Banished!

Citation preview

HAN DONG

Banished! a novel T R AN S L AT ED BY N I CKY H ARMAN

Banished'

Woodcut by Zhou Yi'j ing

Banishedl Han Dong

Trans/cued by N jd~y H(lnllltlJ

Un i versi ty of Hawai'j Prcss HO NOLU L U

© 2009 University ofHawai'i Press

All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America 14 1312 11 1009654321 An early version of chapt er 4 appeared in The Liremry Review (Fall 2006), and abridgemenlS of chapters II - I) in Rwiliri otls 67 (Spring 2007), 70-125. The novel was th en titled Srrikirl g Roo/.

Library of Congress Cata loging-in-Publica tio n Oata Han, Dong_ (Zha gen_ English] Banished! IHan Dong; translated by Nicky I-Iannan_ p_ Clll_ Incl ud cs bibliographical reference.'> ISBN 978-0-8248-3262-9 (hardcover: alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-8248-3340-4 (pbk : alk. paper) I. Harman, Nicky. II. Title. PL2861.A6643Z45132009 895. 1'352- books are printl-d o n acid-f rcc pa per and meet the guidel ine..'> for Fermanence and durabilit y of the Counc il o n library Reso urccs _ Designed by University of Hawai'i Press production staff Prillled by The Maple-Vail Book Manufacturing Gro up

Contents

I

Translato r's Preface

\'ii

No tes o n Translation

l. Banishment

I

I

20

44

I

4. Primary School

5_ Animals

ix

I

2_ Th e Enclosure 3 _ Yo ung Tao

I

63

I 77

6_ Th e Farm Tools Factory 7. Zhao Ningsheng

I

9 _ "S16

129

142

/

to. Rich Peasants

I

166

11 Striking Root

I

181

12_ Th e Author

I

198

D . Conclusion

I

227

Glossary I

100

117

8. Th e Cleaning Bug I n

I

241

Han Dong and Ihe World of Chinese Literature I

247

Translator's Preface

IN 1966, Mao Zedong, declaring thai economic and politi cal stability was corrupting th e Communist Parly's revol u tionary spirit and increasing bourgeois elitism, o rganized a mass

youth militia, the Red Guards, to seize control of the stale and party apparat us. Thus began the Cultural Revolution, o r "CuhRcv."1 The Commu nist Parly Ce ntral Committee was replaced with the Cultural Revoluti on Com miltcc, and local governments with Revoluti onary Commiltces. Throughout China, political and social institmi ons we re disrupted or closed down and the lives of its citizens thrown into turm oiL Those most affected were cadres, the educated men and women (many of whom, though no t all, were party members) wh o held posts in central and local governments, state-ru n enterprises, educati o nal, and cultural inst itutions , They were persecuted by the Red Guards and then banished in huge numbers, along with mid dle-schoo[ s tudents from the cities (the "urb[ings n of this story), to be reed ucated in the true nature of the revolut ion by the peasants o f the rural communes , Into this maelstrom the Tao famil y of Banished! is thrown: Tao, a writer and cadre; his wife, Su Qun, also a cadre; the grandparents; and the son , young Tao As the hook begins, Tao and Su Qun are finally released from th e May 7 Cadre School farm s to which they have been consigned after the "struggle sessionsn led by the Red Guard s, and they arc in vited to sign up for a new life in a poor and rem ote country area. Thi s is the Glorious Banishment. Moving to the cou ntryside cert ainly means materia l hardsh ip for the fam ily. But more than that , it means a loss o f status. In the upside-(Iown world of the CuhRev, because the Taos arc urban an d I The Cultural Revolution (or CuitR ev) is now mo re us ually interpreted as an attempt by Mao to wrest power from hi s ene mi es within the part)' and conso lidate his political pos ition. However, for th e purposes of thi s novel , the ideological interpretatio n is the one that counts.

vii

educated, they are placed lowe r than the most ignorant and ind igent peasants in the new political pecking o rdcr. And this is not just a temporary setback: th e Taos are given no hope that they will be allowed to go back ho me. Their books and other treasures have been confiscated o r burned during th e campaign to smash the Four Old s (old customs, old culture , old habits , and old ideas) . The process o f Striking Root req uires them to assume a new identity, to crase the famil y's past from th eir memory, and to put down new and permanent roots in Sanyu ...i llage. (To the young generation of Chinese tod ay, the decade is alm ost unim aginably strange; hence the need for a glossary, which was actually written by Han Dong for the Ch inese edition. Excerpts appear at the end o f this volume.) How do the banished feel about their fate? [n the sto ry, Tao incu lcates in his son the need to embrace their reeducat io n who leheartedly. [s this simpl e pragmatism, an attempt to protect yo ung Tao and ensure a safe future for him? O r do the banished cadres genuinely cl ing to a faith in their leaders and the beliefs that made them dedicate th ei r li ves to th e revolution? The question of political faith rem ains tantalizingly unanswered in Banished! In spite of all the privations, the Cult Rev was not a n experience o f unmitigated misel)' and violence for everyone in China. We can see (li ffe rent perspectives in the many books that have drawn their inspiration from that decade-from the charm and romance of Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress to the high adventu re , J ack Lo ndon-style, of Wolf Totem. Banished! tells us about the pain of shattered hopes a nd beliefs, the frus trations of a writer forb idden to write, the fears of parents for their child. But there is affection, too, in the portrayal of the village and its inhabitants, just as there is dignity in the Tao famil y's struggles to adapt , survive, and protect their youngest member. For young Tao--asymbol o f th e future no t just for his famil y but because h is is the generation that will re build China in the post-Cu[tRev years- the Glorio us Banishment proves ultimately, and iron ically, to be a formative, life-affirming experi ence.

viii

Tmnslato r's PrdHCC

Notes on Translation

CULTURAL REVO LUTION ca tch p hrases : Special

catch phrases were, as Han Dong reminds us, an integral feature of the strange world of Cu ltural Revoluti on Ch ina, permeallng people's lives and coloring their perceptions of what was happening aro und them_ In order 10 mark th ese terms and phrases in English in th e sam e way as th ey were marked ill th e original Chinese, I h ave in some cases capitalized ordinary words and phrases to underline their special character; in oth er cases I have invented abbreviati ons_ (There is an analogy here to th e way th e Chinese abbreviate a multi-character phrase 10 IWO characters _ For example , the Great C ult ural Revolution X{{.:;k:1fiii'l1 is abbreviated \ 0 )ct(!., the first

and the fo urth characters.) So I have capitalized Glorio us Banishment and adopted the tnms "urbli ng" and "CultRO'.~ The use of Mbani shment " for r 1$ dt.'ServC$ some discussion . The r indicates (Iownward motion, in this case from town to countrys id e. The 1$ is mo re compli cated ; it ca n mean "to rel ease o r Mto let go" and , in another coll ocation Mi1$, to "send into exile." The term "send/sent to the countryside" is th e usual translation. but it docs not easily produce a noun form , so after experim enting with a number of possibiliti es, I se ttl ed on banishment. Names: all the male villagers d Sanyu who are mentioned by nam e have the surnam e Yu . The personal name that occurs most frequently is You (have), and the attributes thai complete these pe rsonal nam es indicate that they carry a degree of mean ing. Exam ples: Youfu (have abundancclwealth) and Youcai (have wealth). While such names indicate something of what the villagers desire from life, I reluctantly decided that I co uld not find appro priat e English names that wo uld not make lhe villagers sou nd overly exo tic or even faintl y ridiculous_ I have th erefo re transliterated the names, following the Chinese nam ing conven tion : famil y name fol lowed by personal nam e, o r just personal name. Whe re different

fami lies surnamed Yu are referred to, I have distinguished one from another by calling the family by the personal name of the head of the family. (Example: the Gengyus are the family of Yu Gengyu.) Where the woman of the famil}' is not givcn a personal name, but is refcrred to in the Chinese as, for cxample, ~Youfu's wife," she becomes in English, Mrs. Youfu Childrcn werc a diffcrcnt matter. Thc (nick)namcs of some of the childrcn in the book- Sparrow Eyes, September, and little Dick among others---seemed to ask fo r translations and got them Weights and measures: There arc a number of weights and measures throughout the book. Han Dong mixes metric with traditional Chinese measures, so where he uses metric measures, I have done the sam e, and where he uses tr"ditional Chinese measures, I have substituted U.s. measures. The weights of ounce and pound and linear foot more or less correspond to a Chinese equivalent. Two measures required conversion: a Ii (about half a kilometer or onefourth of a mile) and a Inn (aboUi one-sixth of an acre).

Notes on Tmns la tion

ONE

Banishment I In November 1969 the Tao fam il y was banished, and Tao took them all to Sanyu vi ll age _ Before their departure, Tao had drawn a circle Oil a map in red craYOIl. The place he had circled was a rag+sha ped lake_ "This is Hongze Lake, the third largest freshw ater lake in Ch in a. That's where we're going,~ Tao said _

Half of Hongzc Lake belonged

\0

Ho ngzc Cou nty, whi ch was

divi(lcd inlO a waler-based commune and a dry-land comm une.

The Taos were to go to the dry-land com mune, which, despite its name, was not really dry since it was crisscrossed wit h canals fed by the abundant wains of Hongzc Lake. Where you had waler, you had fish, and Tao an nou nced \0 his family, "We're going to Hongzc Lake to cal fish!" And not just fish either The good thing about going to the dry-land commune was that there would be plenty of padd y ri ce and other food. In Tao's im agination, Hongze was a land overflowing with good things--or at least it had the potential to become such . Banishment to th e coun tryside meant th e chance of fre ed om ~ the two things went together. Huge numbers of cad res had been swept from their posts by the CultRev, and now they were all eager to sign up for the Glorious Banishment. Tao did not want to miss ou t, so there was little time to ponder the choices available. In any case, there were j ust two: Xuzhou and Huai)'in, the poorest parts of no rthern Jiangsu. O f the cadres who had signed up, so me had chosen no rthern Jiangsu because thai was where their families were from, so the)' were effectively going back to thei r place of origin. O thers had rela~ tives th ere wh om they could move in with. Some had worked in the region and had fri ends 11 was different for Tao: he had not come

from Jiangsu, nor had he worked there, so hejust had to rely on a map, try and work out the best spot, and put a circle around it. So it was that two days later, a group of drum-beating, sloganshouting people in green outfits with imitation leather belts around their waists turned up at the Taos' door. The Taos recognized them as the ones who had come the previous year. This time, however, they were here not to take Tao off to a struggle session but to set him free. Tao was glad that he was being liberated by the same people who had come for him the previous year. Had it not been the same group, he would still have been liberated, but the results woul(] not have been nearly so complete, nor so definitive. They punched the air and shouted unlil the whole building echoed, but this time the slogans were quite different from the time before. They tore off the faded red posters on either side of the Taos' door, brushed on some glue, and stuck on a brand new pair of posters. And this pair was completely different from the previous oncs, not just in appearance (the ink still damp on the bright red paper) but also in content. Instead of saying, ~Down with Tao, " ~Bomb him," "Burn him," or ~Fry him," the new ones read, "Give the Taos a warm send-off!" and ~The Taos are doing the Glorious Banishment. " The good-news troupe chanted a while longer and then marched off. Soon the faint sound of drumming was heard in the block behind the Taos---obviously they were not the only ones doing the Glorious Banishment. About ten minutes later, Grandpa Tao came oul. He was holding a bottle of glue and a small brush, and he addressed himself to the slogans pasted to the door frame The good-news troupe had been in a hurry, and its work had been careless. The posters were askew and there were air bubbles. Very carefully Grandpa Tao pulled them off, straightened them out, added more glue, and brushed them flat onto the door frame Finally he brought a half-full basin of clean water and wiped off the excess glue with a wet cloth. It took him nearly an hour. Taosaid to him a few limes, "Dad, don't bother; we're being banished soon." Grandpa just grunted and did not answer, so eventually Tao sent young Tao to give his granddad a hand. "This is absurd," thought Tao, not just because they would soon be gone. A year before , when Tao was being struggled against, the same group had come to stick posters on the Taos' door frame , and

1

Ha n Dong

after it had gone, Grandpa Tao had bustled happily out to paste on more glue and smoot h out the air bubbles. Thanks to his efforLS , their posters were the straightest, smartest, and longcst lasting of all the people beingslruggl ed against Today's group had had to put considerable effo rt into trying to remove the old posters a nd in the end had just stuck the new o nes o n top. This made Grandpa Tao's task more difficult, but he was a patient man and his face bore a smile as he worked away~So long as Dad's happy," thought Tao to himself.

2 The Taos had a two-room fl at on the third fl oor. Tao and Su Q un slept in one room, Grandpa and Granny Tao in the ot her. Yo ung Tao had a sm all bed in his grandparents' roo m. The kitchen and toilet were opposi te the flat and were shared with the neighbors. The block of flats dated from th e fifti es, and the flats and corrid ors had wooden floo rboards pai nted mauve, Th e stairs were wooden too. The Taos' nat had changed in recent days, not because of the brand new posters pasted on th eir door fram e, but because all the furn iture insi de had been moved around Only the beds were in their us ual place. Wardrobe, chest of drawers, and bookcases were all piled in the middle of the room , revealing whitish marks on the walls against which they had stood. The furniture was now unrecognizabl e as it was paeked in grass mailing and reed sacking and tied tightly with twine. The fl oor was covered in bits of dried grass, stri ng, and cardboard , as well as the mailing and bags. Small er items like the camphor chest, a bedside table , a writing dcsk, and a washstand were bund led up in th e sa me material and stacked anywhere space could be found ~in the corners, by the door, and o utside in th e corridor. And of cou rse there were endless neatly tied packages of hooks All th e furniture a nd other belongings, packed up as th ey were in the sa me material, bega n to look remarkably simil ar: bristly yell ow objects outlined with stra nds of gray wire of varying thi ckm.'Sscs. Fro m the wire hung loops of thinner wire to which were an ached scraps of white cloth . Eve ry cloth label had the same wo rds wrin en o n it: Tao and his wife's name and their de st in a ti o n~Tao Pei yi, Su Qun; Sa nyu, Wangj i, Hongze.

Ba ni sh ment

J

The packing took two days, and the whole family took parI. When they moved the wardrobe, the neighbo rs came to help. Then it was alm ost done, and Tao took a break. He sat on the bed and smoked a cigare\le. Now that each packaged item of furniture had a cloth label attached, he could relax. At noon, a comrade from th e work unit arrived with some paperwork. Su Qun brought in tea, but th ere was no room to put down even a cup. Tao gave up his seat on the edge of the bed to the com rade and stood while talking to him Su Qu n was in attendance, clasping the cup of tea in both hands; the man accepted the cup , took a sip, and returned it. Su Qun waited fo r him to take ano ther mo uthful , but he did not drink anymore. He gave them their instructions, stood up, and said goodbye . As he was going ou t, he told Tao that the furniture removal truck would come that afternoon. At 2 p.m. th e truck, with two young helpers standing in the back, arrived and parked downstairs in the courtyard The Taos were delighted sin ce th ey had thought th ey would have to move their furniture themse lves. No doubt this special treatment could be attributed to th e success of Su Qun's tea offeri ngs. At least it meant that they did not need to bother th e neighbors. All their belongings were ca rri ed down three flighLS of stairs and loaded onto the truck. The two helpers knew what they were about and packed the items lightly together, large heavy objects at the boltom, lighter things and odds and ends on top. The wardrobe was the heaviest of th e lot, as it was not j ust big but also had a large mirror mounted on the front. Su Qun had gone to th e trouble of lying IWO extra layers of colton wadding to the fron l and Ihe back, and th e gigantic object took fo ur people 10 load onto the truck: th e youths al the fron t , Tao and Su Qun al th e back; Grandpa Tao lenl a hand too Once on board , Ihe wardrobe lowered above its owners and th e neighbors who had gathered aro und to watch. A bil of mirro r, just visibl e between the mats and the sacking, gl eamed like an eye. Finally, the lruck drove o ut of th e courtyard. The Taos went back inside, where now nothing remained except bits of sacking and twine Slrewn all over the mauve noorboards. Looking around , Tao remarked, "It's a hell of a lot lighter than before!"

