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

by Chen Huiqin

  The Daoist priest chanted in front of the table and before the six gods. After the chanting, he asked my husband, who was the head of the household, to go through the entire house with him. The priest had a sword in one hand and a chain in the other. He brandished the sword in all the rooms, making sure that he approached all the corners of each room. At the same time, my husband used his mouth to spray the Chinese liquor in every room and into every corner of each room. Shezhu accompanied her father in this task, holding the liquor bottle and pouring liquor out into a bowl for her father. Afterward, my husband said that he felt his mouth was burning from so much high-proof liquor. The priest told us that all this was to drive away any bad spirits in the house.

  The Daoist priest then took the six pieces of paper, which represented six gods, down from the dining-room wall and burned them with the eighty tin-plated paper ingots I had prepared. Next he killed the live chicken and, with my husband following him, dripped the chicken blood around the outside of our house. This, the priest said, was to protect the house from bad spirits. The ritual thus cleaned the house and placed it under the protection of the six gods.

  It turned out that Shezhu’s help was very much needed. She held on to her father’s arm when he went throughout the house and outside the house. Right after the ritual was over, she went to work at Shebao’s company. After we moved into the new house, she talked to us several times a day to check on us. She worried about her father not being used to the new environment. She worried about my being exhausted from the packing and moving.

  Right after we moved in, Shezhen arrived and kept us company in the new house and new environment. Our other children and grandchildren came many times before and during the Chinese New Year holiday. They were able to come because their work schedules became relaxed before the major holiday and they had seven days off for the holiday. They came also because they wanted to chat with Shezhen, who was not always with us at this time of the year.

  We held a traditional ritual to remember my mother on the twenty-third of the twelfth month according to the lunar calendar. Just as I had been doing in the past years, this ritual was also our family’s end-of-year dinner (nianyefan). When I held the ritual to remember my father on his death anniversary in the previous October, I made the announcement that we would be moving back to our ancestral home inside the Helen Community before the coming Chinese Year. So I assumed that my mother knew where to go for the anniversary and that our ancestors knew where to go for the end-of-year dinner.

  On the twenty-third, Shezhen and Xiao Xie, who was on her school’s winter break, helped me prepare the food and for the ritual. Shebao, Shezhu, and Ah Ming came at lunchtime and joined us in kowtowing to my mother and the rest of our ancestors. We laid out the ritual table in our dining room but burned the paper money outside the house to avoid polluting the inside with smoke. I was able to burn paper money outside because the ground right outside our townhouse was part of our homesite. When I lived in our urban apartments, we had to burn paper money inside because we lived in an apartment building that housed many other families and burning paper money outside would be confusing to our ancestors.

  Our children brought not only joy to me and my husband but also the hustle and bustle we needed to warm the new house. With the hustle and bustle and with Shezhen living with us, my husband and I settled smoothly into our new environment. My husband has found new walking routes and takes several walks every day. My daily routine includes doing the shopping, cooking the meals, and cleaning the house, the same daily routine I had when we lived in Xincheng.

  Since we moved back, I have run into many people that I knew but had not seen for many years. I see them mostly when I am shopping for our daily vegetables and meat/fish in the market across the street from our residential complex. I also see them when I walk in the community. Some of these people are from Wangjialong and use my nickname and say, “Linshe, you are shopping here. Have you moved back here?” If they are not from Wangjialong but are of my generation, they say, “You are that warping lady, aren’t you? I came to your warping shop for service many times.” If they are a generation younger, they say, “You are that warping aunt, aren’t you? When I was a little girl, I came with my mother to your warping shop.”

  Several of my cousins and two of my husband’s nephews have also moved back to their ancestral houses in Helen Community. They come often to visit us and have given us help. When we first moved to the new house, we had access to Internet service since Shebao did not stop it when he moved his factory away. But our Helen house did not have cable TV service, so we had to open an account, and it had to be done in the communication service office in Loutang Town. It happened that Shebao was on a business trip at the time. My cousin Zhongming heard about our need and offered to help. He rode his battery-powered bike to the service office and opened the account on our behalf. One of my husband’s nephews fixed the lock on our garage door and lubricated the moving parts of the door. I feel really at home living in Helen Community.

