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

by Chen Huiqin

  I reburied my parents’ remains in the earthen jar deep in the ground. At that time, I lived in urban Jiading. I knew I would be coming to work on the family plot less and less. Without me to tend the burial site often, I wanted to make sure that my parents would not be bothered. So on this hot September day when Shebao used a shovel to unearth his grandparents’ remains, it was not an easy job. After much digging, he did not see any sign of an earthen jar. He asked me if I was sure he was digging at the right place. I assured him that was the place, because I had marked the gravesite with an evergreen plant. I informed Meifang’s sons, who had been growing crops on our family plot, that under the evergreen plant were my parents’ remains. They knew, as I knew, that a gravesite should not be touched. So the evergreen plant should not have been replanted and the remains should still be under it.

  This was early autumn and the land was overgrown with crops. Sweet corn and sugarcane plants were much taller than any of us. Shebao was digging inside the overgrown crops and doing the physical labor he was not used to. In addition, it was an unusually hot September day. Sweat soaked his clothes. Shezhu stood by the digging site and said, “Grandpa, Grandma, your love for and care of your grandson is now paying off. You called Brother ‘Big Man.’ It is now the Big Man who is put to use.” Shebao finally got to the jar that contained his grandparents’ remains.

  The new tomb site we bought at Green Bamboo Cemetery had two burial holes, so I had sewed two red-cloth bags for the ashes. My husband’s nephew, who was a carpenter, made two ash boxes for us. I stretched open the bags while Shebao used his hands to get out the ashes from the jar and put them into the bags. After all the ashes were put into the bags, I tied the bags and put them in the boxes. My husband and I then each carried a box and walked directly to the Coal-cinder Road. There, we waited for a taxi, which took us to the cemetery. Shebao and Shezhu went with us.

  The tomb site in Green Bamboo Cemetery had already been prepared. A tombstone with my parents’ names carved on it had been erected. When we arrived with the ash boxes, a staff member of the cemetery came to assist us. It is believed that a cold burial site is not good for the descendants of the dead. So we took away the two slabs that covered the burial holes and the staff member lit a fire to warm the holes. After the fire was out, we laid the ash boxes into the warm holes and replaced the covering slabs. The staff member used cement to seal the slabs and said, “Now you can rest assured that your ancestors are very comfortable here. Nothing can get in to bother them.”

  I performed a simple ceremony at the new tomb site. I brought with me a candle and incense sticks, some red paper, some fruits and cookies, a little wine, two plastic cups, and paper money I made with my own hands. I spread out the red paper on the raised space right in front of the burial holes, put out the wine cups, poured wine into the cups, placed the fruits and cookies on the red paper, and lit the candle and incense sticks. After that, I burned the paper money to my parents on the ground right in front of the offerings (fig. 13.3).

  In December 2004, we got the key to our new house. The new residential community was called Hailun2 (fig. 13.4). We do not know who came up with the name, which sounds very modern and foreign to us. The newly constructed community is very pretty. There are no spiderweb-like wires or cables because they are all laid underground. In the community, there are tidy streets, clean rivers with wood-railed bridges, flower beds, grassy areas, wooded areas, walking paths, and pavilions. We chose the style of our new house, but its location was determined by drawing lots. We like the location of our house very much. Our new house is in a cluster of two townhouses and our next-door neighbors, a family from South Hamlet, are wonderful people.

  My husband and I continued to live in Xincheng, where we had easy access to hospitals, stores, and other facilities. We also lived very close to Shezhu and her family, who had no plans to move to Helen Community, either. Our new house in Helen Community was temporarily vacant.

  NOTES

  1 Brown Beard was Jeffrey Montague. He died of cancer in 1990.

  2 Hailun is the literal translation of the English word “Helen.” For smoother reading, Helen is used in the narrative.

  14

  Between the Living and the Dead

  IN the spring of 2006, my husband was bothered by serious irregular heartbeats. For a couple of weeks, he received IV drips in a local hospital. Except for the irregular heartbeat, my husband was a healthy man and so walked to and from the hospital. I always went with him and stayed while he received IV drips. One late afternoon, we were walking from the hospital toward home when he suffered a heart attack. I tried to support him but lost my balance. We both fell straight backward, with our faces up to the skies. I cried, “Mom, Mom!” as I hit the concrete pavement while my husband fell on top of me, with the back of his head hitting my chest. I thought to myself, “What a perfect marriage! We are leaving this world together.”

  But we both survived. The accident left a bruise the size of my palm on the back of my head while my husband sustained a little scratch on the back of his head as it hit on the slider of a zipper on the vest I wore that day.

  The witnesses of our accident were from the neighborhood. They said to me later, “Your ancestors are powerful and caring. They must have protected you. Otherwise, how could you survive such a hard fall with no concussion or internal injury?”

  I do not know what happens when people die. But I know that if it is possible, my parents and ancestors would do everything to protect me and my family. In return, I have continued to hold the traditional rituals to remember our ancestors and to pay respects to Heaven, Earth, and bodhisattvas since I moved to urban Jiading in the 1980s. I do not worry about the format of performing the rituals. I believe that so long as I am sincere, the rituals are meaningful.

