Family Affairs

　　　　 The year when my mother died I was five year old and my younger brother was three. The days we lived with mother were too few and we were very small. In our memory mother was an expectation rather than a living being, an incarnation of motherly love imagined in our young hearts in the course of time. After all, we, like other children, also desire to have mother’s care and love!

　　　 My father remarried when I was nine. My step-mother was a worker who experienced the bitterness of the old society, imbued with the inherent industriousness, kindness, simple and straightforwardness of the laboring people. She was poorly educated. It was really difficult for her in those poor and scanty years to manage the family life as a wife and a step-mother of two naughty boys. Father was busy working and often away from home on errands. My step-mother worked in a textile factory with three shifts. After work she had to go back home to take care of the whole family’s life. However, I, being two years older than my brother, was already an indispensable labor in the family. What housework I didn’t do? Cooking, washing, cleaning, and buying daily necessities, what else, were all mine. The neighbors praised me as “capable”, but I felt bitter in heart, hoping to have more time to play. When Spring Festival was approaching, in order to prepare the rice flour to make sweetened dumplings, I had to push the grindstone. My step-mother was sending the water-swollen glutinous rice to the hole of the grindstone spoon by spoon. This would take 3 or 4 hours to finish the work. I sat there, pushing and pushing, always feeling the work was going too slowly. How I was worrying! In those years the households used to make bacon and sausage all by themselves. My family loved to make sauce-seasoned pork, that is, to have fresh pork pickled in salt and Chinese prickly ash for a week, and then to have it dried up in the open air and apply sweet sauce to it for several times, and finally dry it up for use. This kind of pork is especially delicious. Of course, my duty was to apply the sweet sauce to the pickled pork. For so many pieces of pork hanging in a long line to be smeared with sweet sauce for many times, it took time and tested your patience. It was really hard work for me. And every year before the Spring Festival every household would have a big washing of the bed coverings, for which I was also the main labor force. At that time the washing terrace in the compound was shared by all; you had to occupy a place very early, otherwise you would wait for a long time for your turn. In order not to wet your clothes while washing, my step-mother would tie an apron on my waist. This made me a “manly young boy” very embarrassed doing this kind of trivial housework amidst a crowd of females. But my step-mother said that you had to do anything in a proper way and this caused much kind laughing of the people around. At this my face turned red and my eyes were filled with tears. I really wanted to dig a hole in the ground to hide myself away. My step-mother’s hometown was in the countryside of Chongqing County 50 kilometers away from Chengdu. Once some relatives in her hometown managed to get some eggs and dried noodles for us. My family sent me to ride that old bike of my father’s to get those valuable things back. That year I was not fully grown up and it was very hard for me to ride that bike. The time was middle summer and the sun was scorching. I sweated all the way. At sunset Chengdu was finally with my sight when suddenly I dropped to the ground. All the eggs were broken and the noodles were all over the ground. I sat by the roadside, staring at the scene without knowing what to do. That was my first taste of the bitterness of defeat in the journey of my life. Fortunately, I was not blamed by my family when I got home with a wounded arm and those broken eggs and noodles, for which my frustrated heart was somehow comforted.

　　 My father was a strict man. When he was very young he left his hometown Baxian County shouldering a luggage box to seek education. It was perhaps because of the long-termed life burden and the influence of the old-style family that he held the doctrine of “Spare the rod, spoil the child” in our education. He often adopted some simple and unreasonable methods to us, which were not at all in keeping with such an educated man as he. We were very naughty and often beaten by our father. Was there any child who was not naughty? So it was very usual for us to be beaten. Every day we were afraid to see father coming back home from work, knowing not if we would suffer again from his beating for any “wrong doing” we did. I was a child who was eager to excel from childhood. I would manage to get what I liked even by using unscrupulous means without considering the consequence. I even formed a bad habit of theft. Once I took away the vegetable money from the drawer of the neighbor’s, with which I bought some pictures and glass balls I had longed for. This was discovered and the neighbor told my father. How my family was enraged by this! That night seemed especially dark and my father’s face blued. A bitter beating was unavoidable. My father locked the door from the inside and kept my step-mother and the neighbors who came to persuade out of the door (my younger brother had already hidden himself away out of fright). He ordered me to put four round stools together and to lie naked on them on my belly. Then he began to whip me fiercely with a feather-duster on my back and hips. The feather-duster in those years was made of hard bamboo root which was especially pliable but strong and it hurt extremely to whip people with such a thing. The sound of beating and my terrible screaming broke through the night air. My step-mother and the neighbors, afraid that I might be wounded, were knocking the windows and pushing the door from outside, hoping to stop my father’s tyranny, but my father ignored that without any intention to stop at all while on the contrary he speeded up the whipping rhythm. Finally, the door was dashed open and the neighbors pulled away father, but I was already badly bruised and nearly fainted. Later, I thought that it was probably the same when the KMT reactionaries suppressed the Communists in the Zhaizidong Concentration Camp before Liberation--- with only different ways of punishment! A cruel father indeed! In two weeks after that, the wound on my back and hips made me sleepless and every night my step-mother washed and applied medicine for me. She told me in a low voice that those days my father was always asking about my conditions and told my step-mother to cook something delicious for me to eat.

