would be said that they were oppressing the people and repeating their errors. Over their heads hung the power of the Poor Peasants’ League to refuse them admission, or expel them if they offended anyone. It was a power sufficient to unnerve them.

  Both Hsiao Wen-hsu and his wife had been refused admission to the Poor Peasants’ League group in their section of the village. Wen-hsu was charged with being lazy, his wife, Ho-ch’ueh, with encouraging a young bride’s defiance of her mother-in-law. When the branch met, Ho-ch’ueh wept bitterly. “I am a Party member but I can’t join the League. That is too shameful.” Others tried to comfort her with the thought that she need only wait a while. “When the people understand that your husband wishes to correct his bad habits and that you are only fighting for equality they will accept you as members, never fear.”

  “Look at Ch’un-hsi,” said Hsin-fa, the branch secretary. “When he spoke at our last mass meeting, the people supported him. That goes to show that if your opinion is correct the masses will support you even if you are a Communist Party member, so everyone should work boldly and bravely. Only by hard work can we regain our prestige and the confidence of the people.”

  “That’s right,” added Cheng-k’uan, “we must try to be good hired laborers for the people. If we now hestitate and waver back and forth and do no work because we are afraid to make mistakes, then it will be so much the worse for us.”

  These brave words served more as a facade to cover up real confusion and despair than to express a deeply-held conviction. As Hsiao Wen-hsu said, “Before the purification we never thought much, but now I feel as if I were a person full of scabs, scars, and lumps. In the past others didn’t know my faults, but now they are revealed for all to see, and it is hard to go forward.”

  ***********

  The work team that returned to Long Bow from the County Conference on May 1, 1948, was not the same as the team that had left the village in April. The change was due to the withdrawal of the intellectuals. They were recalled because the University to which they were attached was about to move. Progress on the battlefront was responsible for this. The previous November, the People’s Liberation Army had won a great victory at Shihchiachuang, a rail and textile center at the edge of the Hopei plain. The annihilation of 50,000 Nationalist troops in one battle made possible not only the capture of an industrial town but also the linking up of the two great Liberated Areas in North China—the Shansi-Chahar-Hopei Area and the Shansi-Hopei-Honan-Shantung Area. Consolidation after the victory also made possible a merger between the two great universities of the Liberated Areas—Northern University (in the Taihang Mountains) and United University (in the Wutai Mountains). Together they formed North China University and established a campus at Chengting on the plain. In that county town outside Shihchiachuang a mission compound far larger than anything available in the mountains sat abandoned and empty awaiting occupancy. Word of the merger reached Lucheng County late in April. All the personnel of Northern University serving with land reform teams were immediately recalled from the villages. Then, early in May, the entire staff and student body under President Fan’s leadership set out on foot for Chengting. The march took several weeks and covered more than 300 miles.

  Professor Hsu, Comrade Kao, and the student Wang all left the Long Bow team. In the normal course of events, Ch’i Yun and I would also have had to leave, but I asked special permission to stay on. President Fan not only granted permission for both of us to stay but also left behind a graduate student of the English Department to help us. This decision not only relieved Ch’i Yun of a heavy translating burden, but also replenished, at least in part, the strength of a team which had been cut almost in half by the withdrawal of the University contingent.

  The instructor who stayed behind with us was Hsieh Hung, a landlord’s son from North Hupeh. Slight of build, sharp featured and brilliant, he was an ardent supporter of the Revolution. Although cursed with a case of tuberculosis so advanced that he coughed blood whenever he became tired, Hsieh plunged into the work in Long Bow Village with enthusiasm and soon became, like Ch’i Yun, an indespensable member of the team. Not only did he help make up for the withdrawal of the other teachers and students, but he also helped to fill the gap left by those local members of the team who had to take leave, one after the other, to plant, hoe, and harvest their crops at home. First Liang, then Han, then Hou and Little Ch’uer absented themselves for this purpose. The absence of each was keenly felt by those who remained. Their work load was made tolerable only by the fact that the Long Bow peasants too were busy with spring planting and could not devote as much time as usual to meetings and discussions.

  With the advance of spring the pressure of work on the land became overwhelming. In May the fall-planted crops had to be hoed, the early spring crops thinned and weeded, corn (the main crop) had to be planted and, in preparation, all the accumulated night soil of the previous 12 months had to be carted to the fields and spread. In order to accomplish these tasks it was necessary for the men to depart for the fields before dawn each day and stay there until after sunset. They called this liang t’ou pu chien t’ai yang (both ends sun unseen). When they finally returned home they were exhausted

  At the height of the corn planting rush all other tasks were dropped. Even the cadres of the work team went to the fields to help out and when they returned after dark they fell into bed like everyone else.

