Daughter of Good Fortune: A Twentieth-Century Chinese Peasant Memoir

by Chen Huiqin

  But the old man’s nephews wanted his property and believed that they deserved it. According to local customs, the inheritor held the dead man’s head when the corpse was put into the coffin. The daughter and two nephews scrambled to hold the dead man’s head while relatives, neighbors, and curious villagers watched. After the event, everybody talked about this fight, and so I know the details. Ultimately, the daughter inherited the house and most of the land, while the two nephews each got some land from the deceased man.

  The New Marriage Law of 1950 directly addressed the old conventions and customs and proclaimed that women now had the same rights as men in inheriting family property. Under the new law, my parents no longer had to worry about the inheritance problem, and I had the legitimate right to stay home as the inheritor of my family’s property.

  One woman in South Hamlet had married out her daughter, her only child, a couple of years earlier. After she heard about the law, she told my parents that she regretted having married out her daughter. She blamed herself for not being wise enough and admired my parents’ wisdom in keeping me unmarried. In my teenage years, my grandmother had suggested various families for me to marry into. Father always told her not to bother about it. Our relatives had also tried to arrange marriages for me. My father turned them all down.

  At the time of Liberation, we owned fifteen mu of land, which allowed us a very comfortable life. Father bought me whatever I wanted. When I became aware of a machine-made cotton fabric with a pretty blue color, known as shilinbu,1 Father bought some for me and I made a traditional Chinese dress (qipao). Unlike our homemade cloth, this machine-made fabric would not fade from washing, and it would not wrinkle. Father also bought me wool yarn in navy blue and bright red. I knitted a pair of pants with the blue yarn and a sweater with the red yarn. When I went to a meeting in Waigang, the seat of the district our village belonged to at the time, I wore the navy blue pants and the shilinbu dress, over which was the red sweater. All of the materials, the colors, and the styles were in fashion in those years. I was the envy of my girlfriends.

  At the night school, I learned more Chinese characters, including liberty, youth, and fortune. Father wrote beautiful calligraphy. I asked him to write these characters out and I sewed them into the work skirts (zuoqun) I was making.

  I brought my knitting and sewing work to the militia hut when I was on duty. One spring day in 1951, when I was at the hut sewing the shilinbu dress, a woman came to visit me. Having watched me sewing for a while, she told me that I had dexterous fingers. I knew she was one of Chen Jiaxiang’s daughters from North Hamlet and had been married out several years earlier.

  Sometime after that, a woman from our hamlet came to visit my parents and said that Chen Jiaxiang from North Hamlet had asked her to be a matchmaker for his son. The matchmaker said that Jiaxiang had two sons and the elder one was already married. He was willing to marry his second son out and knew that my father was determined to keep his only daughter home. The matchmaker put a red piece of paper in the niche under our Kitchen God. On the piece of paper was Chen Jiaxiang’s second son’s birth information.

  I did not participate in discussions about the marriage. I let my parents and my grandmother make the decision for me. Father said that he had observed Jiaxiang’s second son at the night school and liked him because the young man was quick in learning and very quiet. When a fellow villager told my parents and grandmother that this young man was reserved and did not like greeting people, Grandmother replied, “It does not matter. We shall greet him first.”

  The second son was Chen Xianxi, head of our village militia. This Chen family was very poor at that time. Chen Xianxi’s mother had died. Before Liberation, he had followed his father and big brother, both carpenters, for food and learned the carpentry trade. Liberation temporarily interrupted the carpentry business, which was the main way for his family to make a living. My father did not mind the poverty of the family. He said, “What we want is the young man.” He told Chen Jiaxiang that he did not have to worry about anything regarding the wedding. Father said, “We will bring food over for the after-the-wedding visit (huimenri) so that you can hold a banquet to announce the marriage to your close relatives.”