  A PACEMAKER

  After my husband’s heart attack and the resulting fall on the sidewalk in the spring of 2006, Shebao did not think that doctors in Jiading hospitals were capable of taking care of his father, so he arranged for his father to be examined in Ruijin Hospital, the best hospital in Shangai for treating heart problems. At Ruijin Hospital, my husband was hooked up to an observation monitor around the clock and I accompanied him day and night. While sleeping in his hospital bed one evening, he experienced another fainting spell. Doctors rushed to perform emergency measures on him, concluding that my husband’s fainting was caused by a temporary heart stoppage and that he needed a pacemaker.

  Shebao and Xiao Xie came immediately after they got the telephone call from the hospital. With Shebao’s signature, his father was wheeled into the operating room to receive a temporary pacemaker. We asked why it was a temporary one and what that meant. The doctors explained that the hospital was only responsible for putting in a pacemaker. The patient’s family had to choose and buy one from among several suppliers of pacemakers. Once a pacemaker was placed into a person, it would be the responsibility of the manufacturer to check it and maintain it. Since this was nighttime, the suppliers were closed. It would be the next day before we could choose and buy one. Yet my husband’s condition did not allow the delay until tomorrow, the doctors added. So they had to put in a temporary one.

  After my husband was pushed into the operating room, Shebao called Shezhu, who was at home in Jiading. Shezhu and Ah Ming responded quickly. Ah Ming at the time drove a pickup truck. Pickup trucks were not allowed on the streets in downtown Shanghai. Ruijin Hospital was in downtown Shanghai, so Ah Ming went to a friend, borrowed a sedan car, and drove to the hospital. It was late at night and the roads were almost empty. Ah Ming drove so fast that he exceeded the speed limits. About ten days later, the sedan owner received an electronic speeding ticket. The fine was two hundred yuan. The ticket showed the time and location of the speeding. Shezhu and Ah Ming willingly gave the owner two hundred yuan to pay the fine.

  We were waiting outside the operating room when Shezhu arrived. I saw her coming out of the elevator and approaching us. She looked pale and was shive
ring so hard that Ah Ming had to support her.

  My husband’s illness had alarmed Shebao and Shezhu several times before. Yet this alarm was extremely frightening. First, this was preceded by their father’s fall on the street. They had their father checked into this first-rate hospital because they worried that he might not survive another such event. Second, a second-rate hospital might send a false alarm, but this news reached them from a reputable hospital. I could imagine what was going on in their minds as they rushed to the hospital. Shezhu is especially emotional. She does not react well when she is emotionally upset.

  When my husband emerged from the operating room, we were all at the doorway waiting for him. The first thing he asked was, “Has Shezhu come?” Shezhu quickly approached her father and said, “Diedie, I am here.” Both father and daughter had tears in their eyes. My husband told us that inside the operating room and right after the temporary pacemaker was hooked up, Dr. Gu, the operating surgeon, said to him, “Lao Xiansheng (Old Mister), your life is now saved.”

  The doctors ordered that my husband remain in the hallway for that night. The hospital ward he stayed in had six patient beds. His bed was at the very end of the room. After the pacemaker was hooked up, the doctors said that my husband was still in unstable critical condition. They worried that he might need emergency care throughout the night. If emergency care was needed, every second would be important. It would take more time to move him from the end of that hospital ward to the operating room. So, that night, he stayed in the hallway and rested on that bed with wheels.

  In order to hook up the pacemaker, a deep cut was made at the upper end of his right thigh in order to use the big vein there. A bag filled with sand was pressed against the cut in order to stop the bleeding. Because a blood thinner had been used in preparation for the angiogram, the blood in my husband’s body was particularly thin. So we had to take care of the sandbag very carefully. The doctors particularly said that my husband had to lie face up with no movement or tossing whatsoever.

  My children competed to stay the night with their father. In the end, Shezhu and Ah Ming stayed. They insisted that I go with Shebao and Xiao Xie to their house and sleep the rest of the night. I did go, but I was not able to sleep.

  Early the next morning, Shebao, Xiao Xie, and I returned to the hospital. Together with Shezhu and Ah Ming, we decided to purchase the most expensive pacemaker for my husband. The pacemaker was a Medtronic, an American product. The cost was about 38,000 yuan. There were cheaper choices, but my children chose the most expensive one. They said that this was a lifesaving instrument and they wanted the best for their father.

  In his retirement, my husband receives a monthly pension and has very good and comprehensive health insurance coverage. Just like all government employees, his health insurance is paid entirely by the government. The coverage pays for most of his hospital stays and the various medicines he takes every day. After the pacemaker was put in, we found out that his health insurance covered up to 5,000 yuan for a pacemaker. Shezhu and Shebao both wanted to contribute to our portion of the payment for the pacemaker, but my husband insisted that he pay it all by himself.

