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

by Chen Huiqin

  Young people with some education were also given opportunities to make a living in other ways than tilling the land. Taiying was trained as a tractor driver and Meiying, whose mother died of a fatal illness and who was brought up by her grandmother, went to school after Liberation, received medical training, and became a midwife in 1957. Xiuqin was an accountant in a cooperative in North Hamlet and later became a teacher at Liming Elementary School. Chen Daxi went to a teacher’s college in the 1950s and returned to teach at Liming Elementary School.

  My husband also benefited from the opportunities made available in the 1950s and became an educated man. When we were first married, he did not write very good Chinese characters. He had had three years of formal education when he was a little boy. His mother died when he was thirteen years old. After that, he worked as a carpenter with his father and brother. He did not have any opportunity to use the little he had learned from that old-fashioned school. He admitted that at the time of Liberation, he had forgotten most of what he had learned. After Liberation, he participated in political activities and realized the importance of education. My father said that he was a very serious student at the night school and a fast learner.

  After our marriage, my husband went to a number of training courses. He said that the seven months he spent in Nanjing when Shezhen was a little baby, he was a full-time student and really learned a lot. After that, my family continued to give him full support. We never asked or expected him to do anything at home. The family support and the opportunities provided by the new system combined to make him an educated person.

  As a member of the cooperative, I personally participated in collective projects. My first experience living away from home and working on a public project was in early 1958. I went with a team of able-bodied men and women to help build an irrigation canal in Malu Commune. We packed our own bedding and clothes, pooled together rice and cash, and brought along a cook, who was a nice older man from South Hamlet. We slept on the floors of local people’s guest halls. We used dry rice straw to cushion our cotton-quilted bedding.

  We moved a lot of earth in building the canal. We first built a raised dike. On the raised dike we dug a canal. Only a raised canal could deliver water to nearby rice fields. Equipped with electrical pumps, such a canal made it possible to irrigate rice fields with as much water as was needed. Irrigation canals helped increase rice yields. The canal we built in 1958 was the first irrigation canal in Jiading County.8

  When working on this project, Wang Xi’e, a fellow villager, and I were dealing with pregnancies. I could not eat preserved turnips or pickled cucumbers. If I ate porridge with these condiments at breakfast, I would throw up all my food and have to work on an empty stomach the whole morning. The cook was a nice man. I gave him some money and he bought a jin of soybeans and cooked them in soy sauce for me. I ate the soybeans at breakfast. Wang yearned for preserved bayberries and the cook bought her some when he went to the local market to shop. We worked during the day. For our evenings, we brought with us our needlework or knitting. After dinner, we sat in our beds and did our handiwork while chatting.

  Some traditions and customs continued in this period. In South Hamlet, a childless old man died and his nephew, who inherited the old man’s house, sponsored a funeral service that featured a day of chanting by Daoist priests. Incense, ceremonial candles, and paper money were still commercially available and were all used at the funeral service. The dead body was put in a coffin and buried underground right away. Since most land was no longer privately owned, the coffin was buried on the nephew’s family plot.

  There was also a wedding in 1957 in South Hamlet. The bride came from the same family as the groom’s mother, so it was a marriage between two cousins. The wedding was a one-day affair that took place in the East Compound. We were distant relatives of the family as well as neighbors and attended the simple banquet. Shezhen was four years old at the time. To save a seat at a banquet table, we brought our own small bamboo chair for her. She sat in the bamboo chair and ate at the bench where my mother and I were seated. When a dish came out, we would take a little with our chopsticks and put it in her little bowl.

  Some simple furniture such as a chest, a chamber pot, a basin, and quilts and clothes came around late morning. The bride arrived in a chimney sedan chair in the late afternoon. A few firecrackers were set off and there was a beanstalk bonfire. This was the last time a sedan chair was used to fetch the bride in our village.