  I had seen Chen Xianxi myself during the Land Reform. When it was decided that my rich neighbor was a landlord, the Land Reform work team came to count the pieces of furniture in that household. Chen Xianxi was in charge of recording the pieces of furniture. Unlike some other work team members who were loud and abrasive toward the people in our neighbor’s family, Chen Xianxi stood to the side, had a notebook in his hand, and quietly recorded the pieces of furniture in the book. I never talked to Chen Xianxi alone before our wedding, but I saw him on some other occasions, such as at meetings.

  My elders made the decision that I was to marry Chen Xianxi matrilocally on December 24, 1951. My wedding was a three-day affair—the rehearsal day, the wedding day, and the after-the-wedding home visit day.

  To prepare for the wedding banquet, we raised two pigs, two sheep, and many chickens. We always raised sheep for the manure we needed as fertilizer for our land, but we seldom raised pigs. We learned that feeding pigs with roasted sesame seeds would help them grow leaf fat, which was needed to cook banquet dishes. That year, all the sesame seeds we harvested from our land were kept for the two pigs. We waited until the last month before the wedding to feed the seeds to the pigs. Indeed, when the pigs were slaughtered, they contained thick leaf fat.

  The two pigs yielded more than four hundred jin of pork. After the wedding banquet, which was attended by thirty tables of guests, or 240 people, and after we delivered two tables of banquet food to Chen Xianxi’s native home for the after-the-wedding visit, we still had two legs of pork left. We salted the remaining pork. I remember that the following spring we had salted pork as well as salted fish to eat almost every day.

  We also slaughtered the sheep and the chickens we raised for the wedding banquet. That year, my mother planted more taro than usual. Taro was used as a dish at the dinner on the rehearsal day as well as at the lunch on the wedding day. These two meals were rich, but they were less formal than the banquet dinner on the wedding day.

  We made our own wine for the wedding banquet, too. West River Uncle, who would be thrown into jail as a “tyrant landlord” later, helped us make the wine. In early summer, he came and made the fermentation starter from wheat. We ground fifteen jin of wheat into coarse grits on a stone mill. Uncle kneaded the ground wheat grits into two big cakes, which were wrapped in dry rice straw and hung from a ceiling beam in a drafty place in our guest hall.

  About one month before the wedding, my uncle came to make rice wine. We steamed one hundred jin of sweet rice in our big steamer. Uncle mixed dry wine yeast into the cooked and rinsed sweet rice. The mixed rice was then put into big earthen vats (fig. 3.1). We wrapped the vats with mats made with dry rice straw to keep the contents at a consistent warm temperature for fermentation. During the next few days, Uncle came a few times to check on the fermentation process.

  When the rice had been fermented enough, Uncle came again. He took down the two big cakes from the ceiling beam and pounded them into powder. He put the powder, seasoned orange peels, peppercorns, and water into the fermented rice. Every day after that, we used a long-handled wood tool to stir the contents several times. This second round of fermentation took another couple of weeks. We did this in our guest hall, but the whole house was permeated with a fragrant wine smell.

  We then poured the completely fermented rice mix into a bamboo presser, which squeezed out wine from the pulp. We made a total of three hundred jin of raw sweet wine (shengganjiu). The wine was raw because it was not pasteurized. It was similar to yellow wine (huangjiu), but had a lighter color.

  I was quite particular about the clothes I prepared for the wedding. In those days, the standard materials for a bridal set of clothes were red silk and satin with flowers in them. I did not like silk or flowers in clothing. I chose wool,
fur, and camel-hair materials and selected solid colors. My favorite piece of the wedding clothing was the green wool traditional dress with a lining. I did not think the tailors in the village would do a good enough job, so I had it custom-made by a well-known tailor in West Gate of urban Jiading. This tailor was so careful about his product that I had to go try it on before he put the finishing touches to the dress. The other pieces of clothing I prepared for the wedding were a silk-padded coat, a sheepskin coat, and a camel-hair coat. At the time, women’s formal clothes were long, about halfway below the knees.

  My mother and grandmother did not like my choice of clothes. They thought that bridal clothes should be in red silk and have flowers. They said that I was too willful about my choices. But father was quite open-minded and allowed me to do what I wanted.