　　　　 In the early years of the Cultural Revolution, it was prevalent in the society that every day people should report their daily deeds before the portrait of Chairman Mao and recited his quotations to rectify their ideology and behaviors so as not to be divorced from the proletarian revolutionary line. Especially those who were labeled as capitalist-roaders and the landlords, rich peasants, reactionaries, bad elements and rightists had to report their ideology to the portrait of Chairman Mao from time to time, confess and denounce what they had done. All these thongs seemed ridiculous and incredible. But at that time it was a social fashion. Even my father also followed this “fashion” to punish us when we did some wrongs. He beat us and then ordered us to write self-criticism repeatedly until it was considered “profound” (probably my writing ability was so trained). Then he commanded us to read our self-criticism before the portrait of Chairman Mao to show our deep repentance. Besides, he required us to recite with reverence the most constantly read three articles of Chairman Mao and he would check us from time to time. At that time, all schooling was stopped for the cause of “making revolution”. So we children, free as anything, had nothing to do and nothing to study all day long, and began to wander about in the streets and make troubles in the neighborhood. Helplessly, my father had to use this “fashion” to confine us. It might be considered an effective and beneficial way.

　　 In the above I said much of my father’s demerits. In fact, he had many qualities enjoying my admiration.

　　 Once my father’s unit compiled a booklet carrying some “inside news” of the Central Committee and the Leading Group of the Cultural Revolution to propaganda the ideology of “revolutionary rebellion”. In order to distribute the booklet to the society in time, an uncle organized the children of my age in the compound to sell the booklet in the streets. Each copy was sold at five cents, from which we could get one cent as compensation for our labor. The booklet sold well. In a day my brother and I sold more than a thousand copies and got more tan 10 yuan’s profit. Afterwards it got known by my father who criticized us severely of our “seeking” money. He thought it was our duty to spread “revolutionary information” and we should not get paid and it was unhealthy for us youngsters to have the idea to “seek money”. He ordered us to return the money to the unit. More than 10 yuan! It might be a month’s living expense of a family in those poor and scanty years. We little children had never owned such a “big” wealth. It could realize so many things that we usually dared not to desire and dream of! We dared not to defy the order of my father and returned the money obediently. This made me feel bad for many days. I didn’t know whether my father was right or not in doing so but it bore strong marks of the time. And the principle and the virtue shown in my father’s dealing with it impressed deeply.

　　　 My father was a capable and careful man. Before my step-mother came to the family, all the housework such as washing, sewing, eating and drinking was shouldered by my father. Even the woolen sweaters we wore were knitted by him. Actually, he played the role as a mother as well as a father in the home. In his spare time he liked to do some handicrafts. He even made a cigarette-roller for himself. In those days, cigarettes were supplied quotas. My father who smoked asked others to buy back from other places some cut tobacco and saved many cigarette ends from which he took out the scraps to be dried up. At the end of the month when he ran out of the supplied cigarettes he would use his self-made cigarette-roller to make some cigarettes with the cut tobacco and the cigar-scraps to solve the problem. He could also assembly radios from the simplest crystal set to the complicated valve receiver and transistor radio. The parts he used were all bought from the secondary market at Chenghuangmiao. He often worked late into night and sometimes he even forgot eating and sleeping. When a set was nearly completed, the whole family would soon sit around to listen to the singing of the so-called model Peking Opera plays coming out from that bowl-sized black paper-box (loud-speaker). We all admired my father for his capability. At this time he would sit with one leg on the other and light a cigarette, and seemed very satisfied.

　　 At a moonlit middle summer night, my father brought me (my younger brother was still in the nursery) to the courtyard to chat with several neighbors. In their talk the neighbors expressed their hearty concern and pity for us youngsters who lost mother’s love in the childhood. I snuggled in father’s arms and my father patted lightly on my head and gave a very low sigh. Later, I thought that sigh must have had too much---It must have contained his apology for his scanty love shown to us because of work and the bitterness and difficulty he experienced alone in bringing us up….My father then was so kind and so deeply touched.