4

Ha n Dong

3 That night, the Taos stayed in the local afmy unit guest house. They were not alone, of cou rse. There were fo rty o r nft y families who would be doing the Glorious Banishment the next day, and the guesl house courtyard was ali ve with people and noisc. They all ate dinner together and were then divided up according to gender and age. There were dorm itories for the men and others for the women and ch ildren. Every room contained about ten beds, each covered in snow while sheets. Until lights-oUI, peoplc could drop into cach other's donn ito· rics, and Tao and Grandpa Tao wenl \0 Su Qun and Granny Tao's room. This looked like something oul of a matriarchal sociely: an old lady sat on the edge of a bed wi th a daughter or daughter-in-law in aucndance, holding a bowl of water for her to wash her fcc\. A you ng woman had pulled up her blouse and was breast-feeding her baby. The older ch ildren fought and played and chased each other noisily around the beds. Mothers shouted at their children, grandmothers sighed, and babies wailed There was continuous coughing, belching, muttering, and chatter Tao and his father sat down on the single bed that this evening belonged to the Taos. $u Qun and young Tao were to sleep there. Granny Tao had been given the next bed to share with an elderl y lady from an other family. The Taos could cla im only half of this bcd, the side nearest to $u Qun and her son. Tao and Grand pa Tao sat for a while and then left and wen t back to their own room . It had the same number of beds but was deserte(l and had none of the lively atmosphere of $u Qun's dormitory. It was still ten minutes to lights-out, ~nd the rest of the men were out visiti ng. One by one they returned . had a quick wash, and climbed into bed . Tao lay in the darkness, unable to sleep. It was thirty years since he had shared a bed with his father Now they were squeezed in together, separated by just their pajamas and the quilt th rough whi ch they could feci each other's body warmth Reveille sounded before daybreak, and the dormitory lights went on in the guest house. The banished families hurriedly got up an d packe(1 bags and su itcases. Then there was washing in the cou rtyard- the half dozen taps were all turned on, and icy water gushed out, splash ing onto the concrete under the communal sinks. There

Bani shmen t

5

was shouti ng in the darkness as people tried to find each other, and then, carrying babies and with the elderly in tOW, fam ili es made their way to the dining room fo r breakfast. Half a dozen buses were drawn up in a neat row, ready for th e fami lies to board. In the dim dawn light, the great !lowers that hung from the buses' hoods turned from gray to red and then, when it was fully light , a brilliant scarlet People were divided into groups according to the number of fam· ily members and where th ey were going, and they got on the !lowerand flag-bede cked buses. The fi ve Taos boarded with six other fam ilies, all bound for different production brigades and teams in the Wangji area of Hongze County The brigades and teams were apparently not far apart , JUSt a couple of miles. From now on they would be alm ost neighbors. They began to chat and exchange addresses as the Taos' bus pull ed out of the courtyard and onto th e highway. They came to Nan jing's main artery, Zhongshan Road, and a never-ending stream of buses joined th em until , by th e time they arri ved at the Yangtze Bridge, the convoy stretched for several miles and its end was out of sigh t. The buses were followed by an even longer stream of baggage trucks, hidden from view by trees and buildings. Crowds of people had come to see them off and stood at th e roadside, shouting and waving. In response, the travelers wound down th e bus windows, lea ned out, and waved back. At the Yangtze Bridge the se nd-off reached its climax: the air was fi lled with the sound of drumming and the expl osion of firecrackers, and th e ranks of bystanders stood in some degree of o rder am id a sea of !lags and hanners. Groups of young people in green uniforms with red badges perform ed the revolutionary ~ I oyalty dance. ~ Tao had never seen anything like this since Nanjing had welcomed the PLA in 1949. Then he had s tood by the roadside,almost delirious with exci tement . Now he was in the bus, a blank look on his fa ce. In 1949 th e army was entering th e city; now he and his fami ly were leaving it---or ralher being swept out of it. Why such fan fare fo r people who were being banished? But there were no answers to Tao's many questions. The bus crawled along at a pace scarcely faster than walking. It took hal f a day to cover the seven kilometers through the city and up to and over the bridge.

6

Han Dong

4 O n ce it had passed th e no rthern bridgehead, the bus gathered speed . There were no morc crowds by th e roadside, and the drums on the o ther side of Ihe river could be heard only indisti nctly_They seemed to be driving into silence . They began to sec st raw stacks, calli e, and peasant sma l1ho ldings. As they went around a big bend, the trucks al the back of the column allasl ca me into view bu t, cycca tching th ough the Taos' wardrobe was, they could not sec it. The passengers began to cat their lunches, munch ingon biscuits and buns and drinking waler from tlasks. Some swapped other food like apples, salted eggs, pickles, and dried bean curd. What with the lunch es they had eaten and th e bouncing of the bus, a drowsiness came over them. Time passed and suddenly the bus pulled up for a toilet stop_ The h il ls had disappeared, and now the plains of no rthern J iangsu stretched before th em, rounded like th e lid of a wok The socalled toilets were a nearby s traw s tack, behind whi ch they were to take tu rns relieving themselves. The women got first go. O ne by o ne they crossed a ditch and lIl~dc their w~y tu the guluell yell uw !> tr~w !>tack. The yu ung Irdpcd the el derl y ove r the ditch and up the bank O ne old woman-sh e must have been about ninety-had to be carri ed by a young wo man, who,judging by h er age, was her granddaughter_ The old lady's hair was of s uch wi spy whiteness that it merged into the pale gold o f the stack The men waited their turn at the roadside They craned thei r necks in an attempt to see the end of the con voy or, better still, the truck that carri ed th eir famil y's furniture_ But the line was too long an d the bend in the road was not s harp enough, so they gave up. Finally it was th e men's turn , and they crossed the ditch and hurried toward the stack, greeting the wo men who were on their way back Beh ind the stack was one huge puddle, as if it had j ust rai ned . Ho1cs were brim full o f urine , with bubbles still noaling on the surface. Some of th e women had had a crap. Toil et paper was scattered everywh ere, and as th e wind blew scraps toward the pale green paddy fiel d nearby, th ey looked like so many white doves_ As the stink o f urine wafted around them, th e men relieved themselves and, doing up th ei r trousers, emerged from behind the stack Back

Banishmen t

7

at the bus, the d river counted everyone in, and they were on their way again. Grandpa Tao got out his radio and began to fiddl e with the dials. Th e radi o cheeped and chirped as the bus veered around bends. Th e broad caster's voice cam e and went, dear and fuzzy in turn. Grandpa Tao kept adjus ting the dials. He had tuned into a Nanjing radio stati on that he knew well, and th ey heard a blow-by-blow description of t heir banish ment to th e countryside. The drums and slogan chanting fill ed th e bus, this tim e not from outside but from the radio. Finally even the drums could no longer be heard . Then Grandpa got a local radio station, and they heard the strange local (lial ect with its harsh, abrupt intonati on. They realized they must be nearly there. Tao looked at his watch. 11 was after fo ur in th e afternoon. Outs ide the bus, the landscape looked differenl. There were thatched houses and great fields of ro ugh grass. The sky had darkened too, and cold air crept in through gaps in the windows. By now th ey had reached Hongze County Town In front of them a canal was being dug, and the convoy was diverted around the edge of the town and straight to th e commune. Peasant laborers lin ed up on the banks to watch the buses drive slowl y past. They were no organized welcome pany. In fact they just stared at the passengers in the bus with dull, solemn expressions. The passengers looked back (th e bus windows had all been wound down). It occurred to Tao that that mo rning's send-off, lively tho ugh it was, had made him feel uneasy because the s ingers and dan cers had been so engrossed in their performances that they had no t o nce looked into the eyes of the departing families. Was it reassuring now to be s tared at so fixedly by these peasants? Of course not, but his current un easin ess was at least of a different nature. The laborers were dressed in thin , shabby garments, and some were bare-chested. Most were young and strong and stood holding shovels or shoulder poles, completely silent. Behind them was th e wide, deep water course they had dug, as yet without water. Freshly dug yellowish-gray clay was everywhere. The rays of th e evening s un lit up the scene so vividly that eve rything before their eyes, including the motionless laborers, appeared transformed into a tableau. Then the canal works were behind them . They drove along a bumpy, unsurfaced road in a convoy that had now sh runk in size.

S

Ha n Dong

Buses and baggage trucks turned down side roads toward their destinations, almost without being noticed Tao was s impl y aware that therc were fewer and fewer buses. By the time it began to get dark, only their bus was left , foll owed by four or fi ve baggage trucks. The one with the Taos' wardrobe towering above it was easy to spot.

5 By now it was quite dark o utsid e, and they could only vaguely makc o ut their su rro undi ngs since th ere were no st reet lamps and on ly the starlight to see by. They were driving through an a rea crisscrossc([ wit h waterways, whi ch glittered on either s id e of the track. The roadway was so narrow it could not be seen; they seemed to be traveling o n water, and it was o nl y the violent bumping up and (lown that told them they were on land. The headlight beams were so fain t they could not tell how wide or deep the ca nals were. The bus bounced so much it seemed it might fall into the water. The passengers grew anxious. Finally th e bus stopped, and a man in a bl ue ove rcoat got on and shouted Tao's and Su Qu n's names in the local dialect. They had arri ved . The man was ML Yu, th e head of the Sanyu village Number I Production Team, and they were at Xiaodu nkou. The Taos gathered their things, said goodbye to the famili es still o n board, and got off the bus. The river that ran alongside the potholed track was narrow and gl eamed silver in the moonlight 11 was then they realized that Grandpa Tao had van ished. Grandpa Tao had gone behind the bus, looking fo r a place to relieve himself. But th e land was completel y flat , providing no toilet, not even a straw stack Nearby he saw a pale ~road~ that he took to be tarmac snaking into the distance and out of sight. He saw ho uses on th e opposit e side. Maybe there were toilets there. He tried to cross over and stepped into the ri ver Luckil y it was shall ow, and Grandpa Tao regained his footing in time. But his tro use r legs were soaking weI. When he pulled his rubber boots from the mud , they were full of water and sq uelched as he walked. The water was penetratingly cold . That was lucky too: for the time being it made the old man forget his need to urinate. Tao decided th at he and Su Qun would wait at Xiaodunkou and unload the truck with their furni ture. The village women would

Ba ni sh ment

9

take his parents and young Tao to Sanyu. It was st ill a quarter of a mile o r more from Xiaodunkou to Sanyu along what was reall y just an uneven riverbank, not even a dirt road. It was impassable to traffic (otherwise the bus would have taken th em right to the village). Once news of th ei r arrival had sp read, men and wo men, yo ung and old, from th e production team turned out to meet them Xiaodunkou was quite special as far as th e villagers were concerned: it was not only o n the highway, but there were also some shops--modern buildings, brick-bUilt, with tiled roofs-by the roadsid e (t he o nes Grandpa Tao had seen across the "tarmac road"). These were now barred and shuttered for the night, but it was no t th e shops that had brought the villagers o ut in force , but ra ther the new arrivals. When the Taos got off the bus, they were surrou nde(1 by eighty or ninety people. The men had carrying poles a nd baskets to load the furniture into; the women, th e ch ildren, and the elderly had just come 10 see Ih e fun They had brought along a drum player, who now struck up, but sin ce th ere was only one instrument , it sound ed nothing like Ih e bands that had given Ihe Taos Iheir sendoff. II did not sound like a prcper drum or indeed like a nythi ng much at all , bUI even so, Tao felt somehow reassured. In o ne day they had passed Ihlee kinds of crowds Illassed along Ihe roadside, but it was these villagers who see med to Tao the friendliest. There was no need for anxiety.

6 A crowd of wome n bore th e grandparents and yo ung Tao off to the village. Granny Tao had had bound feet, and although she had unbound th em, she was not very agile Added 10 Ihat , Ihe fright thai Grandpa's we lling had given her meant she could hardly walk at all. Two young Sanyu women, o ne on each side, took her a rms, or rather it would be more accurale to say they carried her along, feet scarcel y touching the ground, in the direction of the Village. The women made good speed . Grandpa Tao, leading young Tao by the hand, did his best to keep up. The moon sho ne down o n th e riverbank path, casting the potholes into deep shadow and making it strangel y diffi cul t to judge where to put one's feet. The old man st umbled along, sevcral tim es almost falling . It would be truer to

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Han Dong

say that young Tao, rather than being lcd, was his grandfather's crutch. A chorus of barking dogs greeted them as they got near the village. Dark clumps of trees and buildings could be seen. Here and there lights appeared, though they were so faint that they were scarcely noticeable in the brilliant moon light They came to a bridge, two feet wide and made of sticks and branches bound together Below it flowed the glitteri ng waters of the Yanma River. Granny Tao absolutely refused to go any further and remained immovable, no mailer how hard the girls urged and pulled her. The whole party was stuck. One of the women, surefooted and swift, crossed over. But far from encouraging Granny Tao, this example made her more fearful than ever. In her eyes, the woman was nothing less than a tightrope walker. Grandpa Tao and young Tao gathered their courage and crossed, along with most of the other women . That left just Granny Tao and her two helpers on th e other side_Young Tao wailed for his granny, who became so frantic that she burst into tears_ Finall y one of the women cam e to a decision, pulled off her coat, put it over Granny Tao's head, and in this way got her across the river. They had arrived in Sanyu_ They were taken to the cO\vshed next to the threshing noor, where the old cowherd lit a fire so that Grandpa Tao could dry his trousers. They sat around the fire, hands outstretched toward the names, huge shadows wavering on the cowshed walls. The underside of the cowshed roof was covered with a mailing of plaited bulrushes from which hung hundreds of dark objects, like so many bunches of grapes bobbing up and down_ They were formed of the ash and dust that had accumulated on the leaves of the bulrushes; in Sanyu they were called ~ash streamers_~ As the cowherd built up the fire, the flames leapt higher until they seemed about to meet the streamers Granny Tao cried out in alarm, but there was a chorus of ~It's all right! It's all right!" from the villagers. More straw was added to the leaping names, and finally some of the stream ers caught fire. The tongues of name quickly went out, leaving a few sparks dancing in the ai r until they too disappeared without trace. Granny Tao became even more agitated . She did not understand what the villagers were saying or dOing, so she turned

Banis hment

II

on her husband: "Horrible old man! What arc you laughing at!n But Grand pa Tao just bared his lips in a gap-toothed laugh. He sat dose to the fire, turning the wet legs of his eOllon-padded trousers th is way and that until wisps of steam rose from them When th e trousers were dry, the three of them were taken to eat at the house of one of the peasants By now, Tao and Su Qun had arrived, along with the young men who were bringing the furniture. This was deposited in front of lhe Taos' new home, and they then joined the grandparents and young Tao At the table they were encircled by a watching crowd {the villagers had had their dinner earlier and did not cat with them} . The house belonged to Lu Suying, a woman in her forties who was busy cooking their dinner in a tiny kitchen. Then she put four dishes brimming with some dark-colored food, none of which they recognized, o n the small table. An old ink bOllle served as an oil lamp, and its tiny name lit up the dishes and the Taos' rice bowls, which were filled with some sort of gruel that they also did not recognize. In the silence all that could be heard was a slurping as they ate. When they had finished, they set off for their new home, with Mr. Yu in the lead and the reSl of the villagers following behind. They crossed a bridge, and their home, or rather a building, appeared before them. It was an odd building, not because it was built of mud bricks and thatch {all Sanyu's houses were}, but because the roof sloped steeply down from west to east at a sharp angle. At the eastern end it tilted up again, seemingly because the crossbeam was warped. The next morning, when they walked around the village in the daylight, they saw that there was no other house like it. In the moonlight they could see that all four walls of the house had almost completely sunk into the earth . The thatch on the slanting roof hung down like a mop of gray hair, covering the doors and windows. The ward robe rested by the front door, tied in its mat wrappings and casting a dark shadow It seemed taller than their new house- an illusion of course. All around it lay the rest of the packaged furniture. Yu pushed the door, and it squeaked open . There was a strange smell in the room. They later found ou t that this had been the production team's old eowshed. A new cowshed {where Grandpa Tao had dried his trousers} had been built, and the cows had been moved. Although they had been gone a year, the sme ll persisted.