  This was a close-relative marriage, which had been accepted in our area and was even considered to be “adding love to a loving relationship.” We learned gradually that such a marriage was not good, scientifically speaking, because it was more likely to produce unhealthy children. This marriage between the two cousins proved that the scientists were right. The married couple had two sons. The first one was a weak and sickly boy. Although he did reach adulthood, get married, and produce his own son, he was very small in size and was never physically strong. The second son developed a brain tumor and died in his teens.

  Having learned the scientific theories about marrying close relatives, people avoided such arrangements. In the early 1980s, a young man from North Hamlet got married. He and his wife had a son, but soon they realized that the boy was deaf and mute. They applied for permission to have another child because the one-child-one-family policy was already in effect. Meiying, who was in charge of family planning in our village, gave the couple permission. Another son was born, but this boy was also deaf and mute. Meiying then said that there might be family history that would explain why both boys were born deaf and mute. She asked the mother of the two boys if any of her family had married close relatives. It turned out that this woman’s mother and father were close relatives. This example convinced people further that marrying a close relative was not a wise practice.

  NOTES

  1 “Zhongguo gongchangdang zhongyang weiyuanhui guanyu fazhan nongye shengchan hezuoshe de jueyi” [Resolution of the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Committee concerning development of agricultural production cooperatives], Dec. 16, 1953. In Zhonggong zhongyang wenxian yanjiushi, ed., Jianguo yilai zhongyao wenxian xuanbian [Selected important documents since the founding of the People’s Republic of China], vol. 4 (Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe, 1993), 661–81. The chujishe in Wangjialong was an experiment and thus its organization preceded the issuing of the resolution.

  2 Meimei is a local way for older people to address young women.

  3 The two Chinese characters meaning “dawn” should be liming in Mandarin pronunciation. But in Jiading or Shanghai dialect, limin, benefit the people, and liming, dawn, have exactly the same pronunciation.

  4 The elections were held in April 1953. Jiading Xianzhi [Annals of Jiading County] (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 1992), 657.

  5 Mama is a respectful way for a younger person to refer to a married woman who is usually of the parents’ generation. Panjia means Pan family.

  6 “Zhongyang renmin zhengfu zhengwuyuan guanyu shixing liangshi de jihua shougou he jihua gongying de mingling” [Directive of the State Council of Central People’s Government to implement planned grain collection and planned marketing], Nov. 19, 1953. In Zhonggong zhongyang wenxian yanjiushi, ed., Jianguo yilai zhongyao wenxian xuanbian [Selected important documents since the founding of the People’s Republic of China], vol. 4 (Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe, 1993), 561–64.

  7 “Nongcun liangshi tonggou tongxiao zanxing banfa” [Provisional methods for unified purchasing and marketing of grain in rural areas], Aug. 5, 1955. In Zhonggong zhongyang wenxian yanjiushi, ed., Jianguo yilai zhongyao wenxian xuanbian [Selected important documents since the founding of the People’s Republic of China], vol. 7 (Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe, 1993), 123–33.

  8 In 1958, Jiading County government decided to “electrify the rural areas.” Jiading Jianshezhi [Jiading construction annals] (Shanghai: Shanghai shehui kexue chubanshe, 2002), 621.

  5

>   The Great Leap Forward

  IN mid-1958, a kindergarten was established for Wangjialong children inside a confiscated house in Bai Family Hamlet (Baijiazhai). All families were required to send their children there. This was intended to save mothers and grandmothers from taking care of children so that they could all go to work. We sent Shezhen (fig. 5.1) to the kindergarten. Mother could not understand it. Her eyesight was already very bad and she was no longer able to work in the fields. She asked, “Why can’t I take care of my granddaughter since I am home anyway?” My parents missed Shezhen so much that several times they went to see her in the kindergarten. They would say to the caregivers that they would not take the child away. They would just stay a while and hold Shezhen for a few minutes.

  The kindergarten in Bai Family Hamlet did not last very long. Replacing it was a kindergarten/nursery in each natural village, including one in South Hamlet. But there was no requirement for all children to be sent there. Mother was happy to keep Shezhen under her care.

