Daughter of Good Fortune

by Chen Huiqin

  Our hamlet was one of the first in the area to have access to electricity, because we were the closest to the pump station that was wired to the electricity transformation station in Zhuqiao. At first, several houses shared one electricity meter. At the end of the month, the electricity bill was divided according to the number of bulbs each household had. We cut a hole in the partition that separated the bedroom from the kitchen-dining room. A wire ran along the ceiling and dangled a bulb down to the hole. That way, we used only one bulb for both sections of our living quarters. The bulbs used in the village were all fifteen watts.

  Over the next few years, electricity became widely available. We no longer had to pedal the threshing machines with our feet—they were now powered by electricity. A wired loudspeaker system was set up in our area. Small loudspeakers were installed at every house and big ones were put up on tall poles that stood in the fields and on the threshing ground. We could turn the loudspeaker in our house on and off anytime we wanted or needed to. Three times each day—morning, noon, and evening—the wired loudspeaker gave us daily news; made announcements; discussed new and innovative farming methods; introduced new farm tools, fertilizers, insecticides, and seeds; and played music and local operas. All those programs came from a radio station run by Zhuqiao Commune, and a young woman from South Hamlet worked as an announcer at the station for several years.

  When the first loudspeaker came to our village, it was set up in Yang Ji’an’s guest hall, the place where we held village meetings at the time. The coming of the loudspeaker was an exciting event, so I took Mother to experience it with me. The loudspeaker was a bowl-like metal box. When it started to play a local opera, Mother asked if the opera singers were hiding in the next room. When I told her that there were no opera singers present in the house, she wondered where the voices were coming from. We were all amazed at the bowl-like metal box that emitted voices.

  On the National Day (October 1) of 1962, a public bus started to run on the Coal-cinder Road between Zhuqiao Town and urban Jiading. Although I was in confinement after the birth of Shebao, I went to the stone steps behind our house and from there I saw the bus running on the Coal-cinder Road. Some people in our village paid to take the bus to and from urban Jiading, just to experience a ride in a motor vehicle. There were several fixed stops on the bus route and Wangjialong was one of them.

  With electricity, we were now able to have rice unhusked or to have rice turned into flour at a processing plant at the brigade headquarters, about one li from our village. Before electricity was available, we had to take harvested rice to Zhuqiao Town by boat for unhusking. The nearby processing plant made things easier for us. We used our production team’s pull-trailer to take rice to the plant for unhusking. If we only needed a small bag of glutinous rice turned into flour for rice balls with meat or sweet fillings, we took it over on our shoulders. We no longer used the pestle and mortar in the Fortune Gate Room to pound rice flour.

  WORK AND CHILDREN

  My husband continued to devote his time and energy to his work (fig. 6.2). For about two years, from early 1963 to late 1964, he was sent to work in Jinshan, another suburban county in Shanghai, as a member of a Siqing, or Four Clean-ups, work team. The Four Clean-ups Movement was to investigate whether cadres, accountants, or warehouse keepers had done anything wrong historically or had abused power and taken what was not theirs.2 While my husband was in Jinshan and lived in local peasant houses, a Siqing work team, made up of people we did not know, came to our village. Zhang Zhigao was one of the team members. He was assigned to eat lunch at our house.

  When my husband worked in Jinshan, he came home for short visits. One day, my father took Shezhu to Jiading Town for a visit. When they got to the bus terminal in Jiading Town to return home, Shezhu saw a food stand selling sugarcane sticks. She wanted one, so my father went to buy it while Shezhu got onto the bus. She saw two men sitting and talking on the bus. She thought one of them looked like her father. Shezhu timidly approached and called, “Diedie, Diedie.” The man did not respond. When my father got onto the bus, Shezhu pointed at the man and asked Grandpa in a low voice if that was her father. Grandpa accompanied her to find out. Indeed, it was her father. My husband said that he had not expected to see his daughter on the bus and he had been engaged in a conversation. Shezhu was so unsure of herself that she might have just whispered from a distance, so her father did not hear her calling voice.