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Han Dong

"How many cows docs the production team have?» asked Tao. "Five,» said Yu. This, funnily enough, was the same number as the Tao family. Insi de, mud bricks lay around on the 1100r. There was an unfinished object rather like a sink, also of bricks. The team had been building them a s tove, but they had arrived earlier than expected, and it was not yet finished. In the corner of the room, at the west end , the villagers had built a bed, also of bricks, and this was covered in rice straw. The bed was big enough for the whole family to sleep on . 11 was dark, they had no lamp, and it was too much trouble to unpack the beds they had brought from Nanjing. They simply opened a trunk, dug out some cOllon-wadd ing mallresses and quilts, and lay down to sleep en the brick bed.

7 The Taos were up the next day as soon as it was properly light; they pushed open the creaking wooden door and went out into a brand-new world The early morning sun shone down on the northern Jiangsu plains, and the mist hung over the stream Nearby, through the bare twigs of the trees, they could see the uneven rool1inc of Sanyu's thatched dwellings. The ground was stil l s li ppery from the night's hoarfrost. In front of the door someone had left a mound of sweet potato stalks, and young Tao, bundled up in four sweaters, began to practice assaults on it. Tao, too, cou ld not help being infected by his son's excitement as he did his chestexpanding exercises in the chill morning air. The Taos spent the day introducing themselves to the villagers. Each fami ly in Sanyu lived in a house within its own enclosure, bounded by a stream on all four sides On the south side was a bridge that led to the village street. The bridge was actuall y an earth en embankment in which a concrete pipe had been buried. The pipe allowed the water to Ilow through and on around the other cnclosures. The houses were all built of mud brick and thatch; in front of each was the family's allotment, on which they grew crops and vegetables, and most of the ho uses had a lush bamboo grovc behind them . Thc Taos' cowshed dwelling was also built within an enclosure, but this one had no bamboo grove, and no crops had been plantcd.

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13

Instead, in front of it was an area of hard-packed earth, the pro(]uction team's old threshing ground . About a year before, a new threshing ground to the west of the village had been built, and the old one was no longer in usc. The cowshed and the five cows had moved away at the same time. Both old and new threshing grounds were at the end of the village, the old to the east, the new to the west, each about a hundred meters from the village itself. So the Taos lived all on their own, and by November their enclosure, bare even of a bamboo grove, looked desolate The furniture and other belongings scallered in front of their house now began to emerge from their wrappings and reveal their true nature. A large number ot" Villagers stood around, although most had not come to help. Every lime something was unwrappe(l, it caused a commotion among the bystanders. They stood arguing in an incomprehensible di alect, hand to mouth or spilling in a display of amazement that the Taos had never encountered before. The women and children crept close and had a good feel of every new article. They were intrigued by everything, especially, to the Taos' surprise, a basket of coal briquettes. The Sanyu villagers burned only straw and other dried vegetation, and coal was a rarity. They had nevel seen anyt hing like these evenly sized, jet-black shiny balls. It was unimaginable that you could usc these finely crafted objects for fuel and for cooking food. The Sanyu Villagers were so astonished that the Taos began to look at the coal briquelles with new eyes. They certainly did stand out in their current surroundings, not because they could be used to cook food, but because of their color. There was nothing anywhere near as black as those coal briquettes in all the gray-brown countryside around them A child picked one up and threw it at a bare-branched sapling nearby. The coal briquette hit the trunk Granny Tao shouted at him to stop. Young Tao retrieved the broken ball, but a distinct black mark remained on the trunk The second object that amazed the Villagers, as it emerged from its four or five layers of wrapping, was the wardrobe. They gasped as each layer was removed and there was still another one underneath. It was a mystery to them why the Taos should have wrapped something with such care. Finally the wardrobe was completely relieved of its layers, and far from being disappointed, the villagers

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were perhaps even more amazed than before. It was not its large size or fine craftsmanship or the fact that they had never seen one before that astonished them but the mirror mounted on the front. Reflected in it, the fields, so familiar to the people of Sanyu, took on a whole new aspect, and neighbors whom they met every day looked like completely different people They crowded in from all sides, craning their necks and peering into it as if it were a well The ones at the back began to protest and push and shove their way forward The ones at the front swayed in front of the mirror, pulled to and fro by the people beh ind them. There were even more standing behind the wardrobe, but there was no mirror there. Gradually they sellled down and began to assume (lignified poscs. But this did not stop them from jeering at each other: MAren't you dark! You're as blaek as the Taos' coal br iquellcs! n MYou're so pale, you look like their aluminum wok! We can see our faces in you! n It was as if they had never seen anything like it bcforenot surprisi ng since coal briquettes and alumi num woks had previously been un known in Sanyu. Nevertheless Tao was impressed that these ord inary people could take to new things so quickly. The wardrobe remained on display at the Taos' front door for a couple of homs before being moved inside at nightfall. Thereafter and for a month or more, the vil lagers were always dropping by so that they cou ld look at the wardrobe----or rather the mirror on the front of il. The visitors were mainly women, nicely gOt up in bright blue jackeLS fastened diagonally across the front, their hai r stil l wet from combing and sometimcs fastened with a plastiC hair slide bought from the shop at Xiaodunkou . They arrived in groups of up to five at a time, sometimes even more, and stood in front of the mirror, pushing and shoving and roaring with laughter. Tao had never imagined that the wardrobe, bought when he and Su Qun had married, would become such a handy way of getting to know their neighbors He and Su Qun talked about it and decided to move the wardrobe from the bedroom to the front room. (Their house had by now been divided into three rooms: their bed room, the be(lroom where the grandparenLS and young Tao slept, and the main room.) Moving the wardrobe made it easier for visiting villagers 10 get a good look. A lad of sixteen or seventeen called September began to hang around as soon as they moved in, helping out in a variety of ways.

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He appointed himself as th e Taos' particular fri end and began to guard the entrance to their house. The women who came visiting cou ld get in only with September's say-so. Tao was not happy about th is, hut he did not feel he could say anything. The women were Sanyu people whom th ey needed to get on their side; September was also a Sanyu neighbor (although on ly a child). He did not want to offend eith er party.

8 They were still cold at night; the), just could not get warm , even tho ugh the bed had a thick layer of ri ce straw covered by two cotton-wadding mattresses, and they lay under a quil t weighing eight pounds. The walls of the cowshed were cr isscrossed with c racks, both sm all , fine oncs and large, wide ones. The biggest was so big that young Tao could put his hand illlo it After they had put out the oil lam p, a ri bbon of moonlight wavered over their bed, and when the moon had sunk below the hill , an invisible icy draft stirred against th eir ears and necks Because the roof was covered in streamers, Grann y Tao resol utel y refused to allow them to light a fire. The first few nigh ts were spent with the Taos half exposed to the night sky; then the whole family set to wallpapering the home. This was a task they were good at, as Grand pa Tao's obsession with getting the sloga ns pasted perfectly flat onto the door frame of their Nanjing home had showed. But he would work too slowly o n a big area like the cowshed . So most of the work was do ne by Su Qu n. Mr. Yu, the team leader, selll them a sho ulder pole's load of rice straw, and Su Qun kn otted small sheaves a nd stuffed them into the cracks. Young Tao had an essenu al role to play here; his hands were sm all enough to fit right into the wall cracks, so he could stuff the rice straw in good and deep Sometimes he overdid it a nd pushed th e straw so far in that it almost weill right through and was visible o n the o uts ide wall. Then Su Qun pasted a layer of newspaper over the walls, then another layer. Then s he added a layer of magaZines, making it three laye rs all toget her. When she had finished, the cowshed looked li ke new and did not even look like a cowshed a nymo re . The mud brown walls were completely hidden beneath the paper, a nd th e

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Han Dong

room looked cons iderably brighter. Grandpa Tao took a bam boo cane, allached a feather duster to the end , and cleared the st reamers from the matting covering the underside of the roof. The "ra t tai ls n of those that were left were much sho rter now, and in some places you could actuall y make out th e dark brown bulrushcs_ They spent a whole day papering and cleaning and used almost two loads of ri ce straw, plus nearly a year's worth of Ncw China Ncws, which they had brought from Nanjing_ They also used two years' worth of the PLA PiC/oriai magazine_ By this tim e it was dark They had dinner, washed their feet. and climbed into bed. Squeezed up against the magazine-covered walls, icy cold and st ill damp from the glue , they fel t peace of mind . Outs id e the no rth wind howled , and the magazine pagcs stuck to the uneven walls bulged ou t and were s ucked back in with a hushing sou nd rather like a lullaby.

9 Thus th e Taos settl ed into Sanyu, and work assumed a regular rhythm_ They bought some rush matting from the shop in Xiaodu nkou and divided the cowshed into three rooms . They made a small hole in the mud-brick si ll below th e door frame and bought a puppy from a villager. The lillIe dog was black and white , more white than black, and they called him P~tch. The hole was fo r Patch to go in and oul. They put down some wooden boards to make what the Sanyu villagers called a jelly at the edge of the stream o n the east sid e of their enclosure. They stood on this to wash ri ce and vegetables and scrub th e toil et bucket. They used a plastic bucket to draw drinking water, which was th en tipped into a large water contai ner that stood in th e fro nt room The conta iner took five o r six bucketfuls_ They added alum to the water and stirred it with a stick kepi for the purpose, and the impuritics in the water sank with Ihe alum to the bOllom of the con tainer. The container was rinsed ou t with water once a week. For bOiling rice they used the cooking stove they had brought from Nanjing (they st ill had two baskets of the coal briquettes). They got rid of the mud-brick stove by the front door. Tao reckoned that they would build themselves a new house the next year and it would includ e a special cookhouse, so they could build a new stove base then.

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Going to the toilet was a problem Sanyu villagers buried a large cylindrical crock in their garden and surrounded it on three si(lcs with a fence , about waist high, of rush matting or maize stalks bound together_ when they went to the toilet, they squatted inside it. The fourth side was open to the world, and you could look out as you did your business Young and old, men and women, used this arrangement, winter and summer, even during the night. When the Taos went visiting, there would often be someone squatting behind the fence_ Peering out, he or she would greet them with a ~Had your dinner yet?" Small children who did not know any beller sometimes pooped outside the family enclosure and were scolded for it. A Sanyu family's night soil should not go on other people's fields, as the Taos gradually learned. However, even though they understood perfectly well the reasons why things were done as they were, they still could not bring themselves to behave in exactly the same way The Taos buried a crock in the garden too and fenced it in, but they did not actually usc it as a toilet. Instead they emptied their toilet bucket into it. At night, each bed had a spittoon placed under illo serve as a chamber pOl. The urine was emptied into the toilet bucket 01 dilcctly into thc Clock outside in the morning_ When they nee([ed to crap, they used the toilet bucket. They were quite embarrassed at being seen by one of the villagers emptying their bucket or pots, but eventually the secret got out. The villagers thought this was very unhygienic. "They crap in the house!~ they said . So the Taos kept their toilet bucket well covered up in a corner of the grandparents' room and hung a curtain in front of it. Anyone using Ihe loilet bucket could not be seen by visitors, but the smell gave them away, so the Taos used the toilet furtively, as if they were doingsomelhing to be ashamed of Every third day, when the bucket was full to the brim, it was emptied into the crock outside_ While we're on the subject, I should tell you about the paper the Taos used to wipe Iheir bottoms They had pink or bleached white toilet paper, something incomprehensible to the Villagers. The latter used anything they could find to wipe themselves, like a handful of leaves or rice straw. In the depths of winter, when there were no leaves, they used lumps of earth. The children were even more uninhibited. When they had pooped, they would stick out their bOlloms and call over one of the dogs to lick them nice and clean.

IS

Ha n Dong

Babies too small to deal with this themselves just had their bottoms wiped clean by a grown-up with a bunch of grass or the sole of a shoe. Once young Tao stuck out his boltom too and called Patch. but he was caugh t by Granny Tao an d given a thorough telling-off. II was a very dirty habit in the Taos' view The only thing lhey and lhe villagers disagreed on was the mOSl hygienic way of going to lhe tOilel , and on Ihis poillllhey were irreconcilable.