  For the wedding, I embroidered four pairs of pillowcases in the traditional fashion. I followed a pattern, counted the stitches, and embroidered accordingly. At the time, I was learning crewel embroidering with a hoop. I bought a pattern, rendered it onto cotton cloth, and finished one pair of pillowcases with crewel embroidering for the wedding.

  Members of my family had always been known for having small appetites. Some villagers said, “You people eat like cats. You’d better be prepared for the coming young man with a big stomach.” We had actually experienced what a big stomach was like. Several months before the wedding day, Chen Xianxi and his father made a new bed and delivered it to our house. They brought the bed over on a boat and came up the stone steps my father had built behind our house. This was in the early morning and Mother offered them breakfast. It was only breakfast, but they ate a wok of rice and a big bowl of pork, the amount of food that would have fed my family for a couple of days.

  My parents took the villagers’ advice. That autumn, we salted one hundred jin of fish. About ten days after the wedding, my husband packed his own bedding and clothes, packed an enamel bowl, a spoon, and a pair of chopsticks, and went to a training course in Jiading Town. He was gone for one month. We gave some of the salted fish to my maternal grandmother and shared the rest with our neighbors before it went bad.

  My family only had one bedroom at the time. My parents and I had shared it for the last twenty years. To prepare for my wedding, we had a wooden partition put up in the bedroom, turning it into two rooms—one for my parents and one as my bridal bedroom. Chen Xianxi and his carpenter father came and put up the partition. Afterward, the two bedrooms had their own separate doors to the kitchen-dining room.

  My father also asked them to put down a wood floor in the bedrooms at the same time. Like most houses in Wangjialong at the time, our house had a dirt floor. In spring during the rainy season (huangmei), dirt floors could be very damp. Wood floors helped reduce the dampness. In West Compound, only the bedroom in the southeast quarter, owned by our rich neighbor, had a wood floor.

  On the rehearsal day of my wedding, the professional chefs my father hired came to prepare food. Bowls, chopsticks, plates, and spoons were rented from a local merchant. Neighbors and close relatives helped with the food preparation, and we borrowed square tables from neighbors and villagers. That evening, we offered the rehearsal dinner, a rich but not formal meal, to everyone who helped and relatives who had arrived from afar. These relatives spent the night in our compound.

  On the formal wedding day, Chen Xianxi, the groom, walked to our house in the late afternoon. He and his companions were entertained with tea and snacks. For the marriage ceremony, I wore a rented red wedding gown. The gown came with a headpiece, but I refused to wear it, for I did not like the hangings on the headpiece. I said that they would prevent me from seeing the ceremony. Again, Mother and Grandmother complained about my stubbornness, but Father allowed me to go without the hanging headpiece.

  Our marriage ceremony was considered a new type. We obtained a marriage certificate (fig. 3.2) and my father personally filled out the certificate with a Chinese writing brush. The marriage ceremony took place in our guest hall, the Hall of Honesty and Sincerity. Two square tables were put in the middle of the guest hall. A huge red candle on each table was lit. Chen Xianxi and I stood on a red carpet, facing the tables and the lit candles. Behind us were our guests and villagers watching the ceremony.

  My father presided over the ceremony. He stood on the north side of the tables. While facing us and the watching audience, he thanked our guests for coming to the wedding and introduced us as bride and groom. He then introduced our matchmaker, the lady who brought Chen Xianxi’s birth information to our house. The matchmaker said a few words about acting as a bridge between me and Chen Xianxi. My father then introduced the head of township (xiangzhang), who was invited to witness our marriage. Standing on the north side of the tables, the witness read aloud what was written on the marriage certificate. He then asked me and Chen Xianxi to put our seals on the certificate. After that, he put his seal on the certificate and declared Chen Xianxi and me husband and wife. As newlyweds, we bowed to our matchmaker and to our marriage witness while a ceremonial mistress my father had hired guided us.