  Another time when my husband came home from Jinshan for a short visit, I was working on the threshing ground and Shezhu and Shebao were playing around. Someone noticed that my husband was entering the village and said to my children, “Your father is coming home. Go quickly to meet him. He must have brought you treats.” Shezhu and Shebao did not move right away, so I said, “Their father is not in the habit of bringing treats to kids.” When I returned home that evening, I found that my husband had brought something home this time. It was four-horned water caltrop (sijiaoling), a Jinshan specialty.

  My husband did not have any weekends or any fixed days off work to come home. Even when he did come home, sometimes our children had already gone to sleep. When he came home before they had gone to sleep, one of them would shout, “Dad is home” when they heard the ting-ting-ting of his bicycle. He had to dismount from his bike outside the compound and push the bike through the dark alley. As he pushed it, the bike made the ting-ting-ting sound.

  The Siqing Movement did not find any corruption in our production team. But our production team leader had participated in a local defensive corps before Liberation.3 He was thus considered a person with a historical problem and removed from the leadership position.

  While working as a Siqing work-team member in Jinshan, my husband himself also underwent an examination. He said that there were cadres who were called back from their assigned work-team positions because they themselves were found to be guilty. My husband was found to have a clean historical record, to have led an upright lifestyle, and to be clean in economic matters.

  In the fall of 1962, Shezhen started to attend the Zhuqiao Central Elementary School, which was in Zhuqiao Town, the same place my husband’s office was located. For her first semester, Shezhen would ride on her father’s bike to school if her father had spent the previous night at home. Most of the time, she went to school with her little friends. In the Western Compound, two other children were of the same age and so they kept each other company.

  My husband made an arrangement for Shezhen to have lunch at the dining room of the commune headquarters. The cook was a middle-aged woman, and we told Shezhen to call her Granny (Ah Po). The dining room kept a tab of everybody’s meals, and my husband paid for Shezhen’s as well as his own meals at the end of each month.

  This lunch arrangement lasted only one semester. When her father went to Jinshan, we prepared a lunch box for Shezhen every school day. My mother would wash some rice and cut a carrot into little pieces and put them, with a little salt, in the lunch box. Shezhen would bring the box to school and have it steamed-cooked at the school kitchen as her lunch.

  When it rained in the afternoon, somebody in the hamlet would take umbrellas to all of the hamlet’s children in school. Adults with schoolchildren took turns volunteering for the job. On her way back from school, some kids, usually boys, would bother Shezhen. Usually her cousin Ah Xing from North Hamlet, my husband’s nephew, protected Shezhen. Ah Xing was one year older than Shezhen, and a husky and daring boy.

  Shezhen loved school, brought perfect scores home, and received awards for excellent school performance every semester. She also won awards at Mandarin-speaking contests (Putonghua bisai). We spoke a local dialect at home while schools taught children to speak Mandarin, so the contests were platforms for children to show how well they had learned Mandarin. We were all very proud of her school performance. My father put Shezhen’s awards, which were colorful certificates, on the main wall of our kitchen-dining room.

  When Shebao was born, there were more preventi
ve vaccines given to babies. These vaccines were free and they worked well. While both Shezhen and Shezhu suffered from measles, Shebao did not. Shezhen was about three years old when she had measles. It was winter, and we kept her in bed under a heavy cotton-padded quilt. We knew that when a child got measles, the illness had to come out. Shezhen was covered with little red dots. We had to keep her from scratching, because too much scratching would lead to infection and leave scars. At one point, she could not even open her eyes. Measles came out from her eyes. I remember somebody brought us red eggs to celebrate the birth of their new baby, and we showed one to Shezhen, asking her if she could see the pretty color. She replied, “No.” We were very worried.