  The kindergarten was the beginning of a crazy period. On a summer day in 1958, cadres in our village went to a “ten-thousand-people meeting” in Jiading Town and said that at the meeting, representatives from various villages pledged a per-mu rice yield of 80,000 jin and a per-mu cotton yield of 10,000 jin. These pledges were called “welcoming challenges” (baileitai) or “launching satellites” (fangweixing). These were unrealistic figures, for the per-mu rice yield had never been higher than 1,000 jin and the per-mu cotton yield never exceeded 500 jin.

  I was pregnant with another child at the time, but continued to work in the fields. When the “ten-thousand-people meeting” took place, I was working in an experimental cotton field. My uncle had been named a “cotton expert” and was in charge of the experimental field. He received this title because the cotton fields under his care had yielded exceptionally good harvests in the previous couple of years. The experimental cotton field I worked in that year looked very promising, with tall and healthy cotton plants. Each plant hosted layers of branches and each branch held several big cotton balls.

  After the “ten-thousand-people meeting,” an inspection team from urban Shanghai came to our village. These inspectors were not peasants and spoke the urban Shanghai dialect. Among them was a woman called Wu Mei. She lived with a family in our village and went into the fields with us.

  The Liming High-Stage Cooperative now became part of a huge entity called Waigang Commune. Wangjialong and several nearby villages became an administrative section inside the big commune. My husband became a cadre in Waigang Commune and was gone even more often than before. There was a kind of crazy enthusiasm among people at that time. We worked day and night and attended a lot of meetings. The higher-ups told us what to do all the time.

  One day Wu Mei, the inspector from urban Shanghai, was working in the experimental cotton field with us and asked my uncle if the cotton yield could reach four thousand jin per mu. Uncle, a very honest and straightforward man, replied, “Four thousand jin of cotton, if spread out to be dried, would need a space bigger than one mu.” In other words, four thousand jin of cotton per mu was absolutely impossible and the question was just ridiculous.

  That same evening, a meeting was called and we were all notified to attend. The meeting was to be held inside the house confiscated from the Pan family in North Hamlet. Around suppertime, I saw Uncle, who asked me if I was going to the meeting, and I said yes. We had no idea why the meeting had been called. It turned out that the meeting was to criticize Uncle for what he had said that afternoon. His words were considered a sneer at the enthusiasm for higher yields. He was labeled a “white flag,” or a “backward element,” and immediately removed from his position as a cotton expert and leader of the experimental field.

  After that, nobody said anything; we just followed. Urban people who could not even tell chives from the blades of wheat plants were now in control. One day after Uncle was labeled a “white flag,” Wu Mei said that according to the weather forecast, a typhoon was moving in our direction. She demanded that bamboo sticks be harvested from private bamboo groves to support each cotton plant in the experimental field.

  That same fall, we pulled up ripening rice stalks from six mu of rice paddies and squeezed them into one mu for higher unit yield. When the cramped rice withered due to lack of air circulation, big fans, pulled by draft animals and human beings, were used to blow air into the crop. A well was dug in the middle of the field. We used buckets to get underground water to cool the rice plants. Finally, the uprooting and the piling up stopped the rice from growth at its critical stage. We harvested only rotten stalks with empty rice husks.

  Unscientific farming methods continued to be implemented after the fall harvest in 1958. We were told to dig crop land three feet deep to bring up the unused soil. More bamboo sticks were cut down and bamboo craftsmen were mobilized to work day and night to divide bamboo culms into slivers and split the slivers into layers to make bamboo ropes. We then used the bamboo ropes to pull plows for the deep digging. After the deep digging, we were told to put dry rice straw on the soil and set fire to the straw. This was to burn the sticky, unused soil into top soil.