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19

TWO

The Enclosure

I The Taos lived in the cowshcd for nearly a year and began bui lding a new home the next autumn_ The project had been in the planning for some lime. There was to be no skimping since, as Tao put ii, the), were 10 "dig inn here for many generations_ GUI just what kind of a house was this going to be? The Sanyu villagers' houses were built of mud bricks with thatched roofs. There were no buildings of fired bricks_ You had \ 0 go \0 Xiaodunkou, where the stores were of bricks, to sec those. The mud bricks for Sanyu houst.'S were made in a number of different ways. The most common was \0 plough up a patch of groull(l, water it well, and scalier wheat and rice husks and choppc(1 rice straw over it. Then an ox was led back and forth through it o r people got in barefoot to trample it, adding water as they mixed it. The longer you trampled the better, as bricks made from properl y trampled mud did not crack easily The prepared mud was then shoveled into wooden molds and the top smoothed out. The bricks were half completed at that stage; when dried in the sun, they could be used to build house walls or stoves_ In the farming slack season, the villagers sat outside their houses unmolding the bricks and stacking them in a neat pile that was then covered with a thick layer o f rice straw to keep off the rain. There was another way of making the bricks that was less trouble: an ox was used to drag a s tone roller back and forth over a field where the rice had just been harvested unlil the earth was rolbl firm and nat. Beneath the stubble were the paddy rice roots, which held the soil together in the same way as the wheat and rice

20

husks. A knife was then pulled across the field either by an ox o r by a couple of men, cUll ing the earth into squares rather like a chess board. These "bricks" were then dug out and used fo r building. Although this method was less trouble, it was hard work, and digging out a layer of topsoi l necessa ril y removed nutrients so that the next crop would be poor 50 the most co mm only used method of making mud bricks was still the first one. The fram es of the houses were of wood Although 5anyu was on the plain and there was plenty of uncultivated land , trees were scarce, and trees big enough to be the roof beams were the sca rces t of all. Sanyu villagers had to buy wood fo r house building from the cooperat ive. The cO\vshed in which the Taos were lodged was made of wood from the Village, which was why the roof ridge was so hideously lopsided. The house roofs were thatched with ri ce st raw, so new houses were a beautiful bright golden yellow But when it had rained a few times, the thatch began to turn grayer and grayer ulllil it ended up a charred black color. II was a big thing for 5anyu villagers to build a ho use. Although mOSI building malerials could be found locally, the wood for the roof ocams, wh ich had 10 be bought , cost mOllCy. The villagers had lillie cash, and feeding the builders was expensive. so you were lucky if you could build one house during yo ur lifetime. When the bricks, the wood, and th e straw were ready, the actual building took o nl y two or three weeks. Once the house shell had bee n completed , the finishing work began inside and out. The same mud, well kneaded with husks, was used. It was used like lime and pl astered on inside and OUI , th e more layers the beuer. The vill agers compared the number of layers on one another's houses. In every o ther respect, the houses were id en tical. The more layers applied, the sm alle r and closer logether th e cracks in the walls. If you took the trouble to do fo ur o r fi ve layers, then the cracks in the wall would be as finely wrinkled as an old woman's face. Careful finishing could be detected o nl y ins ide the house. O utside, o nce the plaster had been applied a few times ove r, the walls we re wrapped in straw mats to keep the rain off. Four o r five layers of malti ng were stuck on with mud , starting at the boltom and ending at the roof. They worked like a palm-leaf rain cape: when it rained, the water ran down off th e stalks and did not damage

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21

the bricks underneath. The malting was usually woven rrom wheat straw. Like the thatch, it started off golden yellow and turned gray and then black. But never mind that A newly built house sho ne a brilliant gold from top to bottom. This is how most houses were built in Sanyu. Of course. poor families might skip some stages-for instance, the outside walls might not have s traw matting

2 The Taos had two advantages when they built their house. The first was money: it was official policy that the department in c harge of banished cadre families in the cou ntryside should provide them with hom es. Each family member got YSO, and there were five Taos, meaning that they had YiDD to spend o n building their ho use. Second, they did not have to pay the builders They were paid in wo rk points, and the costs were borne by the production team as a wh ole. That was official policy too The only thing the Taos had to decide was whether to have a mud brick and thatched cottage, like the locals, or a modern brick and tile house, like th e store at Xiaodunkou. If they had a traditional house , it would be the best in the village; if they had a tiled o ne, it would be beller st ill. They finally decided to co mbine th e two: the walls would be of mud briCks, but the roo r would be tiled. That way, their house would not st ick out too much but would last long enough to enable the Taos to dig in fo r generations. lr they used all local materials, their house would be an obvious contrast to the o thers, whi ch would not be a good thing. After careful consideration , Tao came to the concl usion that mud bricks had their good points. They were warm in winter and cool in summ er, and if you wrapped the walls in st raw matti ng, it kept the rain off and gave you asolid building. Thatched roofs were no good. Apart from the way th ey turned dark gray, they had to be renewed every few yea rs. The most noteworthy thing about the Taos' house was that th e frame and purlins would not be made of wood but of precast reinforced concrete. That way, Tao's ambition that they should dig in woul(] be realized. Even if the walls crumbl ed and the tiles rell o rf with tim e, the concrete frame would go on forever. Tucked away

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Han Dong

between the mud walls and the tiled roof, the frame would be almost invisible, j ust like Tao's secret desire to dig in . Usi ng purlins and a frame mad e of reinforced co ncrete had ano ther advantage: the roof ridge would come out completclystraight. That meant a lot to the Taos after their year spent in a cowshed with a lopsided roof. Tao was thrilled. Even th e modern brick a nd tile shop at Xiaodunkou had only wooden purlins \ None of the o ther banished cad re families were going to use this method of reinforced concrete beams fixed in place with plywood and bolts when they built their houses because, although ofricially recomm ended, it was worryingly unconventional. Tao was pro ud , even elated, when he discove red this. It then occu rred to him that even the famil y's former home in lhe three-story block in Nanjing had only a wooden frame. Using reinforced concrete was so new to the people of this poor rural backwater that the Taos wo uld be trendsellers. Once he had realized this, it was impossible to dissuade Tao from his plan The new house would be built next to the cowshed within the same enclosure. All the Sanyu houses were surrounded by a stream on all sides so that there was no need for a walled enclosu re as in northern Chin ese villages The stream formed the ~compound wall " and the boundary of the property and separated one family from another, but it also linked them together. The house enclosures sat next to each ot her, with a bridge on their sout h sides that 1c(1 to the village street. The Taos' cowshed, howeve r, was o n the east si de of the village, sou th of the st reet, so that their bridge was o n the north si de of the house-that is, at the back. The Sanyu enclosures were a basic and uni versal geographical concept. The term referred to any piece of land surrou nded on all sides by a s tream, wh ether or not it had a building or anyone living o n it. The threshi ng fl oor had its own enclosu re, and so did the production team office and the primary school In fact, there were more streams that enclosed land than buildings. There was also a big variation in size , from a family-sized enclosu re of one-sixth of an acre to enclosures of two acres or more and even bigger ones of up to five acft.'S. The Taos' cowshed enclosu re was o ne and a half acres, with the shed built on j ust a small part of its northeast corner. Apart from the area occupied by the shed and the former threshi ng noor, most

The End osure

2J

of the enclosure consis ted of fi elds pl anted with crops. Taking a bit to build a house o n was going to be no problem at a ll. The cowshed was o n the east side of the bridge; the Taos decid ed to build their new home on th e west side. like the shed. th e house would face south , but they would build it twenty o r thirty meters fu rther down the enclosure (that is, toward the south). Once it was fin ished, th ere would be quite a big space between it and the stream , whereas the shed was built almost on its bank. In Tao's plans, th e family's enclosure had the st rea m to the west and north . On the cast side of the new house, they would dig a dry (litch and plant acacia bushes o n its banks. Acacias grew fast and were covered in thorns, forming a natural fen ce and separating th e house from the cowshed cast of it. Apart from a piece of land to the south of the house that was given to them as an allotment , the rest was owned colleclively by th e prod uctio n team . The enclosure that Tao planned was not a real enclosure. It was an enclosure within an encl osure, th e private bit apportioned to th e Taos by the team and accessed via th e same bridge they had used when they were in th e cowshed But that could not be helped

3 After the autumn harvest, work started on the Taos' house. Yu, the prod uction team leader, brought a dozen or so laborers, and th e found ations were sunk in deep and solid , in accordance with Tao's requirements for a house that would last fo r generations. The concrete beams and the gray-bl ack roof tiles were brought from the county town and piled up in front of the cowshed, where th ey looked very conspicuous As this was not an ordina ry house, th ere was no one in Sanyu competent to do the skilled building work, so Tao got hold of Dong, once a grade 2 bri ckl ayer in a Nanjing building company and now working nearby in Number 13 Product io n Team. Dong had been a worker, not a cad re , and he had been banished und er a different scheme (of which more later) . In additio n to the beams and til es, two hundred fired black bricks also arrived. Tao wanted to usc them to build a lradit ionalstyle Mgatehouse" at the front of the house. There was no real point

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Han Dong

to this structure except to mark out their home as different from the res\. For Tao, the beams and tiles were not nearly enough; there had to be a much more obvious sign of his good taste and his determination that they should dig in Dong was in charge of building the walls of the ~gatehouse," but his bricklaying was so irregular that the walls threatened to collapse, and even after several attempts he had not managed to make them vertical. In the end, Sanyu's own master bricklayer completed this formidable task Tao was very dissatisfied and complained to his family that Dong was hopeless, and he could not imagine how he had ended up as a grade 2 bricklayer. The Sanyu Villagers were o bviously very bright and learned on the job. As for Dong, he did not understand what the problem was. Laying a few bricks in Nanjing had been prWy easy. He started by saying he did not have the righ t tools; then it was that he had not worked as a bricklayer for a year and had lost the knack He went scarlet with embarrassment at Tao's obvious annoyance and the villagers' jeers and became clumsier than ever. It was only when the beams had to be boarded in that he came into his own. The beams had four holes at each end, and so did the lengths of pl}"vood. When the beams went up, the holes had to be matched with the holes in the plywood; a long bolt was pushed through and the nut screwed on tight. The vil lagers had never seen nuts and bolts and did not know how to handle them . It was not like mud bricks and fired bricks, where the materials were different but the techn ique was the same. Dong knew all about nuts and bolts, and he was young and fit, with strong hands. Deftly he put on the nuts and did them up good and tight. There was no way they would come loose now. Tao's face al laSI wore a gratified smile. II was Dong who did th e tiling 100, kneeling on Ihe roof to nail down the ti les. He CUI a heroic figure, even in Ihis clumsy position, bUI it was a clear day with no hint of rain, so for Ihe moment il was impossible 10 know if Ihe new roof would be watertight. The remaining work and the materials used were typical of Sanyu: three layers of mud were plastered onto the mud-brick walls; then they were wrapped in matling. InSide, four layers of mud were applied, and then it was lime-washed all over. The vi llagers had never used lime, but they knew that it worked the sam e way as mud plastering. The master plasterer mixed the

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lime to the right consistency and painted the whole of the inside of the house white. The house was divided into fou r rooms, partitio ned with screens made from sunnower stalks, plastered and whitewashed. The resulting walls were both smooth and lightweight. Pate-yellow-colored mailing covered the ceiling rafters, and that put an end to the problem of the d usl streamers. On Ihe wesl side of the main house th ey built a separate cookhouse, with ilS door opening east, in the same slyle and of Ihe same materials as other Sanyu houses. II was of mud brick and that ch, and from the roof rose a two-foot-tall chimney. Ins ide Ihey built a mud-bri ck cooke r, filled with small (three-hand s ize) and large (six-h and size) iro n woks. Between these there was a ro und hole in to which fill ed a crude pot that the villagers called a ~ kell le. n When they cooked food in th e woks, any remai ning heat warmed up th e water in Ihe pot-kelli e. There was also a bellows, in a wooden box , allached to th e outsid e of th e cooker. Finally, a sealed corridor, o ne meier long and just wide enough to allow one person to pass along it, led to the main part of the house. The mOSI remarkable thing about th e Taos' house was ilS window-s. They were just ordinary square windows with wooden fntmt.."S, in to which were set pam.'S of glass. But th ere was nothing like them in Sanyu; the village houses had no windows in the walls. The nearest they got to windows were holes about the size of two mud bricks. These were left ope n in su mmer and autumn and were bricked up when winter cam e so that even in daylight the ho uses were pitch (lark insi de. It was extremely rare for someone to have glass set into the holes (only th e slightl y better-off could afford that) and even rarer 10 have proper windows with wooden frames that could be opened and sh ut. These were call ed ~live windows," while th e holes se t with glass panes were known as ~dead windows." Alive or dead, there were numerous windows in the Taos' new house. There were li ve windows in every room, even in the cookhousc . And there was a dead wi ndow in each wall of the passage so you cou ld see your way through. What most upset the villagers was not how many windows th e Taos had but the two windows they had set into the north wall of the house, directly opposite the front door. They felt this was both unlucky and unSightly. In that position they usually had a mud-

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Han Dong

brick cupboard with a wooden shelf on top, which they used to (lisplay things of value to them, like the Little Red Book of Chairman Mao, a small mirror, a hot-water nask, and so on, depending on how well off the family was. On the wall above the shelf, Chairman Mao portraits, old propaganda posters, and faded couplets usually hung_ Gut the Taos put windows in their north wall, so nothing could be slUck there_ The villagers were very puzzled, especially because when the Taos stood at the window, they could see out onto the village street. Passersby said, "Those windows arc just like two big eyes staring out." The Taos also made a hole in the wall, a frameless, glassless win(low. This was a round opening at the base of the gatehouse wall, about the size of two bricks, to let Patch in and out . If this counted as a traditional window opening, then the Taos had just one of these.

4 With the new house finished, the Taos began to move in_ This time, unlike a year ago, they did not need to package up all their furniture, as the new house was just thirty meters away ~our or five young men came to help with the heavy pieces, and it took them only an hour or so. The Taos themselves moved the smaller items and bits and pieces, making endless trips between the cowshed and the new house. As before, they had a considerable audience, but this time the focus of interest was the new house rather than the Taos' belongings. The things the family no longer needed were left in the cowshed and were carried off by the villagers By nightfall absolutely everything had been moved out of the cowshed The villagers tore off the sheets of newspaper 5u Qun had pasted onto the walls, and even took the rice straw used to SlUff the cracks_ The cowshed now looked as it had before the Taos' arrival, with blackened, cracked walls. The family was not in the least sorry to leave it. The dog was, though. With all the merry hustle and bustle, Patch, by now fully grown, had no idea what was going on. Gradually his puzzlement turned to fear. "Do you want the dog?" asked the villagers, as if he was just another thing they might be leaving behind . "of course we do. He's part of the family," said Su Qun.

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"Such a big dog. How much does he cat?" asked the villagers. And, "If you want him, why hasn't he gone with you?" But for the moment, Patch stayed on in thecowshed, along with the other remnants, and the villagers gazed at him, appraising his thick pelt and his body fat. They even began to smell a delectable whiff of dog meat Finally, when it was completely dark, the villagers reluctantly left. Young Tao had been keeping a close eye on Patch's whereabouts. Now the dog lay by the cowshed door, his paws on the threshold and his head on his paws. He looked at the boy fearfully and whimpered. Young Tao brought him a bowl of stewed pork and put it down by his nose. Bit by bit, he persuaded him over to their new home.

5 Aher the move Tao and young Tao tackled the garden, starting by planting some trees. They put in acacias alongside the ditch between their house and the cowshed. Acacias were long.lived and easy to grow Their root system spread underground, and they would be a prom inelll feature of the allotment. Some would spread across the ditch and up to the cowshed They were quite slowgrowing but could still provide useful timber if properly pruned. Tao wanted something invasive. The acacias would grow into an impenetrable thicket, and with the branches covered in thorns, they would become a fearsome barrier. On the west side of the allotment, on the banks of the stream, Tao planted twenty or thirty willows They grew fast, and although their wood was not much use, their slender branches swaying in the wind were a prelly sight. Tao got thick willow branches from the vill age and trimmed ofT the side Sh001S, leaving just the green stems. He then dug the planting holes (three feet deep, until he could see water) and planted the bare stems in them. Young Tao's job was to backfill the holes and water them . Come next s pring, these stems would be covered in shoots. They also planted mulberries. These were slow-growing but produced hard wood and were highly valued in Sanyu. The shoul(ler poles for carrying loads and the handles of farm implements were all made from mulberry wood.