  On the east side of our house is a strip of land on which we can grow trees and flowers. When Shebao ran the factory here, he planted a couple of orange trees. There were also some non-fruit trees planted by the community management. But there was still open space for more trees. One morning when I was shopping in the market, I saw a man selling young fruit trees from his truck. I found out that he sold all kinds of trees and that he was coming the next day. So the next day, my husband and I went to the market together and we bought three little fruit trees. They were a calamondin tree, a pear tree, and a peach tree. Shezhen helped me plant them in the open space in that strip of land.

  My husband is now used to living in our new ancestral home. We have a supermarket here that supplies most of what we want and need. The nearby vegetable/meat/fish market is a little smaller, but as sufficient for us as the one in Xincheng. The hospital in Zhuqiao provides the same service as the one in Xincheng. There are three bus lines we can take to get into urban Jiading. They all stop outside our residential complex to pick up or to discharge passengers (fig. 16.1).

  Spring in Shanghai is wonderful, with comfortable weather. Around our house, the trees and grounds are turning green. Our neighbors have a peach tree whose branches are now full of peach blossom buds. In a couple of weeks, we shall have peach blossoms in our living environment.

  Recently, Shebao came to visit us. He asked for a shovel, saying that he wanted to show me where he had planted the peonies I gave him. I obtained these peony plants from one of our Xincheng neighbors. This neighbor raised peonies that won a prize in a gardening contest in her hometown. I asked her for some roots and she graciously honored my request. So that fall, she gave me two peony roots. I asked Shebao to plant them in the strip of land on the east side of our Helen house. Soon after he planted them, he moved his factory to the manufacturing center. One day after he moved, I visited our Helen house. Our next door neighbor told me that somebody had stolen our peony plants. I was sad, but I did not think I could do anything.

  When Shebao said that he wanted to show me the location of the peony plants, I told him that they had been stolen. But he took the shovel and went to the location where he had put down the roots. I went with him and watched as he gently scratched off the dried weed over a patch. There, we saw many deep red sprouts just emerging from the soil. It turned out that only one of the plants had been stolen. I put some fertilizer around the sprouts and am now watching them grow every day.

  I take a walk almost every day so long as it is not raining. The planners of Helen Community kept all the rivers in my hometown as well as the Coal-cinder Road. So I can still identify many meaningful places although my village itself has disappeared. During the New Year’s holidays, my children walked with me to our old homesite. Zhangjing River (Zhangjing He), the river that flowed behind our old house, had a slight bend about ten meters west of our stone steps to the water (shuiqiao). The slight bend is still there, so I could almost precisely point to the pl
ace where our old house had stood. On that particular site now stands a cluster of two townhouses. I did not know the people who owned these two houses. East of this cluster, however, were two townhouses occupied by people I knew from Wangjialong. They were home for the New Year’s holiday, so we chatted with them a little that day.

  I walk on the central walkway inside our complex very often. The walkway is brick-paved, wide, and flanked by trees, green bushes, and flower beds. Although this is still early spring and there are no flowers, I can imagine flowers in these places when the weather becomes warm. Along the walkway are several areas with pavilions, built-in benches, playgrounds, and basketball courts, as well as exercise equipment such as leg-stretching and arm-stretching machines and sit-up benches. I use some of this equipment often, stretching my arms and legs.

  Where this walkway spans the Zhangjing River, there is a fancy wooden bridge. Besides allowing people to cross the river, the bridge is a wide wooden platform on which there are built-in benches under a glass-covered corridor and a glass-covered pavilion. The river is widened at this place so that part of the wooden platform is above the water. The people who have experienced the summer season here have told me that in summertime, it is particularly cool on the wide platform because you are basically above the water, which helps to cool the air. On the west side of the wooden bridge is where our family plot used to be. That is where my parents’ ashes were buried for a number of years.

  On the southeast corner of our complex is a community park. This park is right beside the old Coal-cinder Road, which has been widened and paved with asphalt. The park is also equipped with benches for people to rest on. The north end of the park is right at the entrance gate of our complex and the south end is at the Big Stone Bridge. The bridge, just like the road, was there when I was little and has been widened and rebuilt several times.