  When we sowed wheat, we were told to put down two hundred jin of wheat seeds in a mu of land for high yields. Normally, twenty-five jin of seed was sowed in a mu of land. We were even shown the way to put down two hundred jin of wheat seed evenly: first we put sticky paste on old newspapers, then we spread wheat seed on the sticky papers, and finally we covered the prepared fields with these “wheat” papers. The papers would be removed when the wheat seeds had fallen off into the soil.

  We continued to work day and night into the winter months. Gas lamps were strung over the ground outside our compound in the evening. We made soil cakes, baked them in the improvised furnaces erected in the field, and then crushed them into powder to spread onto the wheat as fertilizer. The brick stoves in our houses were torn down in order to get to the dirt that served as the stove’s foundation. The theory was that because the stove had cooked food for many years, the foundation dirt had been so baked that it must be good fertilizer. We were also directed to scrape the top layer of our kitchen and guest-hall floors as fertilizer for the wheat crop.

  During that period, we were organized to wipe out all the sparrows. The birds were considered pests because they ate our grain; therefore they had to be eliminated. The method was to deprive sparrows of any opportunity to rest so that they would be exhausted and drop dead. Young people were assigned to stay on house roofs and beat wash basins to prevent sparrows from perching and resting. Others stationed in the fields about twenty meters apart carried tall bamboo sticks to prevent sparrows from perching and resting. Further, grains of rice soaked in poisonous liquid were spread on the ground to kill sparrows that slipped through the network of people. This was all done on one day. We were required to get up and to our assigned positions before dawn, to bring our own food for the long day, and to remain at our positions until it was completely dark. We scared all the sparrows in the area and killed a few that day, but most sparrows survived and have continued to live in our midst.

  TRYING TIMES

  In the fall of 1958, we started to eat in communal dining rooms and had to hand in all grain at home and all of our cooking woks, which were melted to make iron and steel in peasant-run furnaces. Our family plots were taken away. Some of us became “iron and steel workers” and worked in a peasant-run furnace in Loutang Commune, another huge entity in our area.

  At that time, our family again had surplus rice. When we were told to hand in our surplus grain, we had about one hundred jin of rice in our house. Having learned from the previous experience, my mother filled various available containers such as empty glass bottles and small earthen jars with the rice and stored them under our beds. We kept these containers when we handed in the rest of the rice. Father made a stove out of an empty kerosene container and gathered scraps of crop stalks and dead wood. When neighbors were out in t
he fields, Mother would cook two small bowls of rice on the improvised stove, one for Shezhen and the other for me. Mother said that I was pregnant with a child and needed more food. Shezhen was a good child. We told her not to tell anybody that Grandma cooked rice for her at home; she listened and never did.

  My second daughter was born during this crazy period. I worked until the day of the birth. It was an autumn harvest day. I was on the threshing ground doing the lighter task of stretching big hemp sacks while others poured harvested rice into the sacks. In late afternoon when we had a break, I went home and told mother that I felt unusually heavy in the lower body. Mother suggested that I walk to the maternity ward in North Hamlet without telling anyone else. It was believed that the more people knew about your labor, the more pains you would suffer during labor.

  I walked to the maternity ward, which was in the side rooms of the confiscated compound from the Pan family. Less than two hours later, the baby was born. The maternity ward cooked food for new mothers, but we had to bring our own material. I borrowed some rice from a woman who had given birth to a baby two days earlier. The midwife cooked the rice for me and that was my supper.

  That evening, Zhu and Wang, two women peasant cadres from South Hamlet, were attending a meeting in the guest hall of the Pan compound. I asked the midwife to call them in. They came and were surprised that I had already given birth, because several hours before, I had been working with them on the threshing ground. I asked them to let my parents know that I and the baby, a girl, were doing well. I added that my parents needed to go to the dining room and get ten jin of rice and bring it to the ward. I also needed personal items such as a toothbrush and toothpaste, a change of clothes, a thermos, a wash towel, a wash basin, and diapers for the baby. I told Zhu and Wang to let my parents know that they did not have to come right away and that they could bring the things to me in the morning.