　　 It was unfortunate for us who lost our mother in childhood. But compared with the only sons and daughters of today, who are not short of the love of both father and mother, we did not feel lonely when we were small since we had brothers and sisters. I used to be together with my younger brother all day long. We even slept in the same bed. Before remarriage, my father was often out from home for work. We two had to take care of ourselves. Then my step-mother came to the family, but she worked in the factory, so sometimes we had also to take care of ourselves. For this reason we learned to live independently from childhood and from time to time we could live a period of unconstrained life. All children liked to play. It was only natural. We played in various ways. Especially, we liked to raise small animals. That was our favorite. We tried to catch all kinds of small animals. Take ants for example, we used to fill a basin with water and make a small earthen mound in the middle. We put the ants on the mound and the ants had to drill holes there to settle themselves down because they had no other way to go because of the water around. We put some rice and dead insects for them to eat and these ants had to live on the isolated island at our will. Another example was duck-raising. All the ducklings we played with were stolen from the market. To steal the ducklings from the peddlers was a skilful work. One of us pretended to talk with the peddler to distract his attention while another was inducing the small ducks out with vegetables. As soon as the ducklings came out of the bamboo basket, we took them away. In order to raise these ducklings up we would go to get the left-over rice and dishes by the canteen or even go far to the countryside to get small fish or insects from the water-fields. How happy we were to see the ducklings growing up from day to day! There was a small path in the compound we lived, on both sides of which there were flower terraces. The terraces were lower than the walls around. Whenever it rained the terraces would be filled with water to form two ponds. How happy we were to see these ducklings playing joyfully in the pounds! We desired to raise some small dogs. That was forbidden at that time. I witnessed how the dog-ridding team of the neighborhood beat the dogs dead with wooden sticks as they caught them. That scene was cheered by somebody but somebody was heartbroken for that. We raised several cats. The small cats were very lovely and understanding. They often snuggled at your feet or played with you on your shoulder or on your knees…. Once, a small yellow cat was sick, lying there motionless all day long miserably. We put it in our quilt at night, hoping to give it some warmth. But the next day the cat was already pressed dead under the thigh of my younger brother. My younger brother and I buried it on the mound of the air-defense cave in the compound and made a grave for it and even erected a tablet there. We mourned for some time to show our memory of it and our apology for it.

　　　　 I sometimes had disputes with my younger brother. We would even fight each other when enraged. After all, my younger brother was smaller than I and was more cared for in the family. In housework I always did more, for which I often felt unbalanced. But I dared not to say it in front of my parents. Feeling unhappy about this I often sought faults with my brother. Once, my brother wanted to get a badge of Chairman Mao which I obtained with efforts from somewhere. Of course, I was not willing to give it up. Suddenly, without my notice, he snatched it away and ran out of the room. I ran after him and picked up a pebble from the ground and threw it towards my brother 30 meters away. I did not intend to hit him but only to frighten him. But unfortunately, the pebble hit right on his back head. Seeing him bleeding, I was dumb-headed. The neighbors hurried to send him with a tri-cycle to the hospital. My step-mother, after coming back from work, scolded my severely. It was fortunate that my father was not at home. Otherwise, a heavy beating was unavoidable. Another time, as we were playing in the compound, my brother’s disobedience to my will enraged me, I used a 5-feet long bamboo stick to beat him who was already asking for forgivingness. The scene was something like my father beating me. Finally, the neighbors stopped me. For more times, I was on good terms with my brother. Whenever he was bullied or I was disputing with other children, we always stood on the same line to help each other and fight the others. A child in the compound who grew bigger than others of the same age and was called by us “big man” often bullied other children taking advantage of his strength. Sometimes he fought with us. At these times, I and my brother would attack him from both sides and keep him long in dealing with both of us until he admitted defeat with tears.