  47

  Both Ends Sun Unseen

  On the hands of the people

  Callouses will never go away

  For on their hands they depend

  To create the new day

  Wang Hsi-chien

  ONE MORNING in May I was awakened long before dawn by the sound of iron-clad wheels clattering down the street on the far side of the mission compound wall. In courtyards throughout the village, cocks were crowing. I rolled
out of bed in the semi-darkness and groped my way to the gate. In front of Old Lady Wang’s privy the middle peasant Li P’an-ming had already parked his donkey-drawn cart. He and his son were busy scooping “black gold” from the street-side cistern where it had been fermenting all winter. By the time they had filled the large barrel-like tank that was lashed to the axle of their vehicle, the rest of P’an-ming’s mutual-aid group had emerged from the shadows. They rubbed sleep from half-open eyes and hunched their shoulders against the pre-dawn chill. They had come to help Old Lady Wang plant corn, and so had I. When the old lady came out, vigorous and vocal as ever, we departed for the fields together. Our hostess, tottering along on her bound feet, led the way.

  When P’an-ming’s cart reached the end of Old Lady Wang’s best plot, Li pulled a sliding board from the tail end of the tank and allowed its liquid burden to pour into a reservoir that had been fashioned for this purpose on the previous day. Two of us then dipped the nauseating soup from this reservoir with the aid of wooden buckets slung on carrying poles and carried it to the far end of the field. There two others hurriedly scooped out small hollows in the ground. These hollows, each of which was formed with one blow of the hoe, were spaced some three feet apart in rows that were likewise separated by three feet. Into each hollow a generous portion of night soil was poured. The hoe-wielders then flung some dirt back over it to form a bed for the seed, and Old Lady Wang herself dropped three seeds—no more, no less—on top of the dirt. To complete the job the seeds were covered with loose earth and lightly tamped in with foot pressure. The important thing was to surround the seeds with a rich pool of manure without allowing any of it to come into direct contact with the tender shoots and root hairs which these seeds would soon produce.

  According to local custom, one bucket of liquid night soil was enough for only two or three hills of corn. This meant countless trips back to the reservoir at the end of the plot and required Li P’an-ming to make at least a dozen trips to the village with his cart. It was hard work, made doubly so by the stench of the liquid we were distributing.

  Old Lady Wang’s field lay due west of Long Bow in the center of a wide expanse of flat land. Other groups were planting corn in that area that day, and their voices came clearly across to us on the still hot air. Strips of millet surrounded us on every side. They had been planted some weeks earlier and were already in need of thinning. Wheat, knee-deep and lush, alternated with the millet. Because early spring rains had been ample, the whole countryside seemed to pulse with life. Under the hot noonday sun I even fancied I could see the leaves and stalks grow. Never had the monsoon cycle provided better weather for corn

  We worked in almost complete silence for several hours—Li Lao-szu, a former delegate at the gate, Old Lady Wang and her son Jen-pao, a genial middle peasant named Kuo Ch’ung-wang and I. We finally caught up with Li P’an-ming by emptying the reservoir before he could return with another load. Then we had a chance to sit down at last. Old Lady Wang opened a bundle of steamed bread and I soon found myself chewing this cold fare with a relish I would not have thought possible. The steamed bread made us all so thirsty that we finished off a large pot of boiled water within a few minutes. Our hostess had to send Jen-pao back to the village for more.

  As we sat in the field, stinking from the night soil that had slopped onto our clothes and from the sweat that ran from every pore, I was surprised to see how low the mountains appeared from the middle of the flat on that bright day. I had already noticed that on clear evenings they seemed to tower in the sky, completely enclosing the plain on which Long Bow and Kao Settlement lay. Now the highest peaks appeared to be no more than low hills on the horizon.

  All too soon Li P’an-ming’s cart came rumbling out, and once more we fell to work. But by this time less than a quarter of our task remained. Before the sun slid halfway down the afternoon sky, we had completed the whole field. That was none too soon for me. I was exhausted. When I got back to the village, I fell asleep on my bed in the parish house before I could take my clothes off. For several days thereafter a certain not-so-delicate reminder of the Wang family lingered on my quilt.