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There was also what the villagers called the "sap-digger tree. n If you dug into its bark with your fingernail or somet hing sharp, a whit e sap oozed out. The sap-digger had big round leaves, and every village house had one by the front door for summer shade. The tree was supposed to grow more quickly the more sap was leached out , so th e trunk of every tree hore the sca rs of innumerable knife and axe cuts. Another tree that gave shade was the chin aberry. Its leaves were sm al l but so bitter in taste that they discouraged bugs, so if you sat under it , there was less danger of a hairy green caterpillar drop ping into your dinner bowl. Its roots could also be used to make a remedy against parasites. The Taos also planted Ch inese Toon trees, Trecs of Heaven, peach and jujube tret.'S, and so on. Then there was the Paulownia tree, hitherto unknown in Sanyu. Tao bough t one from the Hongze Coun ty Forest ry Department Tree Nursery and followed th e instructions in his hook, cutting the roots into three-inch lengths and planting them. The saplings would be transplanted wherever they were needed the following year, when they had grown as tall as a person and thick as your thumb. They grew quickly, tall alld straight , amI produced much broader leavcs than the local sap-digger tree. The timber was lightweight an d flimsy, and the villagers cou ld not see much usc for it. But Tao (lisagreed: the wood would be perfect for making sewing machine stands and radio cases, he said. The villagers had never seen sewing machines or radios before the Taos' arrival, but now that they had seen them, their heads were full of them They got the Taos to give them some Paulownia roots and planted them in their enclosures. The saplings grew tall and straight. and the villagers imagined sewing machines and radios in their own homcs. Tao did not stop at introduci ng new varieties. He also tried grafting one peach varie ty onto the stock of another, for example. He knew nothing ahout grafting techniques, but he could read and gOt all his knowledge out of a book. Books arc a goldmine of knowledge, as they say, and now Tao began to see their new house and its enclosure as golden opportunities too. He immersed himself more than ever in reading: Grafting Fruit Trees, Scientific Cultivation, How To Grow Vegetables, and How To Raise Poultry were some of the books he read. He also ordered

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Scientific Experiments and read it ove r and over, keepi ng it by his pillow, taking it to the field s, and even flicking ove r a rew pages when si tting o n the toilet Tao got hold of some bamboo roots from the villagers and planted th em on th e ri verbank behind the house_ Bamboo being as invasive as th e acacias, th e roots soon put up shoots that would grow int o real plants With tim e, th e new house would nestle in the shad e of a verdant bamboo grove, and th e villagers would no longer fcel th c Taos' hack windows wc rc so ugly_ Between the bridge and the house they built a path bordered wit h su nflowe rs. The flower stems cou ld be used as building materials (partition walls and fences), and the seeds could be eaten . Most o r all, the flower ·'faces seemed to bow in humbl egreeling \0 anyone walking up the garden path to visit the Tao family. By the st ream to the north of the house, they combined plants and trees that were both useful and pl easing to the eye: willows and daylilies_ H

6 Now fo r the allotillellt. On t he west side, by the strealll, the Taos made a vegetable garden. In it they planted just about everyt hing you could imagine: tomatoes, potatoes, ch ili peppers, rad ishes, leeks, spinach, Chi nese spin ach, hearting cabbages, wax gourds, pumpkins, cucu mbers, towel gourds, eggplants, two types of bottle gourds, ginger and garlic, all kinds of beans (black-eyed peas, haricots, broad beans, and kidney beans), and greens like lell uce, rocket, and non-h eaning and tall-stem med cabbages_ It sounds mcssy, hut actually Tao was extremely methodicaL His allotment was cultivated to wi thin an in ch of its life: vegetables were sown and ripened in sequence, and every scrap of land was underplanted and replanted_ That way he ensured that they had fresh vegetables to eat all year round_ Hc also made a poi nt of introducing new variet ies to the village and tryi ng new techniques for cu lli vat io n. As far as greens went, the Sanyu villagers had o nly a kind of lettuce with dar k green leaves; this had a capaci ty to soa k up a great deal of oil , and it had a biller taste . As the villagers wou ld say, it scoured your stomach. Tao got a cousi n in Nanjing to send

30

Han Dong

him some new varieties, like rocket and non-hearting and tallstemmed cabbagt.'S. Rocket was much nicer than Sanyu lclluce, and non-hearting cabbage was nicer still, especiall y after the first frost. Then it turned sweet, just as if someone had added sugar to it, as the vi llagers commented . Tall -stemm ed cabbage was excellent fo r pickling; with its long, fat stalks and small leaves, there was nothing to beat it. The following year, all the villagers grew these new varieties. They grew the bitter, navorless Sanyu lettuce too but gave it to the pigs to cat; after all, it did have the advantage of being easy to grow. Now the Taos' night soil had somewhere to go, and Tao was at pai ns to teach his son th at their n ight soil should not go on other people's fi elds. As soon as it was light, G randpa Tao got up and tipped the urine from the family's three spilloons into the toilet bucket. Young Tao carried the bucket out of the house and pou red it in to the night soil crock When needed , Tao dipped the night soil buck ets into the crock and carri ed th em on a sh oulder pole to the garden, wh ere h e do used the veget.a.bles with the contents . So with the combined effo rts o f grandfather, father, and son, the famil y's night soil finally ended up wh ere it was needed . [!velY evening, Tao wo uld stand 0 11 the ballk of the stream, a gou rd lad le in his hand , and throw water over his sho ulders o nto the vegetable beds. The ladlcfuls spread o ut in the ai r and fell on the vegetable leavt.'S as a shower of Silvery drops. Someti mes a delicate rain bow would appear amid the misty sp ra y as a reward for all Tao's dforts. In the rest o f their allotment, they planted crops. In the first year, they planted peanuts and harvested seventy or eigh ty pounds unshelled Then the villagers ca rne carryi ng mach eles and baskets and dug up a second lot, then another, then another. They could always find peanuts; twenty or thirty pou nds of peanuts were picked from th e soil after harvesting and went to whoever fo und them, mainly the women and children who poked aro und in the soil or squalled down and turned over the clods. To start with, they put their peanuts in baskets, but after the third tim e aro und they found so few that it was not worth pUlling them into baskets; they shelled and ate them o n the spot. By that lime, they appeared to be there to cat rat her than to harvest.

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So many villagers came that the Taos' garden was badly tram pled. Th e next year, they planted maize instead of peanuts. The Taos were not interested in the size of their maize harvest. They really wanted the young cobs, whi ch they would break off and eat. That was the only way they liked them Pi cking the ripe cobs, rubbing off the grains, and taking them to be ground into fl our fo r porridge o r pancakes was not of great interest to them. The vill agers considered this grossly wasteful, so even though the maize grew o n their own all otment, th e Taos sneaked in like thieves to pick the baby corn . They warned each other that they should be very careful and not allow rumors about their wastefulness to spread about. Among the cadre families, however, baby corn was very popular and made a good gift. They would take along a big bag wh en they went visiting, just like they had taken gifLS of tinned fruit o n family visiLS back in Nanjing. Banished cadre families in the area saw a lot of each other and were very close, so it was no exaggeratio n to describe th ese as family visits. The Taos did not plant any crops other than maize o n their allo tment since basic foodstuffs were not a problem After arriving in 5anyu, Granny Tao and young Tao became registered residenLS of the production team, which provided them with their food rations. Th ey did not cam work points, so they paid for their ralions in cash, but prices were much cheaper than in Nanjing and food rations were generous, nearly four hundred pounds a year each . There was plenty of variety: in addition to the staples of rice and wheat, they got other foodstuffs like maize and yams, several pounds of which cou nted as one ·'ration-pound ." Basic rations for the two of them were mo re than enough to feed the whole family. So it was easy to understand why they grew just green vegetables and snack food s like baby corn and peanuts on their allotment. Tao, 5u Qun, and Grandpa Tao were still registered as Nanjing residenLS and were being paid their salaries, whi ch were enough to pay for Granny Tao and young Tao's food as well. They also got a cooking oil ration; several times a month Su Qun made the tri p to Wangji Market on her bicycle to fetch their rice, fl o ur, and oil and to buy any other necessities that Sanyu co uld not supply. So food was not a problem for lhe Taos. They even ate better than in Nanjing since it was fresher and there was mo re variety.

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7 O n the south side of the cookhouse the Taos made a fe nce of sunnower stalks that curved around to th e stream to the west, and inside this pen ned-off space they built a mud -brick henhouse. They had al most arou nd twenty birds, and these were of all so rts, colors, and sizes. Twice a day Su Qun opened the gale and wenl in to feed them with a mixture of cooked husks and so me rice. This was bright yellow and, as it had just come off the stove. cmillcd douds o f steam . Su Qu n ladled the mixture oul of an aluminum pOI o nto the ground. Most o f the Taos' birds were hens kept for their eggs, not their meal. In addition to th e local vari eties, th ey brought in white leghorns, prolific layers of large, pure white eggs_ The local hens laid an egg every o ther day, altho ugh some would lay two in a row before resting for a day The Leghorns laid fi ve or six in a row before missing a day, and some even managed seven_ The Taos had more eggs than they needed , but that was at least beller than not haVing en ough . When they had finished laying, th e hens would build a nest and uegin Lu ~iL un tln:il' egg~. The ~igh t ufthc hcn~ fluitlt:~~l y ulooding their unfertilized eggs all day long amused the Taos . So the Taos bought eggs from vill agers who kept cockerels and put th em under their broody hens_ That way they got chicks, and some of those chi cks grew int o hens who in turn produced more chicks_ Tao's original id ea had been to keep the pullets to lay eggs but to kill and cat th e young cocke rels before they began to crow, as their meat was supposed to be very nutritious The chicks hatched o ut , fluffy and yellow To start with, cock and hen chicks looked ali ke. Later it was possible to determine the sex: all the you ng cockerels were much livelier than the pullets and had a lot more c haracter. One day Tao had time on his ha nds and had the bright idea of giving them names. O ne was molting a nd had pat ches of thick and thin feathering. Tao called him TalleredJ acket. Another had a great tuft of tail fe athers that swayed as he walke(l, and Tao call ed him Palm-Leaf Fan_ And that was thal. When they had grown enough to be kill ed, the Taos cou ld not bring themselves to do it because they would be killing not just any young

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cockerels but Palm-Leaf Fan and Tattered Jacket. Protected by their names, the cockerels grew up and began to crow and to rape th e hens. Which was how the Taos' henhouse got so prod uctive. The Taos kept ducks too, but only two of them , and they were herded by September. They raised geese to guard the house and a ewe because Tao's id ea was that they could drink its milk. Gut CUl ting grass to feed th e sheep every day was too much bother, and Tao got someone to se ll it As for th e dogs and cat, I won't go into that here because th ei r stori es come later. The Taos did not raise pigs, which was odd, as almost all the villagers kept pigs. Maybe this was in case they got too fond of them o r perhaps because pigs were a nuisance to feed.

8 The Taos' allotment was finally fini shed. In the distance the dark gray roof of their new house could be seen. Later the new house would become th e old house, but the dark gray of the roof would not change The house foundations raised it up, and it stood notably taller than th e squat thatched COllages of the villagers. The cowshed, in the shadow of il.S lofty neighbor, looked more dilapidate(lthan ever. With the trees and vegetables the Taos had plante(l, their poultry, and their dogs, the ho use and its s urroundings prese nted a nourishing, bustling picture. One day, Tao said to his wife, "Why don't you get so me me(lical training, so when o ne of the villagers has something wrong, you can give inject ions and do dressings?" With this 5u Qun reali zed that the second stage of digging in was beginning. They had come from Nanj ing and had no famil y in Sanyu to help them The idea was th at th ey had come here to "learn from the poor and lower middl e peasants," so politically speaki ng they were at the bollo m of the heap Added to that , they had built a new house that, alth ough it had improved their li ving conditions, set them apart from the ord inary villagers and was bound to aro use jealousy. So the second stage of digging in could be termed "getting d ose to the villagers." Before coming to 5anyu, 5u Qu n had worked in the Commu nist Youth League , so she had no formal medical knowledge. On th e o ther hand, she had been in poor hea lth and was always seeing

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doctors. Chro ni c illness makes you a good doctor. That was o ne thing in her favor. Another was that s he was literate and could read. Books had taught Tao how to create a well-organized garden, so surely Su Qun could read up eno ugh to treat the vi llagers' mino r ailments. So she bought the Village Barefool Doctors' Manual and Three Hundred Proven Tradili onal Prescriptions, as well as a suppl y of mercurochrome antisepti c, gentian violet, anti-inflammatory powders, paracetomol, and oxytetracycl in e. Tao and Su Qun had kept up the habit of reading in bcd, and they would sit propped up , books in hand , every night. Tao's book was How To Grow Vegetables, and Su Qu n's was The Classification and Selection of Chinese Herbal Remedi es. Su Q un had one other thing going for he r apart fro m lo ng years of ill health and the abili ty to read medica l books: the Sanyu Villagers hardly ever consulted a doctor or took medicine, so they had no resistan ce to drugs. wh en th ey took medicine, it acted on the ill ness imm ed iately. Su Qun's imm ediate success as a doctor greatly encouraged her. She applied herself even more industriously to the few medical books she had and learned simple techniques such as putting on dressings and giving injections Every eveni ng she went from house to house dispensing rem e(lics, a wooden medicine chest packed with inst ruments and medicines on her back. General inflammatio ns and infectio ns ca used by inj uries fro m farm tools quickly healed after she had cleaned them and appli ed an ti-infl ammatory remedies . She was proud of the fa ct that she had succeeded in curing several people's back boils (what the vi llagers call ed "carbunc1es~) Boils were a serious compl aint because th e si te of infection was near the spinal cord , which made healing difficult. In the worst cases, it co uld even be life-threaten ing. Su Qun was also proud of having cured September of his ri ngworm September was about sixtee n, and in a year or two he should be getting married ; so far there were no takers, both beca use of his bald, suppu rating scalp and because of the withered leg that a c hildh ood attack of polio had left. The production team looked after him by giving him small jobs and paying him a daily six work points (t he women's rate). So September had plenty of spare tim e in which to go and help ou t at the Taos.