  Following the marriage ceremony was the meeting ritual. Two chairs were placed on the south side of the tables. My father and mother were the first to take the chairs. Chen Xianxi, now my husband, called them father and mother for the first time. My parents gave him meeting-ritual money (jianlitian) wrapped in red paper. After my parents, then my grandmothers, uncles, aunts, and all other relatives who belonged to the elder generations took the chairs and my husband was officially introduced to them. In this meeting ritual, I accompanied my husband.

  Two young men, our relatives, moved the big red candles into the bridal bedroom and they were kept lit for the night. At the time, it was very difficult to buy new furniture or wood for furniture making, so we did not even have a desk with drawers, a standard piece of bridal suite furniture, in our bedroom. The red candles stood on a borrowed desk.

  A ceremony to inform my ancestors about the marriage followed. A table with banquet food was set in the guest hall. My husband and I kowtowed to my ancestors. After that, we kowtowed to the Kitchen God in all the kitchens inside West Compound.

  On the third day I accompanied my husband to his native home in North Hamlet for the first visit after the wedding. I wore my favorite green wool dress. That was the only time I wore that dress. I treasured it too much to wear it on any other occasion.

  My parents regarded my husband as an adopted son. Father gave my husband a new name, Chen Xianmin, which is on the marriage certificate. My family, relatives, and neighbors call him Xianmin. But he kept his own name, Chen Xianxi, professionally. To his own family, his relatives, and people in North Hamlet, he is Ah Qiu, which is his nickname.

  My name, Chen Huiqin, is not my original name. When I was born, Father gave me two names, a nickname and an official name. My nickname is Linshe. The Chinese character “lin” is made up of two parts. Each of the two parts means “wood” and the combined word means “woods.” In the old days, after a baby was born, the family would consult a fortune-teller to determine if the baby lacked any of the Five Elements, which were Metal, Wood, Water, Fire, and Earth. It was believed that a person needed all the elements to live a healthy and balanced life. If one lacked any of the Five Elements, a name that contained a character or half of a character related to the element was supposed to help. When I was growing up, I heard adults say that I was called Linshe because I lacked wood. Father, however, never explained that to me in a serious way.

  My official name was Chen Tian’e, Chen the Swan. I never liked Tian’e as my name and told my father so. Nothing was done about it. When I went to night school after Liberation, I needed an official name. One of my female cousins was ten years younger and went to the formal school inside Yan Family Temple after Liberation. There, her school teacher gave her an official name, Chen Huijun. I followed her example and chose Chen Huiqin. My father accepted it, and it became my official name. While I continued to be called Linshe at home and by my rel
atives and neighbors, my husband’s family members, relatives, and neighbors all addressed me as Chen Huiqin.

  MUTUAL AID TEAM

  After our marriage, my husband stopped being a carpenter and joined us in farming our family land. The Land Reform was over, but he continued to be involved in local politics and went to many evening meetings and attended training courses in Jiading Town.

  In the spring of 1952, my husband introduced the idea of organizing mutual aid teams for farming in our village.2 Father supported the idea. Before Liberation, families like ours did not own large farm implements such as plows or draft animals such as oxen and had to rent them. Many families also helped each other in planting and harvesting seasons, so mutual aid was not a totally novel idea to us. But before Liberation, many families had been too poor to own rice land. Now, all families owned dry land and rice land, and we all needed implements and draft animals in order to farm. The idea of organizing mutual aid teams was thus welcomed by many.

  Yan Shoufu’s family, our family, and five other families joined to form the first mutual aid team in Wangjialong. My father was the work-hour recorder and accountant for the team. The seven families shared draft animals and a waterwheel and worked together in planting, weeding, and harvesting crops. We still kept our land titles and claimed the harvests from our own land. Our work hours were recorded. At the end of the year, the families that owned more land and contributed fewer hours had to pay families that owned less land and worked more hours.

  The crop yield of our mutual aid team in the first harvest was higher than that of an average family which did not belong to a team. We became an example and other families in the village followed us and organized their own teams in the following year. My husband was invited to talk about his experience of successfully organizing the mutual aid team in Waigang, where the district headquarters were located, and even in Jiading Town, the county seat.