  ***********

  As the work load on the land around Long Bow increased so did the load of domestic work in the yards and hovels inside the village. The severe frugality of winter fare no longer sufficed to nourish bodies taxed by heavy labor. Substantial meals of whole grain had to be prepared morning, noon, and night. In order to accomplish this, some women and children scoured the village, the fields, and the hills in the distance for anything that would serve as fuel for their mud stoves, while others pitted themselves against the stone mills scattered throughout various courtyards and corners. All day long they ground out the last remnants of the previous year’s crop.

  Prosperous families put donkeys to work at this task, but the majority possessed no source of power other than the frail limbs of their women and children. It made one wince just to watch them straining to drive the solid stone cylinders round and round on their stone beds. Most of these women had bound feet so small they could be held in the palm of a man’s hand. Yet they toiled on these crippled stumps like any roustabout and thrust them against the hardpacked soil that circled the mills as if they were clubs of wood. More than once I joined some poor woman behind the boom that drove the stone and circled with her until Hou’s megaphone, from the top of the church tower, announced the beginning of another important gathering.

  During that period, few peasants found the energy to respond to Hou’s call. But backbreaking labor at home, at the stone mills, and in the fields was not in itself sufficient to explain the apathy of the peasants, male and female alike, toward the political work the team was trying to carry out. The spring season had not prevented the vigorous land reform drive in 1946. Hundreds of people had participated with enthusiasm then in spite of the need to plant corn. What was holding them back in 1948?

  Part of the answer to this question lay in the program proposed by the work team. It was primarily a program of recapitulation—first, the organization of the poor peasants into a league (this time an official rather than provisional league); next, the classification of the whole village (this time according to the new standards); and finally, the establishment of a Provisional Peasants’ Association made up of the majority of the poor and middle peasants together (here the wave of recapitulation broke onto higher ground). After all this, the first task of the Peasants’ Association turned out to be still further recapitulation—a second gate.

  To traverse once more this familiar cycle was like leading an expedition over a mountain that had already been explored, a mountain on the far side of which no gold had been discovered but only another mountain. And this under conditions far more trying than had been encountered on the first attempt. Only the most dedicated activists participated of their own accord. To get others to come to any meeting required special pleading. Even then the results were disappointing.

  Thus, what really held the peasants back was not exhaustion but ch’ih mi szu hsiang (millet eating thought). From the endless meetings of March and April they had realized no concrete gains, no material goods. Now they were asked to repeat these meetings with even less prospect of material reward. To many shrewd tillers this did not appear to be worthwhile. Better to have a good sleep.

  Since coercion and beatings were absolutely forbidden, people did just as they pleased. They came out if they wanted to; they stayed home and slept if that suited them better. As Lao-pao, a delegate to the gate, said to his friend Lao-szu when the latter dropped by to call him out, “I’m tired. I’m going to bed early. I don’t want to go to any meeting. Can anyone arrest me for that?”

  The work team called this “extreme democracy.”

  “Extreme democracy” slowed progress to a walk but never quite stopped work altogether. In spite of poor attendance the neighborhood groups of the Poor Peasants’ League reviewed their membership lists for a second time, added 20 families, dropped eight (mos
t of them households thought to be middle peasant), and then on May 11 elected an official Poor Peasants’ League Committee. The balloting was done with beans and bowls as before.

  At this stage in the development of village institutions, elections were significant mainly as a sort of litmus test to show the trend of popular thought. As such, this election both encouraged and disturbed the work team cadres.

  In most sections of the village the poor peasants chose candidates whom the cadres considered to be the most active and reliable leaders. Among them were eight Communists—four men and four women. The large vote which these Communists polled showed that they still enjoyed great prestige. In the southwest section, for instance, bobbed-haired Hu Hsueh-chen won twice as many votes among the women as her nearest competitor, a sign that her popularity was rising day by day. Old Lady Wang, on the other hand, though nominated, failed to be elected. Apparently her neighbors had begun to tire of her single-minded determination to get something out of the movement and her harsh condemnation of all who did not live up to the strict moral standards which she set. These results were encouraging.

  What disturbed the work team cadres was the big vote won by Shen Ch’uan-te among the men of the southwest section. As it turned out, Shen had solicited support from every one of the Catholics who still had a grievance against the revolutionary administration. Men and youths who had never attended any previous meetings showed up to put a bean in his bowl.

  The women of that section were shocked.

  “Shen has already mounted the horse. He struts around the village as if he owned it,” said one.

  “He doesn’t know how high the sky is or how thick the earth,” said another.

  In a runoff, where both men and women voted together, the women cast their ballots for Li Lao-szu. Since the men split their vote, Shen was defeated, but only by a narrow margin.