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Since September was a good fri end of the family, Su Q un decided to tackle his ringwo rm She obtained griseofulvin fro m Hongze Pharmaceuticals, and after a few doses, September's scalp began 10 grow brand new black hair. His new hair growlh was so black and so luxuriant Ihal il hardly seemed real For a long time after, September could nOI bear to have his hair CUl , and it grew long, cove ring the shiny round bald palch on Ih e crown of his head . September, naunling his new locks around Ihe vi llage, was yet anOlher advert isement fo r Su Q un's medical skills However, she could do no thing abo ut his crippled limb , and he still walked with a twisting li mp when he went to fetch water for them from the st ream . Su Q un did not stop there. She had read in Three Hlind red Proven Traditional Prescriptions that a remedy mad e by bOiling chinaberry root was good for intestinal worms. There were plenty of c hinaberry trees in Sanyu. They had a dozen o r so in their own garden. Su Qun dug up a number of roolS, peeled and boiled them, and admin istered Ihe broth to her neighbors When they crapped after taking it, out came sh iny while roundworms, eno ugh 10 fill a whole buckel in a week Need less 10 say, Ihis gave Su Qun a greal sense of ach ievement. When it was tim e 10 uansplalllihe paddy rice, Ihe Sanytl women wen t barefoot. With their hands and feet immersed in water all day, they eventually developed an unbearably itchy red rash. Su Q un looked it up and found it was called rice paddy itch . 5e/ecLed Folk Remedies suggested bOiling ri ce straw and add ing alu m. There was no shortage o f rice straw in the Village, and the Taos had a s upply o f alum that they used to purify drinking water. Following the inst ructio ns in Ihe book, Su Q un boiled up a mixture of Slraw and al um in th ei r largest wok and tipped il into a wash basin, which she PUI by th e sid e o f Ihe road al Ihe entrance 10 the village for Ihe village women to wash their hands and feet on Iheir way back from Ihe field s. The remedy worked, and the rashes on the women's hands and feel fad ed; ifth e rash did not go away altogethe r, Ihe women alleast got some relief from th e it ching. The women (the Village men di d not do the transplanting) dub bed the rice-alum mixture anti-itch water and exclaimed at how mi raculous it was. Then Su Qun lea rned acupunctu re and mox ibustion . She had a plastic ea r in her med icine box, the same s ize and colo r as a human ca r. The ca r ca me from Hongze Pharmaceuticals

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Han Dong

and was intended for practicing acupuncture . Different areas were shown in red, and black spots the size of sesa me seeds marked the ac upuncture pOints. When she had a spare mo ment , she would practice on it. The ear was supposed to have points correspond ing to all the o rgans of th e body so that applying acupuncture to the ear could cure diseases of th e whole body. In fact , Su Q un did not limit herself to needling the villagers' ears; she also did their arms, legs, hands, and feet. Applying acupuncture to the ear actually required a rather higher level of technical skill. She did not limit her praclicing to the plaslic ear either. She often held the needle in one hand and needled her ot her hand until it tingl ed and bled. She held herself respo nsible for her patients' safe treatment. Somet im es young Tao practiced acupuncture along with his mother. Tao told him to get himself a piece of pigskin and keep sti cking his needle illlo it. Why did Tao walll his son to learn acupuncture? Well , first because young Tao was fascinated by that pink plastic ear, but another reason was Tao's concern for his son's future prospects. That he would have to sellle in Sanyu and be a peasant was not in q uestio n, but if he could learn a skill , he could lead a more comfo rtable li fe . Su Qun's success had inspired Tao, and if in the future yo ung Tao cou ld become Sanyu's "barefoot doctor, n it wou ld be a lot beller than tilling the fields. Young Tao had scarcely started practicing when he lost interest. Nor did he show any natural talent for it. He never rem embered to wash his hands before he start(.-d need ling. O nce, when he was prac ticing on his father's bUllocks, he caused him excrucialing pain. The bUllOCks were swoll en for da}:s afterward Tao nicknamed his son Ch icken Claw Doctor and put a stop to his medical studies. Young Tao did use his acupuncture but on pigs, not on humans (not counting th e tim e he needled his fath er) The standards required were not as high. Su Qun too mostly needled the Sa nyu pigs rather than th e humans Pigs were th e villagers' only cash earners, so in the villagers' view it was much mo re important to treat the pigs than to treat the people. If the famil y had one dose of penicillin and a fam ily member and a pig both fell ill , it would be the pig, not its master, who got the inject io n. 11 was on ly belatedly that Su Qun realized that it was easier to get dose to the villagers as a veterin arian than as a doctor. But by

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this time, her reputation as a doctor had spread to the surrounding villages. I should say a few words aoout penicillin. The Sanyu villagers regarded it with superstitious awe . According to them, one dose would have even a seriously sick pig up and s kipping. So penicillin was precious, and no humans could get hold of it unless they were on the point of death And if penicillin could not cure them at that point, then they were clearly beyond saving. A barefoot doctor in a neighboring production team treated many patients with distilled wa ter, which she passed off as pen ici llin, and many of them got beller. Even though the truth later came out, the villagers' reverential attitude toward the drug had clearly had an effect. of course, this trick did not work on pigs. Su Qun had little opportunity to treat the Villagers with pen ici llin. This was a good thing because one had to do a skin test before injecting it, and that could not be done in Sanyu. Without a skin test, sooner or later there would be an accidenL Whether skin tests should have been done on the pigs, I have no idea.

9 Grandpa Tao was Sixty-nine years old, and in the Villagers' rec koning he was over seventy since they traditionally counted babies as one year old at birth . Such an age was rare in Sanyu, among whose population there was practically no one over seventy. The Sanyu villagers married early, had their children early, and were old at fifty. Although Grandpa Tao was a hale old man, his age meant he was not required to work in the fields He did not go from house to house visiting like Su Qun, but he did not forget the need to get close to the villagers, and he put some effort into Striking RooL The villagers knew that Grandpa Tao was a good-natured man, and from time to time they would come and borrow money off him. ~Grandpa, can we bum a few yuan off you?~ they would say to him. Although "bum off you" meant "borrow" in Sanyu dialect, most of the borrowed money was not paid back, and Grandpa Tao did nOl expect them to return it , so it would be truer to say they had been given the money by him than borrowed it from him . Mostly they borrowed two or three yuan, sometimes even one yuan. Grandpa Tao was reluctant to lend more than five yuan, o n

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his own say-so anyway, and they would havc a family meeting to (lccide. I have said that Grandpa Tao, Tao, and Su Qun all got their sal aries while they were in the country Grandpa's was a relirement pension of about thirty yuan a month. The villagers borrowed only sm all am ounts of money, hut they borrowed often and in large numbers, which used up most of Grandpa Tao's pension. Once that was gone, the loans had to come from his son and daughter-in-Iaw's pay. Grandpa was not miserly: he limited the villagers to no more than five yuan so that he could fund the loans from his own pension and sh are it out evenly. The villagers also went through Grandpa Tao to sell the Taos their all otment produce. They charged more than market prices, but it saved the Taos time and money not to have to go to the market. Before the Taos got their chickens, the villagers often brought baskets of eggs to sell to them Grandpa would get the family's sixteeno unce scal e out to weigh them and buy them all . The result was that everyone in the village came to sell them eggs. Long lines formed at their door until the Taos' house looked like a supply depot. Even after they got their own chickens, the villagers sti ll came to sell eggs, and Grandpa Tao continued to buy them Tao thought this was gelling ridi culous. "We can't even eat our own eggs; why are you buying other people's?" Grandpa Tao replied: "We can salt them ~ For these reasons, even though Grandpa Tao rarely went visiting and was a taciturn sort of man, he was popular in the village. Vill agers would often drop by the house, not to see the furniture or the new house (in which they had lost interest), but to visit the old man. There was a bachelor in the village by the name of Youming who often turned up. He said nothing but simply watched them eat their dinner. In the summer he would sit for hours in the shade outside the house with Grandpa Tao Neither Youming nor Grandpa Tao would say anything. The family knew that it was Grandpa he had come to see, but no one knew what it was about. Finally they discovered that Youming was hoping for a cigarelle . Grandpa Tao himself smoked and always used to offer cigarelles to his visitors. When Youming came , he would silently hand him a dgarelle. When Youming had finished the first, he would wait for a

The End osure

39

second. By evening, Youming could expect to have had three or four cigarettes (that was Grandpa Tao's limit). Finally, when the nigh t (lew got heavy, Tao moved the bamboo bed from the shade back insi de, the family gOI ready for bcd, and Grandpa gave Youming his last cigarette. Youming look ii, stuck il behind his ear, and went away happy. He would probably enjoy thai last cigarelle before going 10 sleep. Laler Tao suggested 10 his father Ihal Ihey switch to smoking a tradilional pipe (he was Irying hard to economize as part of his (Jigging in), but Grandpa Tao still had to have a box of cigarettes o n hand in case any villagers visited. Grandpa Tao certainly succeeded in getting close to the vill agers, but he spent a lot of money doing it. His son had considerable doubts about all this, most especially about the fact that Grand pa Tao had no particular plan in mind; he was just extravagant by nature. 11 was nOllike allhe beginning; their wages might get stopped, so they had to prepare for Ihe worst As head of Ihe fami ly, Tao felt an invisible burden weighing him down.

10 The new house was built, the enclosu re more or less in order, and now Tao turned his attention to the Sanyu Number 1 Production Team. This was where their house and enclosure were locate(J; the team also provided Granny Tao and young Tao with fo()(J rations. The team was their family, and its members, young and old , were their relatives. The team's fortunes were their fortunes, and its future, Iheir future They would sink or swim logelher. So Tao transferred Ihe energy thai he had put inlO Iheir house and garden to Ihe team's agricultural production First, he needed to find out what crops were planted where and why. He got a small plastic-cove red notebook, which he took everywhere with him, and made notes while he chatted to cadres and villagers. In a few months Tao knew more about the team than the Sanyu people themselves did It helped that he had had experience working on land reform in villages on the outskirts of Nanjing. He knew something of farming-in fact, he knew a great deal about it. Of course his land reform work had been in southern Jiangsu, where the climate and growing conditions were a bit difTerent. But

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both places were rural, and the one provided useful lessons for the ot her. What is more, now that the Taos had built their house and planted their allotment, Tao knew an awful lot about life in Sanyu. Let me show you a page of Tao's notebook so you can sec that I know what I'm talking about. Ditches Field : 13 acres, of which 2 too poor to cultivate; 2 acres sweet potatoes grown as base fertilizer ; 200 lbs. phosphate applied per acre; japonica rice grown. Best Small Field: 2 acres, fertile; seedlings grow well; indica rice planted. Big Fertile Field: 4 acres, of which 2 of sweet potatoes grown as base fertilizer; phosphate applied to seedling roots, 75 lbs.lacre. South East Spring Field: East Lake fi eld : Small Hall Foundations Field: Village End Wheat Field: More than just containi ng physical in formation about the team's field s, his noteoookshows how Tao analyzed the sit uation and what his plans were. In fact, he had three notebooks: one was a diary in which he jotted down the main farming events, and o ne was a diary of the team's au tumn silkworm rearing. The last was a reco rd of all the village households: names, personal characterist ics, economic situation, state of health , and family relati onsh ips. The rest of the Taos knew the fields on each side of the road. But only Tao could tell you the proper nam e and any nickname of every patch of culti vat ed land belonging to the ir team . He would beam with pride at this achievement. Sanyu Number I Team was a poor one, with a total populati on of around two hundred. The year that the Taos arrived, grain production had just passed the forty-five-ton mark. After all had receive(] their annual grain rations of four hundred pou nds, there we re o nl y a couple of tons of su rplus grain to sell to the state. Littl e surplus grain mean t they could not put much by a nd had littl e to invest in agricultura l materials in o rd er to develop production . It was a vicious ci rcle. Tao's grand plan start ed with increasing grain prod uction-by fi ve tons in th e fi rst yea r, ten tons in the seco nd,

The End osure

.. t

and fifteen tons in the third, so that by the third year, total grai n prod uctio n would reach seventy-five to ns , This figure was beyond the team members' wild est dreams. Yet they did indeed increase production by five Io ns in Ihe firSI year, gelling a 10lal of fifly Ions. On the basis of this increase, they dared 10 imagine reachi ng seve ntyfive Ions. But of course it was as yet jusl a dream. Tao's plan was Ih al after grain production had reached seve ntyfi ve tons, they would put the money Ih ey had made on surplus grain sales, plus income from sidelin cs they could develop (like sil kwo rms and bean fl ou r vermicelli) and a contribution fro m his o wn family, into buying a walking tractor. 11 has to be admitted that there was a selfi sh element to Tao's plans. When you ng Tao grew up, he could learn to operat e th e walking tractor, and being a tractor driver wo uld be much better than laboring in the fields, Since tractors were expensive and th e Taos wo uld need to contribule some of the money, it should not be a problem to get young Tao a position as one of the drivers. Th e villagers were not yel aware of th e advantages and status that would be conferred by a walking tractor; th ey just envisaged the noisy machine parked o n Ih e village threshing ground and then roaring off 10 Ihe fields. The tho ught was extremely exciting nonethdess, and they began to have more and more confidence in Tao. Yu, the team leader, relied heaVily o n Tao and discussed everything with him . Eventually, he hand ed ove r most of the team's work to him so that Tao became the de facto team leader. However, when Yu suggcsted that Tao take ovc r the positio n offici a lly, the latter (lcclined modest ly: "We came to be reed ucated , to learn from you poor peasants. I'll do as much as 1 can for the team, but as an adviser. You should stay as head !" There was more Ihan that to Striking Root in Sanyu, however. Young Tao would have to marry and have children here. Gra ndpa and Granny Tao, Tao himsel f, and Su Qun would need to die and be buried here. The ce metery at the western end of the village would have a family grave, and the Sanyu Taos wo uld gather at the Qi ngming Festival to clean it up and to shed filial tea rs. And indeed the opportunity for the first of these steps arrived soon. One day, the team leader, Yu, came to the house on behalf of the de put y party secretary, another Yu, to sec if Tao wo uld like to engage his son to Yu's eight-year-old daughter. If Tao were wi ll ing,

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it would not only make it possible to strike root, but it would also raise Tao to the status of honored relative of the party secretary and would be a solid guarantee that they could dig themselves in in Sanyu_ But when it came down to it, the Taos could not make up their minds_ Child betrothals were common in Sanyu, but they shocked the Nanjing-born Taos And once a betrothal was agreed upon, there would be no going back on it, nor on their Striking Root in the village_ Tao turn ed it over in his mind and discussed it with the family and finally tactfully declined. '·Young Tao is still young,» he told Yu . ··We still don't know whether he's going to be any good, an d we don't want him to let down the party secretary's little girl. We should talk about it again in a few years, and he should earn this happiness through his own efforts.» The betrothal business caused Tao a degree of anxiety. His reply was most gracefully and circumspectly phrased and allowed him room to maneuver, but there was also a risk of offending the party secretary And of course offense was taken Tao thought, "We'll just have to make it up to them in some other area_» And he threw himself with even more dedication into development work in the villagc_ Tao worked in the fields with the other men, plowing, ditch digging, CUlling the rice and wheat, and dredging the drained waterways in winter. Grasping his wooden shovel, he put on long rubber boots, waded out into the bone-chillingly cold mud, and pitched shovelful after shovelful of inky black sludge up to the top. If one of the family passed by, the person did not get even so much as a "hello" from him At the same time, Su Qun continued her evening rounds of the villagers' homes, treating their ailments_ Grandpa Tao receivcd visitors and handed out cigarettes_Young Tao WCI1l to school and was up carly and back late Granny Tao took care of thc home and cooked their meals_ After one year in thc countryside, this was morc or less the pattern of their lives_