　　　 “Stealing books” was probably the most glorious deed we did in the childhood. The compound where we lived at that time was an information and publishing unit. There was a reference room in the compound, which was in fact a small library of the unit. It contained various Chinese and foreign books published since the early years of the 20^th century. It was a treasury of culture and knowledge. During the Cultural Revolution, these books were labeled as poisons of feudalism, the bourgeoisie and revisionism, and were sealed up. The reference room was a single-story wooden building with the pillars. Door, window and floor all made of wood. It was situated in a quiet corner of the compound, rarely visited at usual times and out of control after being sealed up. This provided convenience for us the gang of “theft”. Of course, this gang did not include me and my brother only. Many youngsters of our age in the compound joined in. Our actions always took place at deep night. The younger ones stood sentry and the bigger ones like me would climb through the broken window into the room and seek with a flashlight what we liked. The “stealing” continued for a number of years; the objectives were from children’s picture-story books to novels. Many sets of famous literary works seemed to have broken through their bandages and got their liberation with the help of our stealing hands. In those years short of spiritual as well as material supplies, these books accompanied us from childhood to boyhood. I remembered that I, a boy of 12 years old, finished reading the whole four volumes of The Don Flows Quiet by the ex-Soviet novelist Sholokhov in a week but without much understanding. The incidents were already forgotten, but the images of Gregory and Natasha were impressed deeply in my heart. After I went to the countryside to received re-education from the poor and lower-middle peasants, my younger brother succeeded my undertaking of “book-stealing” and did better than I. He took all kinds of books from well-known novelists to literary critics, from poetry to painting and calligraphy. Every years when I came back home I would “transfer” a lot of them. The life of the educated youth in the countryside was poor and monotonous, but with the companion of Pushkin, Hugo, Dostoyevsky, Belinsky, Tolstoy, Dumas as well as Li Bai, Su Dongpo and others, I did not feel lonely in the remote region. In a sense, it was because of this “stealing” that I laid a considerable cultural foundation which enabled me to pass the entrance examination of higher education later and became a member of the intellectual circle.

　　 Two elders in the family were closely connected with the development of me and my brother. They were my two aunties: the younger sister of my father and the younger sister of my mother. The first auntie was transferred from a national defense factory in the eastern suburbs of Chengdu to the mountains in Guangyuan to support the “3^rd line construction”, for which I called my Guangyuan Auntie; the second working in a hospital in Mianyang was my Mianyang auntie. After my mother died, the two aunties shared the responsibility to nurture us, even after my step-mother came into the family. In those years, they gave us immeasurable concern and help both in material and spirit. It was their care and love that enabled us to know the warmth of “family” and the value of family intimacy and to experience some happiness in our childhood.

　　 In the early summer of 1968 when I was thirteen, I accompanied my auntie to move from Chengdu to Guangyuan. It used to be a half day’s journey. But in those years when everything was out of order, we traveled by train for more than two days before we could finally arrive at the destination. Yet, for a boy who for the first time to go so far away from home, I felt everything in the outside world was fresh and did not feel a bit of the tiring and slowness of the journey. As the train passed the Western Sichuan Plain, crossed the hilly region and entered the undulating mountains, my auntie said to me: “Look, these are real mountains!” In deed, I only saw mountains in books and films before and now I saw them with my own eyes. Hoe excited I was then! I formed a beautiful picture in my mind: In the lofty mountains covered with dense forest, a handsome boy with leg wrappings, wearing a jacket made of animal skin and shouldering a hunting-gun, was running with a hunting dog after a wounded river deer, whose stumbling steps were set against the white cloud in the blue sky in sharp contrast to the strong and vigorous image of the boy----the boy was none other than myself.

　　　 Arriving in Guangyuan, I plunged myself into the great nature.

　　　 Compared with the Provincial capital, Gunagyuan was a small county seat in the remote mountainous region. And the “3^rd line” factory where my auntie worked was situated in a small mountain valley several kilometers away from the county town. The factory, being first built, had no fencing walls and the dormitory was built near the mountain and a river. Stepping out of home one had to climb up the mountain path. Pushing open the back window of my auntie’s house, I could enjoy the beautiful landscape of the mountains where there were many wild pear trees with white flowers in full bloom in spring and chestnut trees bearing plenty of fruit in autumn. In the grass the hares were moving about and they would run away quickly as flying arrows when I tried to catch them. Spending two hours to climb over the mountain ridge, one could see a mirror-clear lake on which flocks of wild ducks were swimming, and on seeing people approaching，they would fly away up to the sky or hovering for a while around the mountain ridges and then landed on the opposite side of the lake. In daytime, we used to the entrance of valley to swim or to fish or catch crabs in the Nanhe River. The river was very clear and the fish could be seen swimming to and fro in the water. In the fields by the river were grown water melons. When tired or thirsty, we might steal one or two to satisfy ourselves in behind the thatched cottage. In the night, we often carried a flashlight and a bag to the stream in front of the house to catch frogs. Once, in order to give nutrition to my auntie who was then in the family way, I, together with my uncle (the husband of my auntie), went along the stream for nearly two kilometers in order to catch more frogs. I was about to catch a big one crouching at a rock when a meter-long poisonous snake came into my vision. The snake was also attempting at the frog. It frightened me and my uncle greatly. However, panic was only our punishment. The snake went away and the frog escaped. Nevertheless, we got a bumper harvest that night. We caught about thirty frogs altogether, more than 5 kilograms.