  When I walk inside this roadside park, I can pinpoint the spot where we owned one mu of land before Liberation. This was one of the first pieces of land my family bought. It was not irrigable land, so we usually grew cotton there. With the land itself devoted to the cash crop of cotton, my mother grew sesame on the edge of our land along the Big Official Road as well as on the little path that separated our land from the land that belonged to another family. We cut down the sesame plants in August, brought them home to dry in the sun, and then harvested the seeds. We kept the seeds until around Chinese New Year’s Day. Then we made sesame-and-peanut candies. Since we were small eaters, the candies, as our sweet snacks, usually lasted until April or May of the following year.

  We are back to our native place. But it is no longer the place of rustic living conditions that we all tried to escape. I have seen many earth-shattering changes in the last eighty years and have endured a lot. Ever since I became aware of things, I have worked hard. Sometimes I wonder if I have been a fool who does not know how to enjoy life.

  Overall, I think I am a pretty lucky person. I grew up in a harmonious environment under the influence of people with many good qualities. My grandmother was capable, bold, and far-sighted; Grandpa Bai was kind and loving; my mother was kind, wise, and selfless; my father was reasonable, principled, open-minded, and generous.

  I married a good man. My husband has a kind and loving temperament. He trusts me and respects me. We have never quarreled with each other, not even once, in the more than sixty years of our married life (fig. 16.2).

  My children are just wonderful. They did not give me much trouble while growing up. They have established themselves in life and have achieved things far beyond my expectations in their professional lives. At the same time, they are thoughtful and filial children, ready to attend to my needs and those of my husband.

  My husband and I are getting old. We take care of ourselves and try our best not to be a burden to our children. Our current life is good, and we are grateful for the family and health we enjoy every day.

  GLOSSARY

  INDEX

  Note: page numbers in italics refer to illustrations.

  A

  adoption, 16, 45, 65

  Ah Bing, 49, 50, 170–71, 195–97, 202–3

  Ah Du, 180–81

  Ah Juan, 169, 176, 192, 195, 205, 221, 245–46

  Ah Lin, 290. See also Chen Huiqin; Chen Tian’e; Linshe

  Ah Ming, 298; air conditioning business, 244–46, 253–54, 309; and Beibei, 190–92, 214–15, 227, 232, 234–35, 239–40, 300–302, 304–5, 307–8; engagement, 178; and Helen Community, 271–72; repair shop, 235–36; and Shebao, 208, 235–36, 309–12; sideline production, 208–9, 222; urban apartments, 236, 244; 282–83, 286, 289, 307–12, 321–23, 326; wedding, 184–86, 185

  Ah Xing, 117

  Aibao, 83

  Aidi, 205, 206, 207, 245

  American company, 308–9

  American Congressmen, 260

  American Consulate, 259, 260

  Amitabha, ix, 292–93, 323

  ancestor, 13, 19, 20, 21, 38, 49, 68, 196–97, 277; and marriage ceremony, 62, 224, 307; power of, 36, 145, 238, 280–81; and relocation, 272; remembered, 284, 285, 286, 326

  ancestor-remembering festival, 284, 285

  ancestral compound, 19, 195

  ancestral home, 12, 196, 273, 274, 324, 326, 327; for Beibei, 304, 307

  ancestral tablets, 20, 125

  Anhui, 29, 30

  Annina, 188, 225, 262–63

  apartment, 9; in Beijing, 193–94; as condition for marriage, 251, 252; in Japan, 318–19; and relocation, 270–72; in urban Jiading, 206, 219–20, 224, 227–28, 234, 236, 241–46, 248, 307, 309, 310–11, 320–23; in urban Shanghai, 246–47, 297, 300, 301–3

  B

  “backward element,” 73, 90

  Bai Family Hamlet, 45, 88, 334

  Baihe River, 36, 334

  Baiqiang Brigade, 141–42, 334

  Bai Yingzhou, 288

  bamboo craftsman, 28, 91, 167

  barefoot doctor, 121, 125, 207, 208

  Beibei, 298; apartment in urban Shanghai, 302; birth and first birthday, 191–92; and Chen Li, 230, 299, 300; college entrance exams, 240; Donghua University, 240; education in urban Jiading, 233–36; engagement and wedding, 299, 301, 302–8, 307; family trip to Hangzhou, 227; jobs in urban Shanghai, 298, 301; and Shebao, 239, 298–99; and urban life, 214–15; web friend, 300. See also Yang Xi