The End osure

0

TH REE

Young Tao

I Young Tao was born during the Three Years of Fam ine, when the Taos had no meat to cal To buy meat you needed coupons _ Each persOIl gal o nt coupon a month, and that would buy two ounces of meal. The Taos were a family of four, so they cou ld buy eight ounces of mea l per month . They saved up their coupons for young Tao's hirth. One day Tao found some o ne-pou nd cans of mcal in a sho p. Each call cost on ly four two-ounce meat coupons, so they cou ld double thei r meal ration by buying it in a call. Overjoyed, Tao rushed home, got Q UI the coupons they had put by that month, and bought a call After thai , th ey did n ot save up their coupons; they exchanged them for cans of meat, which they put by for young Tao's birth By the tim e th e baby arrived, they had five cans of meal. The meat was to feed Su Qun, wh o would be breastfeeding_She would turn Ihe cans of meat into sweet milk for young Tao_ But of cou rse five cans of meal were nowhere near enough. So Tao wenl back 10 the Village o n the o utski rts of Nanjing where he had worked o n land reform in the 1950s a nd managed to get hold of two swa mp eels. Each eel was as thick as a thumb and abou t a foot long. Tao was over the moon at his luck, and these famin e years swamp eels also ended up being converted into breast milk for young Tao to suck in greedily Mee ting Tao again rem ind ed the villagers of all the things he had done fo r Ihem One winter. the mutual aid team's only ox had died Tao had given them his watch to sell so they co uld buy another ox_On leaving, Tao had left behind all his bel ongings, including an ovcrcoal and an ename l washbasin_ Aftcr his return to Na njing,

44

Tao had sponsored a village youth through school and university out of his own wages. Tao and the Villagers had stayed in touch since those days. If any of them came to Nanjing for medical t.reatment, they would stay over at the Taos, unrolling their bed mat on the floor and staying sometimes for as long as a month, depending on the severity of the illncss and the treatment they were having. Tao reckoned he had already been rewarded for all he had done for them He had written a series of short stories based on his brief experience of village life, and these stories had been published. Tao had gained a national reputation and had been able to make a living from writing. So for Tao, a young man from the city, his village experiences had been hugely valuable. It was still vital for him to stay in frequent contact with his village friends so that he could talk to them about farming matters and village affairs. Nevertheless, one day after Tao had come back with the eels, a peasant arrived from the village carrying baskets on a shoulder pole. He walked into number 96 Hongwu Road, climbed to the third floor, and found the Taos' flat. He did not stay long, just put down his load and left. He had brought not just a single cabbage but a shoulder pole's load (about a hundredweight). The Taos were overcome with gratitude. They took out one of the cabbages, cut up half and cooked it, shut their door, and stealthily tucked in. They left the other half on the chopping board in the shared kitchen. About half an hour later, when the Taos had finished eating and went to do the washing up, there was no trace of it. The Taos could hardly make a fuss since they had been carelcss enough to leave such a precious object lying around. The problem now was not half a cabbage but what to do with a whole load of them Unless they handled the situation properly, the consequences could be disastrous They carefully stored the cabbages away Whenever they cooked some, they were extraordinarily careful Sometimes they crept silently into the kitchen at midnight to cook, terrified of making any noise with the cooker, wok, or bowls. There was no mistaking the smell, however, and the next day hungry neighbors would look them up and down suspiciously. For the first year of his life, therefore, it was necessary \0 raise young Tao on five cans of meat, two swamp eels, and a load of cabbage.

Young Tao

n

2 One day, when young Tao was three or four years old, Su Qun lOok him to the cinema. In the depths of the s ilver screen at the fro nl, a globe could be seell revolving, its surface pitted and cracked_

Young Tao bursl into noods of terrified tears He made such a noise that Su Qun had \0 carry him oul halfway through . When they gOi ho me, Tao looked at his son's tcar-stained face and co mm ented, MHopclcss child!H

The celestial body was, of course, OUT Earth. And, in fact, what cou ld be more frightening than that? II whizzed round and ro u nd, making a shrill sou nd and threatening \ 0 come crashing down. II probably reminded young Tao of the instant he carne into the world_ And, as 1 well know, there is no grimmer experience than being born . BUI sin ce he had been born and there was no going back, there was nothing fo r it hut slowly to grow up Gradually his baby fears faded , and the will to live became firmer When he was six, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution swept likc wild fire across China. This was an even t without precedent in nati o nal history. The boy did not understand much of what was going on, but the CultRev did bring the small details of his world into sharpcr focus and made life more exciting and colorful, at lcast com parcd with the film st udio's fuzzy globe emblem. One baking hot summer eve ning, the Taos had carried the bam· boo bed into the street outside 96 Hongwu Road and were enjoying the cool of the evcning Suddenly a neet of tri cycle. trucks roared up al great speed, packed with people wearing helmets and carrying truncheons whose steel tips glillered under the streetlights. Some were shirtless, and their bare chests had an oily sheen. These stalwarts had come to engage in armed strugglc . When young Tao heard thiS , a ch ill came over him and suddenly thc e"cningdid nOi seem so hot anymore. The next day young Tao and a friend stoIc off with an older boy, the son of a neighbor, to see the armcd st rugglc. They walkcd through o ne street after anothcr; you ng Tao had ncvcr been so far from home. Fi nally, they got to a three·story building with a lawn in fron t. There was nothing there and not a sou nd to be heard. Up· stairs th e windows were half open; young Tao realized that none of

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them had any glass in them The older boy said that the arm ed strugglers had broken all the glass. The gl assless windows were eerily (lark. "Yesterday, th e leader of such-and-such a faction got a hell of a beating here," the older boy told th e two younger oncs . They discovered the lawn was covered with shiny bi ts of glass. Something wh il e and round renected th e afternoon su nlight. Young Tao th oughl al firSI il was a naked human body, but when he got d ose, he saw il was a bathtub The bathtub had broken in two and lay huge and glaringly while on the brilliant green grass. Obviously it had been thrown from the window. The person who had thrown it must have been awfu lly strong, thought young Tao, as st rong as a giant. He did not want to go any furt her and begged the older boy to take them back. But the boy insisted on going inside and dragged the ot her chi ld with him , leaving young Tao wait ing on the grass outside . He did nOI dare look up, afraid that the other two might get Ihrown OUI of Ihe gaping black windows too. BUI aside from fear, the Cult Rev meant fun a nd indcscribable excitemen t. After Tao and Su Qun went to th e May 7 Cadre School, Gra nd pa and Granny Tao, no longer as vigorous as in their younger years, lost control of you ng Tao. The boy spent all day runn ing arou nd the courtyard and the streets outside with the neighbors' child ren, and there they saw a lot of weird and wonderful things. Parades of people passed through the streets wearing tall hats, labels hung around their necks, stand ing high up in the backs of trucks or walking, marshaled by the young generals of the Red Guard s in green uniforms with red armbands, holding bright red copies of th e lillie Red Book in their hands. Every parade was accompan ied by drumming, making it as noisy as Chi nese New Year festivities. The struggl ed-against sometimes ca rried thei r own small drums, wh ich Ihey beal as Ih ey went along If red and green were Ih e most popular colors of those years, then drumming was their most powerful sound . As soon as young Tao saw red and green and heard the din of drums, he was sei zed wi th excitement and rushed outside to see what was going on . Finally the red and the green and the drums forced their way into the courtyard of 96 Hongwu Road , and the names of the Smash the Four aids bonfires leapt into the air, fueled by quantities of books,

Young Tao

H

paintings, accou nt books, silks, and satins . And then there were things th at would not burn, like crockery, figurines, inkstones, teapots, and so on. All that remained aft er the conflagra tio n was a blackened heap of debris Th e Taos contributed their bit to the great fire too: the green-clad, red-arm banded troops collected trunkfuls of th eir books and many of Tao's notebooks and threw them into th e flames . No one was prouder of this than young Tao. Soon afterward , th e red-and-green-dad guards and their drums cam e upstairs, to the third fl oor, to the Taos' fl at. They pasted bright red posters arou nd their door and shouted slogans. From the sho uting, but not from the posters (since young Tao co uld not yet read), the boy learned that his father had been struggled aga inst. The sloganshouters told him this was because his fath er was a ~bad egg." "You shou ld make a clean break from Tao Peiyi. Don't call him 'Dad' an ymore; j ust ca ll him Tao Peiyi!" they told him, and yo ung Tao felt greatly honored The scene at his door excited young Tao, but more thrilling still was being abl e to boast, in grown -up language: ~Our famitys got a bad egg too, and he's been struggled againsl." It was more glory than he had ever dreamed of.

3 After this, yo ung Tao did not ca ll his fath er "Dad" anymore; he called him Tao Peiyi. Every now and then the laller came back fro m cadre school to collect a cha nge of clothes a nd a fresh s upply of pickles. He wore a dejected frown and spoke lillie. This shadowy figure would drop in and then be gone again. When young Tao called him Tao Peiyi, he pretended not to hear o r just grunted in reply. Young Tao fo und this boring. Every even ing, Grandpa Tao would lean out of the third fl oor window to call th e boy, who was playing downstairs, to the evening report back meeting Young Tao would race up the stai rs with more alacrity even than at dinnertime. Later Grandpa Tao gave up cal ling him to dinner, which young Tao ate when he wanted, and just called him to the reportback. Outside their flat, the walkway was swe pt clean, and the neighbo rs assembled with their Mao portraits, which they hung o n the wall. Everyone brought his o r her own lillIe Red Book. Young Tao was keen on the evening repo rtbacks,

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as they included both the red books and the green uniforms (t he neighbors' older boy and girl were Red Guards) . Young Tao had a lillIe Red Book but no un iform He also wanted to go to the morning instructi ons meetings and nagged his grandfather to wake him, but every day Grand pa Tao ignored his req uest, which annoyed the boy greatly. One day, j ust as the evening report back meeting was ending, Tao and $u Qun turn ed up It was th e first tim e they had corne horne together. Previously they had corne at different times because they were at differen t cadre schools. The neighbors wcre stil l standing o n the walkway and Tao and Su Qu n were about to go int o their flat when young Tao sudden ly shouted o n impulse, "'Down with Tao Peiyi! H When he had called his father "Tao PeiyiH before, he had been ignored , which was boring. He wanted to get a react ion from the fami ly's bad egg. Heari ng young Tao's shout , Granny Tao rushed out of the flat, got hold of the boy, and forcibly dragged him back inside, shouting, "You li ttle fool! You're going to get yourself into big trouble! H Inside the nat , she sm acked him- right in front of everyone! Young Tao was utterly humiliated In protest at his father's siknce and his grann y's blows, he gave a howl loud enough to wake the dead. Young Tao carried on crying and ca lling them all the bad names he could think of: his granny was the "'wife of a landlo rd »; his father was a "counterrevolutionary"; his grandpa was a "historical counterrevolu tion ary\ his mother was a "SpyH But no one was paying any allentio n anymore . With you ng Tao sa fel y inside the nat , his granny exclaimed, "Dratted child! " Young Tao was "dralled H for a couple of hours and fi nall y stopped wai li ng. He looked at th e white walls and the motionless furn iture around him and felt bored, even a bit futile. Having failed to get a reaction from his father, he now started to call him "Dad again. Before they were sent to the cadre school, Tao and Su Qun used to read in bed at night. Propped up against the headboard, they each held a book in their hands. Young Tao sat between them. As they read , he would look up, first at o ne, then at the ot her. Arou nd half past eight Grandpa Tao would come in and carry the boy off to his cot in his grandparents' room. Young Tao never wa nted to go. H

Young Tao

'N

This tim e Tao and Su Qun were back for the night and did not have to go back the same day. That evening, they began to read in bed, but young Tao did not climb in with them because he was in th e other room sulking Later he stopped sulking, but his parents still did not call him in , and young Tao felt desolate_ The next day Tao and Su Qun made their sepa rate ways back to cadre schooL As Su Qun left, she squatted down and held her son tight, her eyes wet with tears Then Tao got ready to go_ He stroked his son's head and admonished him , ~Do what Gran ny and Grandpa tell you." Neither he nor young Tao mentioned the events of the previous day. As Tao left , young Tao stood at the head of th e stai rs, where he could sec the handrail all the way down . He saw his father's hand on it , moving downward. Then it turned the co rner and went down some mo re. The hand got smaller and s maller un til it was smaller than young Tao's own hand; then it disappcare(l all togeth er, without young Tao seeing th e rest of his father at aIL

4 The posters aro und their door had faded, and Grandpa Tao had taken his glue pot to th em several tilllt.."S before Tao and Su Qun we re back home again together. By th en, young Tao had lost interes t in the eve ning repo rt backs and had started school. This was a new worl d, one that provided him with many new ex periences, although I will not go into them here. When his parents fin all y returned, they sat up in bed with books in hand once more. That night , for the last time, young Tao sat between them, but it was no t th e sa me as before_ Was it because he had grown up? Not entirely Tao and Su Qun were only making a pretense at reading_ Instead, they were talking, with solem n faces and in grave tones_ Young Tao understood only part of what they were saying; it was something aho ut ~air raids, ~ ~alarms," ~Third F ro nts,~ ~evacu­ at ion,n ·'atom bombs,n and "air raid shclters .n Above the boy's head, the words new back and forth between his pa rents and filled him with terror. Just like when he was lillIe, he gazed up at one, then at th e ot her, but his parents took no not ice of him . Young Tao looked up at the light bulb and at the tungsten filam ent blazing o ut like

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a gold thread. If you looked at it long enough and then looked at the sheets, they looked less white than before, and even the room 100ke(1 darker. Between the light and the shadows, his parents' faces seemed to change shape; their mouths opened and shut, and out came those troubling phrases He thought, ~There's going to be a war, and what will we do then?" He thought and thought, but there was no answer. Fear once more gripped young Tao, but this time it did not last long. Soon the Taos' Glorious Banishment to the countryside was approved. The drum-beating green uniforms came back, stripped off the old posters, and put up new ones. The Taos were as happy as if it were a family wedding. And young Tao basked in the limelight at school. Mrs. Wang, the class teacher, asked, "'Has anyone here been approved for the Glorious Banishment?" Young Tao's hand shot up, and so did that of another classmate. Mrs. Wang told the other child, ~~ot you; your family were runaway landlords, and now you're just being packed off back to the countryside again." The child put her hand down, crestfallen, and only young Tao was left with his hand proudly raised above his head There was a special send-off for the Glorious Banishment children. Young Tao and a dozen or so others sat in a row on the platform, wearing red nowers as big as rice bowls on their chests. Each child was given the Collected Works of Chairman Mao in four volumes, wrapped in red silk. They held the books in both hands and looked down over the assembled teachers and students. Of course one could not have an occasion like this without a good deal of drum beating and slogan shouti ng Young Tao was scarlet with excitemen t. Young Tao did not have to go to school anymore after this, and Tao and Su Qun were released from cadre school and came horne for good. Each of their work units gave them a send-off where they wore red nowers and were presented with the Collected Works in four volumes. The Taos ended up with three sets of the Collected Works, one of which young Tao had brought home. II was young Tao who was the most excited about their departure for the village. He greeted everyone he met with, "'We're going to the countryside, to Hongze Lake, to cat fish!"