  When Shezhu had measles, it was in summertime. The hot and humid climate made it more difficult for the illness to come out. For the illness to run its course, we had to keep Shezhu from being exposed to wind. Her rash was much worse than Shezhen’s. We also realized that the rash was a combination of measles and heat rash. It took a long time for the rash to disappear.

  Shezhu suffered from joint dislocations several times when she was little. At the time, my grandmother lived independently in one big room partitioned into a bedroom section and a kitchen-dining section. Grandmother loved children and did not mind having them play in her room or on her bed on cold and rainy days. One time, while playing with another girl, Shezhu suffered dislocations at the shoulder, the elbow, and the wrist. We took her to the woman who cooked meals at the commune headquarters. She was a local expert in putting back a dislocated joint. She fixed the dislocations and told us to be more careful from now on because once a dislocation happened, it was possible that it would happen again. She was right. No matter how careful we were, Shezhu had more joint dislocations. Fortunately, although it was painful when it happened, it was easy to correct them with the help of that expert.

  Shezhu also suffered from asthma when she was little. During asthma attacks, she would breathe with difficulty. There were times that her face turned blue. Asthma attacks were usually activated by catching a cold, so she learned to stay warm. In summer, after supper, my mother and father would take the children out to cool down on the ground in front of the compound. Shezhu would bring a piece of clothing with her. Neighbors noticed it and commented that this little child acted like an adult who had the sense to care of herself.

  After my husband returned home from Jinshan, he learned about a medicine to cure asthma and bought some for Shezhu. It was a yellowish powder and an over-the-counter medicine. We explained the reason for the medicine to Shezhu and instructed her to take it. This was before she started school, but she acted like an adult, taking the medicine herself three times a day without ever forgetting about it. Since the medicine was in a powder form, it was not easy to swallow. But Shezhu never fretted about it. She was also smart and saw the result—there were no asthma attacks. She was so afraid of the stifling attacks that she was willing to do anything to stop them from coming. After about three months, we stopped the medication. Her asthma problem never came back again. She was cured of the illness before she started school.

  After Shebao was born, my mother’s eyesight deteriorated further, although she continued to do house chores. When Shebao was learning to walk, she was worried about his falling and bumping into dangerous objects without her being quick enough to protect him. So we decided that when no other adult was around, she would keep Shebao in a “standing bucket.” We told Shebao, “When Grandpa comes home, you will come out and walk.” The “standing bucket” was designed to support and protect kids when they were strong enough to stand until they were fully independent walkers. The bucket was round, about three feet high, with a two-and-a-half-feet diameter opening at the bottom and a one-and-a-half-feet diameter opening at the top. Inside this cone-shaped bucket, there was a removable board for the child to stand on. The board could be taken out and washed. The board was located about one and a half feet above the bottom rim. In winter, a foot warmer filled with warm ashes would be put on the ground and under the standing board so that it would be warm for the child standing inside the bucket.

  Every day, Shebao would wait for Grandpa to come home. Looking at his little shoes hanging from a bar below the dining table, he would tell everyone, “When Grandpa comes home, I will put on my shoes, walk, and play.” When he saw Grandpa come home, he would jump in the standing bucket and shout joyfully, “Grandpa is home, Grandpa is home.”

  My mother was very patient with her grandkids. Just like most children, my kids did not like to eat while sitting down. My mother had to feed them mouthful by mouthful. Shebao was the most troublesome of the three. My mother found all kinds of ways to feed him. She would allow him to run around while she fed him food. When he was three years old, he ran so fast that sometimes Mother could not catch up with him. She would follow him, food in hand, to the ground outside our compound, trying to feed him. I told mother that she did not have to do so, and that when he was really hungry, he would eat. But Mother replied, “Don’t mind my business. I have all the time under the sun to do so and I do not mind doing so.”

  This was during the Siqing Movement and Zhang Zhigao was eating lunch at our house. He was a young man who ate a lot and was a fast eater. When Mother was feeding Shebao, she would say, “You are also a big man and should eat food like Zhang Zhigao.” This was one of the ways Mother coaxed her grandson to eat. Our neighbors and villagers heard my mother, and so Shebao got the nickname “Big Man.” Even today, some villagers refer to Shebao as “Big Man.”