　 During the days in Guangyuan, our instinct was fully released as if we had turned back to childhood. We were totally mingled with Nature. Our auntie and uncle treated us as their own children. I really enjoyed the warmth and harmony of family, without any sense of the tension I felt sometimes in Chengdu. For this reason, I and my brother were always expecting the arrival of holidays when we could go to Guangyuan again to relive our happy childhood amidst the mountains and rivers there. Even after I grew up and worked or on my family visit from Kunming to Chengdu, I would spare a few days from my holidays to go to Guangyuan to see my auntie’s family and to visit the places there I once visited so as to review the traces of my childhood.

　　 Before moving to Guangyuan, My auntie had lived in Chengdu and had frequent contact with my family while my Mianyang auntie had few chances to go out of home to meet us because of busy work both in the unit and at home, though it was only a hundred kilometers from Mianyang to Chengdu, just a half day’s journey. But each meeting would bring us surprise happiness and impressed us deeply. I remembered one day shortly after I went to school and my father went to work outside Chengdu and my brother was in the kindergarten. I was the only one at home and after school I was going back home to cook lunch for myself when suddenly I saw my Mianyang auntie standing at the front gate waiting for me. It was really out of my expectation! She came to Chengdu on business and came to see me after finishing her work. She brought me to a small restaurant near Qingshiqiao where I had a full meal. Especially the dish of cool mixed rabbit meat seemed to be the most delicious I ever tasted. After the meal my auntie sent me back home and gave me 50 cents at departure. A dish plus 50 cents might be nothing to others, but to me it was something extraordinary because in those poor days and in my age desiring to get love and care, the surprise arrival of my Mianyang auntie was just like the soft spring breeze warming my young heart.

　　 The childhood favorite toy for me and my brother was a couple of wooden swords, which were exquisitely made with silver-grey cutting edges and carved shields and tassels on the handle. Mine was sky-blue and my brother’s was dark-green. We looked at them as a treasure. They were the gifts the Mianyang auntie and uncle sent us at their wedding.

　　　 That year when my auntie and uncle came to Chengdu on their marriage trip, they stayed at our home. My father made them sleep in our only room which was about ten square meters. To speak more exactly, it was not the entire room but only that carved nanmu bed which was once my mother’s dowry. I and my brother slept in another bed and my father had to sleep in the neighbor’s house. The second day, the new couple brought us to Chunxi Road to do some shopping and bought us that pair of swords in a toy shop facing the Zhongshan Square. As soon as we got the swords in hand, we could not help playing them in the street. Our excitement attracted a crowd around us. In my memory, it seemed that I never owned any toy in its true sense. What we had were but those self-made “knives and guns”. It was from that day that we had toys really belonging to ourselves. What a wealth! Couldn’t we feel excited and memorize it for life?

　　 At the age of 16, I went as an educated youth to the Yunnan borders, which were a thousand li away from home. An important part of the life of the educated youth was to write letters to their kinsfolk to exchange information and feelings. My correspondence with my two aunties was the most frequent. Because of confidence and intimacy, I hid nothing from them in my letters as if I had an impulse to say all I felt to them. At those days, one correspondence would take half a month. I often counted the date when I should receive their letters. In fact, they replied every letter of mine. In time when they were too busy to write themselves, they would ask their husbands to write to us instead. In those years or even in my college days, it was their letters that accompanied my life, giving me great moral support. The life of the educated youth was very poor. The limited supply often made us unable to make two ends meet. In this case, I always first thought of my two aunties. They would respond to any “help” signals I sent them. A woolen sweater, a pair of sports shoes, some rice cards, little as they were, were valuable to me as gold and gave me the feeling of intense intimacy. In fact, the conditions of my aunties were not any better at that time. My inconsiderate demand for help seemed really like robbing them of the clothes they wore and the food they ate. But they always gave me selfless support without any hesitation.

　　　 Time passed quickly. The Guangyuan auntie and uncle returned to Chengdu shortly before their retirement and successively died of illness in a few years. They left us for ever. And My Mianyang auntie and uncle as well as my father and step-mother have all reached their old age and their days together with us have become quite limited. How long would this family which once made us happy and painful at the same time subsist? Thinking of this, I always feel sad……