  Beijing, 6, 83, 159, 171, 173–74, 176, 183, 192–95, 225, 226, 249, 263; Agricultural Exhibition Hall, 177; Opera Troupe, 168; Zoo, 194

  Big Aunt, 14–16, 26, 49, 102–3, 160, 174

  “big belly” disease, 81

  “Big Man,” 120, 276. See also Shebao

  Big Official Road, 40, 41, 42, 81, 103, 106, 330, 336

  Big Road, 35, 39, 336

  Big Stone Bridge, 68, 105, 330,

  bodhisattva, 125, 281, 292, 293, 323

  Bole Road, 232, 334

  Boston, 264, 265, 267, 268

  brickmason, 28, 110, 179, 180, 241

  Brown Beard, 188, 225, 261, 262, 279n1

  Buddha, 292

  C

  Canada, 316

  “capitalist road,” 126, 127, 210

  ceremonial master, 302, 304, 305, 306

  ceremonial mistress, 61

  Chen Daxi, 84

  Chen Huiqin, 3, 4, 6, 7, 40, 62, 63, 76, 77, 199, 218, 277, 298, 331. See also Ah Lin; Chen Tian’e; Linshe

  Chen Jixi, 36, 44

  Chen Jiaxiang, 55, 56

  Chen Li, 229, 298; and Beibei, 299–300, 304, 305; birth, first haircut, and first birthday, 229–32, 237n1; college entrance exams, 316; education in urban Shanghai, 247; graduate school in Japan, 316–19; and grandfather’s retirement celebration, 248–49; kindergarten, 232–33; Shanghai University, 316; trip to Canada, 316

  Chen Long, Dr., 135

  Chen Pingli, 42

  Chen Tian’e, 62. See also Ah Lin; Chen Huiqin; Linshe

  Chen Xianmin, 62. See also Chen Xianxi

  Chen Xianxi, 42, 56–57, 59–62, 72, 115, 140, 143–44, 154, 229, 277, 298, 331.
See also husband

  Chen Yuanxiang, 41

  Chen Zhengqi, 147. See also father

  chicken night blindness, 69, 337

  child bride, 17, 43, 45–47

  Chinatown, 265, 266

  Chinese medicine, 12, 24, 73, 136, 149

  Chinese New Year: celebration of, 27, 120, 312; of 1968, 129; of 1969, 142; of 1970, 154; of 1979, 168, 174, 177; of 1981, 179, 183; of 1987, 220; of 1990, 232; of 2011, 315; of 2012, 323

  Chinese zodiac, 150n2, 293

  class enemy, 51, 137–38, 141, 142, 144, 170,

  Clearing the Villages Movement, 37, 39, 337

  Coal-cinder Road, 106, 113, 145, 171, 197, 274, 276, 329, 330

  commune, 99, 101, 105, 112, 146, 154, 185, 219; Chengdong, 144, 158, 159, 165–66, 177, 189, 209, 210, 234; Loutang, 92; Malu, 84; movement, 4; Tanghang, 208; Waigang, 90; Zhuqiao, 99, 113, 116, 118, 125, 126, 127, 137–39, 141–42, 144, 148, 153, 155, 157, 205

  Communist, 41, 42, 43, 44, 49; anti-, 42, 43, 137, 144; movement, 4; Party, 8, 64, 112, 210, 212, 234; revolution, 35; wind, 109; Youth League, 42

  concubine, 50

  counterrevolutionary, 137–40, 144, 147, 151, 154

  coupon, 94, 98, 112, 134, 275; grain, 75, 77, 100, 142, 143, 158, 166; industrial, 100, 154; special, 99

  Crook, Isabel and David, 4

  Cultural Revolution, 3, 6, 8, 9, 125, 127, 130, 135, 136–37, 150, 157, 160, 169, 170, 175, 187, 215n1, 216n5, 286, 290

  customs, 8, 31, 36, 54, 85, 144, 191, 217

  D

  Daoist priest, 7, 13, 23, 44, 85, 158, 287, 288, 292, 294, 295, 324–25, 336

  Dazhai, 334; Movement to Learn from, 123; road, 128n4; system, 199

  Deng Xiaoping, 199, 215n1

  Dengta Middle School, 139, 144, 334