  That morning, my husband needed to take a bowel movement. Since he could not move his body without risking his life, Xiao Xie thought of an idea to help. She went to the hospital shop and bought a packet of toilet paper. We gently put the packet under my husband’s body and told him to relieve himself. It worked very well. Xiao Xie helped to solve a life-threatening and awkward problem. We are really lucky to have such a thoughtful and kind daughter-in-law. The operation to insert the permanent pacemaker took place in the afternoon of the same day. The pacemaker has been keeping my husband relatively healthy since May 2006.

  REMEMBERING ANCESTORS

  Until the mid-1990s, I went to our village house every year to hold traditional rituals on the death anniversaries of my parents and my grandmother and on the ancestor-remembering festival (qingming). Because my father passed away on September 30, the day before the National Day holiday, I used the holiday to remember him. I usually went to the village house the day before the ritual, opened all the windows to let in fresh air, and cleaned the house. I bought meat and vegetables and brought them to our village house to cook dishes. I folded paper money ahead of time and burnt it at the ritual. The rest of my family came on the day.

  The ritual was always at lunchtime. We moved our square table to the middle of the guest hall, placed the dishes in the middle, and lined wine cups and pairs of chopsticks along the three edges of the table. The adults in the family took turns pouring wine for our ancestors, a little at a time. Two candles and incense sticks were lit and put on the remaining edge of the table, which was the side closest to the entrance door of the guest hall. We also offered fruits and candies on the table. I assumed that my father, together with my mother and other ancestors of ours, would come to the lunch. When the incense sticks burned down to about their last third, I would burn the paper money. While the paper money was burning, each of us knelt down and kowtowed three times in front of the table.

  When the incense sticks burned to the end, the ritual was over. We would take everything on the table back to the kitchen, clean the table, move it to one side of the guest hall, put back the dishes, and sit down to have our lunch.

  My mother’s death anniversary occurs seven days before the Chinese New Year’s Day. I combine the ritual to remember my mother with the end-of-the-year family dinner (nianyefan), which is another occasion to make offerings to our ancestors. At the combined ceremony, I have one urn that burned paper money to my mother and another urn that burned paper money to all our ancestors. My grandmother’s death anniversary is close to the ancestor-remembering festival in April (qingming), so I combine the two together. I again separate the paper money into two urns, one for my grandmother and the other for all our ancestors.

  All of us, except for Shezhen and Zhou Wei, who lived and worked too far away, came to the three rituals every year. For my mother’s death anniversary/nianyefan and my grandmother’s death anniversary/qingming, we would choose a weekend that was the closest to the anniversary so that all of us could be present. I would always say at the rituals, “Father, Mother, or Grandmother, we are early or we are late for the anniversary because we work or go to school. We can only gather together on a weekend.”

  We never held a separate ritual for my grandfather. Grandmother did not perform any ritual for her husband. We asked her when my grandfather died. She said it was on the twelfth of the second month on the lunar calendar. When we asked why she did not make offerings to Grandfather on his death anniversary, she said it was because he gambled away the family fortune, so he did not deserve to be remembered. According to traditional beliefs, the practice of remembering a person’s death anniversary should begin right after the death occurred and should continue regularly. If a family did not make offerings to a dead person after his or her death, then the family was not supposed to start doing so after many years had passed.

  Around the mid-1990s, my husband suggested that we move to hold the rituals in our apartment in downtown Jiading. He said that I had to clean the house in Wangjialong every time we held a ritual. I agreed. Then came my father’s death anniversary. On that day, only my husband and I went back to the village house and held the ritual there. During the ritual, I told my father and our ancestors that this would be the last time I made offerings to them in the village house, that I would hold future rituals for them in our urban Jiading home, and that I would show them the way.

  After the ritual, we ate our lunch there. My husband called a friend, who was a driver, and asked him to drive us back to Jiading Town. I lit an incense stick as I left the village house and held the stick in my hand while riding in the car. I carried the incense stick all the way to our apartment in downtown Jiading. That way, I felt that I had shown my ancestors the way to get to where I now lived. After that, I conducted the rituals in our downtown apartment.

  Wh
en we moved to the Xincheng apartment, I held a ritual in the downtown apartment, told our ancestors that we were moving again, lit an incense stick, and carried it to the new apartment while riding in Ah Ming’s truck to show our ancestors the way. After that, I conducted rituals in our Xincheng apartment.

  ZHAKU AND DAOCHANG

  Both of my parents passed away during the Cultural Revolution, so we did not perform traditional rituals at their funerals. I felt really bad about that. My parents had me marry matrilocally partly because they wished to have a family take care of them in their old age and after they left this world.

  Under the reform policies, many traditional practices were revived. Shamans, who are believed to have the ability to contact dead people and act as liaisons between this world and the world of the dead, became available again. No ordinary person would wish to be a shaman. It is usually a person who has suffered a severe illness and has to act as a shaman in order to live a healthy life.

  In the early 1990s, I decided to find out how my parents were doing in the other world. One weekend, Shezhu and I went to see a shaman in a remote village near Jiangsu. We were inexperienced and got there too late. We waited the whole day but did not get the service. There were simply too many people ahead of us.