  In those days, in winter, we would use electrical pumps to dry village ponds to get silt for fertilizer as well as to harvest the fish. The harvested fish would be allotted to families. When the ponds were pumped dry, adult men in the village would put on rubber shoes and get down to the bottom to get fish. This was usually around Chinese New Year’s Day and a festive event. Women and children would go to watch.

  When Shebao (fig. 6.3) was about three years old in the winter of 1964, I took my children to see the fish that had been caught and were kept in big bamboo containers. It was a cold and gray day and I held Shebao in my arms. We approached a container of fish and one huge black fish flipped over and splashed drops of water and mud around. I took a step back. Shebao was so shocked that he pressed tightly against my chest. I quickly returned home. That night, Shebao ran a fever. He uttered “pong, pong” and indicated that there was something in the bedroom that was frightening him.

  To calm him down, I tried a folk method. I filled a bowl with raw rice, put a silver ring in the rice, and then wrapped the bowl with a handkerchief. I then put the bowl of rice, handkerchief side down, on his chest. I kept the bowl of rice there for the whole night and watched him without sleep. He calmed down as time went by. It was believed that silver helped to calm disturbed nerves. The next morning when I lifted the handkerchief from the bowl, the silver piece was in the center and on the surface of the bowl of rice.

  One harvest season, when I was working on the threshing ground, Shebao played with another boy in piles of newly threshed wheat stalks. They climbed up to the top of a pile and jumped down. Shebao hurt his leg on one of the jumps. A barefoot doctor, who was a peasant with some medical training, took a look and said that he had just sprained it a little, and that it was not serious.

  A doctor from urban Shanghai was “receiving re-education” in our neighboring Dongfeng Brigade. Every day, he would bring a medicine box and walk the villages to provide medical service and advice. The day after Shebao’s incident, the doctor came to our village, and I asked him to take a look at the leg. He felt it and said that a minor bone had been broken. He recommended that a plaster cast be put on the leg to help heal it. Or, he added, if the child was not a restless one and would listen, he could use two bamboo sticks to keep the leg in a straight position. Shebao would be required to sit and rest until the bone was healed.

  I told the doctor that my child would listen to me and could sit well, so the bamboo-stick method w
as used. Shebao listened and did not complain, but lay on the little reclining rattan chair under my mother’s care during the day until the bone was healed.

  When the children were small, in winter, my mother would prepare a foot warmer with warm ashes after cooking breakfast. She would then put the children’s clothes on the foot warmer so that when they got up and dressed, the clothes would not be damp and cold. In the evening, she would stuff the foot warmer with warm ashes from cooking supper and warm the beds for the children.

  In summer, I worked in the fields until dark. During harvest seasons, I had to work day and night, until nine or ten o’clock in the evening. Father worked in a factory and usually returned home earlier than I did. He helped Mother take care of the children. They fed the children supper. After supper, Mother used an oil lamp, which had a chimney-like shade, to kill mosquitoes inside the mosquito nets over our beds. Since her eyesight was poor, she asked the children to find mosquitoes for her. When they pointed at a mosquito, she put the chimney-like shade under it to catch and burn it. She then drew close the net openings and tucked them under bamboo mats to stop any bugs from entering.

  In the evening, Father took benches and chairs out to the ground in front of our compound for cooling down. He and Mother warmed water on our brick stove and poured it into a wooden basin for the children and themselves to wash and clean one after another. Afterward, they all went out to the ground.

  Our house was in the northeast corner of the West Compound and summer winds in our region usually blew from southwest or southeast directions; so we rarely got any natural wind. In those days, natural wind was the only way for us to cool down after having cleaned ourselves in the evening. My children were not very brave when they were little. They would come home through the dark alley between the East Compound and the West Compound holding Grandpa or Grandma’s hands or clutching onto their clothes.