Young Tao

5t

of course young Tao had not got to the age he was without eating fish. He had not eaten much immediately after he was born, but then that changed. But these were to be no ordinary fish; they would be Hongze fish How were they different? Well, they were from Hongze. If you probed further, young Tao could not answer, but he was quite sure that there were differences. Young Tao, born in Nanjing, had scarcely seen a village. Once when he was very small,just a toddler, his parents had taken him to a village on the outskirts of Nanjing That was before the Yangtze Bridge was built, and they crossed on a ferry. Once on the northern shore of the river, young Tao saw green crops for the first lime and a water buffalo too. His memories of that visit were pretty hazy because he had been so young. Later, when the Yanglze Bridge was built and had just been opened to traffic, Tao and Su Qun went with young Tao to walk across it. But halfway across, young Tao wanted to do a poop, and there was no toilet on the bridge The boy tugged at his mother's clothes and said timidly, "It's coming out,~ "itn being his big turd. So Tao tucked the boy under his arms and raced back across the bridge to look for a toilet. Young Tao never got to see the villages on the other side He just saw the newly built bridge, bedecked in red and green, and he got a new nickname too, given to him by his father: "Master Coming Out!" A year later, young Tao arrived at the bridge again . The difference was that this time he was riding in a nower-bedecked bus, with other bUSt,"!> in front and behind. Again he saw the wildly exciting reds and greens and heard the ear-splitting drumming. The procession of people seeing them off was so long that it slowed down their progress. However, in spite of the crowd's enthusiasm young Tao could nOI help remembering his embarrassment on the previous occasion. "It's comingoul, ii's com ing out." And to the boy, the endless procession of vehicles was like a long turd extruding from Nanjing.

5 When they ate dinner in Sanyu that first evening, they were surrounded by a large audience. The house was gloomy, with just an oil lamp made out of an ink botlle on the small, square table . Its

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pea-sized name lit up the four dishes in front of them . Young Tao sat on the edge of the bcd, propped up against a quill. Then the quilt moved and coughed, and he rea lized that there was someone undern eath it. The person had drawn his knees up so as to make it more comfortable for the boy to sit. According to th e villagers, this was a Mr. Yu, LQ Suying's husband. He had a chron ic stomach com plaint and had been bedridden for a dozen years. For th ese years he had , as it were, been lying in wait for the boy's arrival, and now he drew up his knees to prop him up while he ate. Young Tao wished he could sec his face, but it was pitch dark on the bed behind him, and he could not sec anything. From beneath the table a dog's head appeared . In the darkness, young Tao cou ld not tell what color it was unlil the lamplight showed it to be black and white, more white than black, so that the black looked rather like a birthmark on a person's face. Young Tao reached out and stroked the dog's head, feeling its dense, slightly damp coal. Its eyes looked beseechingly at the boy. Its head was on a level with the table, within reach of the dishes, but it dearly would not have dared to put its muzzle into them without permission The dog was can lly: it rubbed against th e boy's legs until he took a piece of somet hing dark, probably meat, and threw it under the table, whereupon the dog wolfed it down. This ca used quite a stir among the villagers around them. "What's it called?n asked young Tao. There was a chorus of, "Dog! Dog! 1I's called Dog!n They were obviously annoyed and felt that dogs had no business eating meal. Thanks to young Tao, the dog had had meat for the first time in its life--and choice, cooked meat al that. It looked up at young Tao for a second time, begging for more, and he was about to give it a second piece of meal when there came shouts from around him: "Gimme some! Gimme some!" The voiccs came from the children; their hands st retched out of the darkness and almost poked young Tao's face. (The adults may havc been ravenous, but they would not lower themselves to shouting.) Tao put a stop to his son's behavior forthwith. The dog sud(le nl y (lisappeared from under lhe table, and in a lillIe while young Tao heard it yelping outsid e the room The vill agers had chased

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it out, and no doubt it was being severely punished for its lack of manners. One child shouted louder than all1he others. He stood out for the obvious reason that he had no hair on his head and so appeared to have a very large face The child was wearing a black padded jacket, tied at the waist with string Young Tao excitedly cried, ~Baldie! Baldie! " until his father scolded him iJ1lo silence. Then he shouted, "Big head! Big head! " and Big Head grinned, showing big, yellow teeth When young Tao wanted to go to the tOilet, Tao gOI Big Head to take him, and seven or eight other children tagged along behind. Outside, in the brilliant moonlight, it was billerly cold. Big Head took young Tao to where the night soil crock stood behind the housc. It was enclosed by a fence made of maiZe straw; it was pitch dark inside, and there was a terrible stench. Young Tao was reluctaJ1lto go inside, so Big Head got him to squat on the ground outside. Young Tao hesitated. Big Head set an example by pulling down his own trousers. As the boy still wavered, the other children followed suit, revealing bare white buttocks. Then young Tao pulled down his own trousers and squatted, but he just could not get the poop out. Their bOlloms hurt from the icy wind as they squalled down. The more anxious young Tao became, the less he could go. He ended up with his bOllom numb with cold. Looking up, he saw the moonlight through the fork of a tree and thought thai it was so big and so round that it was like a giant bOllom .

6 They were all up early the next morning, young Tao included. The warmth under the quilt quickly dissipated once they had all gone and there was no one to cuddle him He had not slept well, but getting up was still exciting. He had never been up so early before and in such a novel place. II was chilly, and Su Qun made him put on four sweaters, one on top of the olher; bundled up like this and with his nose running wilh the cold, he went out. In front of the cowshed, Tao was doing his chest-expanding exercises, emilling clouds of white breath . A heap of yam vines had

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been piled up nearby, its top white with frost, whi ch gleamed like salt crystals in the morning sun. The pile, waist high , looked like a small moun tain to the boy. With a shout he charged the heap. It promptly gave way He charged again; it got natter. He went on until he had fl attened it comple tely and strewn the stalks out all over the ground Soon afterward the vi llagers turned up Big Head was the first to arrive, and young Tao learn ed that his name was September. He took September around the outside of the cowshed to have a look at the half-unpacked pile of furn iture, and then September took him over the little bridge and into the Village. They met a dozen ch ildren herding pigs in a field where yams had just been harvested, They had not come to the Taos' house because they could not leave the pigs, so they were delighted that you ng Tao had come to visit them. St retch ing out filthy hands, they felt his clothes, chatteri ng s hrill y in wonder. Their hands were not only black with dirt, but some also had chilblains or cracks in the skin from which oozed blood and pus Young Tao, worried that they we re dirtying his clothes. tried to keep out of their reach. Then September got between them and decreed that they could feel young Tao's dotht>s onl y on his say-so There were no protests: he was a head taller than the ot hers and fierce looking, and besides, he had brought young Tao. Young Tao got a bit of peach candy out of his pocket. It made a squelchy sound as he chewed it. September held out a hand and said , MGimme some!" With thiS, all the other children chorused, MGimme some!n A dozen small hand s reached o ut , and young Tao did not know whi ch one to put the candy into. Behind them sn ufning sounds came from the pig herd With the arrival of young Tao, th e child ren had been ignori ng them and contin ued to do so now On ly young Tao, who had never hea rd pigs before, was aware of them. He saw pigs of all sizes ru nni ng around the field. There was a huge sow with a row of teats drooping so low they almost brushed th e ground and a bunch of piglets scurrying after her. The sows, young boars, and piglets alike were all black. They rooted aro und in the eart h with their s nouts, looking for yams that had not been harvested. They had turned over the earth so many times that it was like a ploughed field, with not a blade of

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grass, not even a stalk, to be seen. The entire field was a gray-brown color and shrouded in dust kicked up by the herd . Normally if a pig found a yam, the children would spot it and give chase. If they could get the yam away from the pig in time, they would rub it on their clothes and chomp it up. The pigs took many a beating in the competition with the children for food. But today the children's attention was not on the pigs. They surrounded young Tao, dirty paws outstretched in eager expectation. Even the pigs stopped running and milled around behind their masters, necks craning up, sniffing through fleshy snouts. Did they want some candy too? Perhaps the smell of it made them forget that they were only pigs. Young Tao emptied his pockets of candy and handed it out to the children. Then he fished out any other tidbits he had on him and handed them out too. After that, every time he stepped out of doors, he had to fill his pockets with snacks . This was the only way he could get to play with the pig-herder children. After a couple of weeks, the Taos were out of almost all the snacks, candies, and cookies they had brought from Nanjing. The only thing young Tao could find after a long search was an enamel pot with a bag of red and green candied strips used for decorating t:!ight Treasure Rice. He produced the sugary strips for the amazed children, who demanded "Gimme some! Gimme some!" with can(lied strips still stuck to the corners of their mouths. The cry was by now automatic whenever they saw young Tao, irrespective of whether he had already given them some. They stopped only for the second it took them to shovel the food into their mouths and took up the cry again before they had even swallowed it. The first sentence that young Tao learned in the Sanyu dialect was "Cimme some!"

7 Young Tao's first friend in Sanyu was September. He was fifteen or sixteen years old and thus hardly a child, but because his family was poor and he had ringworm of the scalp, he was not yet betrothed, so the villagers tended to look down on him. Although September was no longer a child, he did not qualify to work with the men or earn their daily ten work points either. He would hang around with the women and girls and work in the

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fields with them. But that could not go on . He was old cnough to und erstand their women's talk by now, and it was not proper. Yu, the head of the production team, took him away from the wom en and set him to work on his own doingsmall jobs, though still at the women's rate of s ix work poillls a day So September had p1cllly of time on his hands and did odd jobs in people's homes too. Everyone in the village could order him around II goes without saying that when the Taos arrived, September gOI busy helping th em unpack Ihe furniture and carry the wardrobe, supplying them with rice straw to stuff the cracks in the walls and fetching water from the river, as well as taking young Tao around with him . He built up a special relati o nsh ip with the Taos and was as happy as cou ld be. There was of cou rse quite a lot in it for him: peach candies and red and green cand ied slrips aside, there were the cast-off clothes they often gavc him and the bits of cash that Grandpa Tao would sometimes reward him with. And best of all, th ere was the griseofulvin that Su Qun bought him at Hongze Pharmaceuticals to cure his ringworm. Septembe r, sporting a brand-new head of black hair and wearing a fad ed Sun Vat-sen jacket that had belonged to Tao, st rolled around the village, his hands clasped behind his back. He could have been mistaken for o ne of the co mmune cad res, and looking the way he did, it would not be long before some matchmaking took place. But September did not want things donc in a hurry; the choice had to be made carefu lly. The team wanted village famil ies to develop sideline activit ies and encouraged the keeping of ducks. The ducklings were bought by th e team and distributed according to th e number of household members. Someone was needed to herd th e ducks, and September was th e obvious choice. Armed with a long cane, he gathered all the ducks together every day and herded them along th e village streams. Depending on where he was working, the ducks spen t the day in the st ream that bordered that particular allotment. of course, given the amoun t of time that September was helping the Taos, they turned up most often in the stream alongside the Taos' allotment. For some lime now, the Taos' st ream had been alive with the quacking of ducks. And it was common knowledge that whe re the ducks were, there too was Sept ember.

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Every evening September herded the ducks back along the village st reet. The ducks knew where they lived, and they waddled over the bridge to thei r homes. The next mo rning, the owners wo uld let them oUi of thei r pens, and th ey would make their way to their own stream until September appeared, wielding his long cane. Mostly the ducks laid their eggs in th e morn ing, in the pens of th eir owners. If September chased them OUI before they had had tim e to lay, th en they laid in the stream . Every day September took off his Sun Vat-sen jacket, rolled up his trousers, and got into th e water to feel around for eggs. Every day he fo und two o r three. These mis-laid eggs belonged to September, and he co uld give them to whomever he wanted Naturally he gave most of them to th e Taos, and Grandpa Tao would pay him a few cents fo r them . September got more and more enthusiastic about his duck herding. He came to fetch the ducks and drive them to the stream earlier and earlier each day. More and more eggs were mis-laid and retrieved by him from the watcr, Grandpa Tao bought morc and more eggs, and young Tao got more and more eggs to eat. On every occasion, his grandfather said to him, ~T h ese a re Septembers duck eggs, you know! " Too man y duck eggs can spoil the appetite, and young Tao started to turn up his nose at them. Grandpa Tao kept remi nding him, ~ T hese are September's duck eggs, you know!" And of course it was difficult for young Tao to refuse the eggs that his best friend had supplied. Tao fcl t that the whole business was turning into a fi asco. Keeping ducks had been his idea, and he had put up the money to buy the village ducklings. By now all the eggs-not just those September coll ected for free, but also every o ther family's su rplus eggs- were taken to the Taos, and Grandpa Tao bought each and everyone. On th e other hand, the Taos had led the villagers by taking two ducks of thei r own, which September herded along with the others, and th is made it ditTicult for Tao to complain, annoyed though he was.

8 Su mm er was soon upon them. O ne day September and a fr iend ca ll ed lillie Dick came \ 0 th e house to arrange to go hunting swa mp eels with young Tao that evening. Lillie Dick was the same age as September but a good deal

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shorter. He was hunchbacked and as ski nny as a beanpole. He was not st rong enough to work for the production team, so he stayed at home all day, un like September, who was to be seen around the village showing off his new growth of hair and new outfit. Even if Su Qun had had advanced medical skills, she could not have cured little Dick of his hump, so he was not especially close to the Taos. They had come to in vi te young Tao to hunt swamp eels with them because they had their eye on th e family's electric flashlight. When the wheat field s were flooded, swam p eels would emerge from thei r holes in the dykes, and transfixed by the light of the fl ashl ight, they could JUSt be picked ou t of the water. Before the Taos' arrival , villagers going out to catch swamp eels at this time of year had to make do with s mall oil lamps . Eve n inside the house, these lamps, made of ink bOllles, barely threw their light a couple of feet in front of them, so they were not much use in the open fi eld s and not nearly as good as a flashlight for terrifying swamp eels. September of course was the only boy lucky enough to have easy access to the Taos' flashlight because of his friendship with them . The two older boys each carri ed a big, round, narrow-necked fish basket , and young Tao had the fl ashlight, and in its flickering beam th e three of them made their way out of the Vi ll age. Before they arrived , they could hear people slosh ing th rough the water. Eve rywhere their oil lamps flickered like firenies . The three boys gOt to th e edge of the fi elds, took off thei r shoes, a nd waded in . You ng Tao gave the flash light to September and found himself holdi ng September's smelly shoes, as well as his own. He followed the others. His feet had not yet developed calluses, and the wheat stubble und er foot jabbed his tender soles painfully. He walked with great care, not daring to lift his legs too high Sometimes his feet touched sludge left by the ri ver, and its coarse grains massaged his insteps pleasantly Hobbling slowly and gingerl y along, he soon got left behind. He asked September and lillIe Dick to walk more slowly, but they paid no allention. In the end, the bright nashlight beam moved so far ahead that he was lcftto feel his way through the dark padd y fields . September and lillIe Dick soon fill ed their fi sh baskets with eels, but instead of comi ng back for you ng Tao, they made for the

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(lyke o n the opposite side , where they could take a rest while they waited fo r him to catch up. September was messing around with the Ilashlight, shining it here, there, and everywhere. Young Tao had no idea how long he had been wading through the water. but the Ilashlight seemed to him to be getting dimmer and dimmer until it looked just like one of the oil lam ps. Finally, he reached the dyke himself. September gave young Tao the Ilashlight , whose battery was by now run down, and took back his shoes. Young Tao was annoyed and wanted to go home, but the o ther two were engrossed in conversatio n and had no intention of going just yel. He sa id he wo uld go alone, but they scared him by tdling him that all along the dykes and at the water's edge there were ghosts who particularly liked c hil(!ren, especially city kids like young Tao, soft- skinned and tenderfles hed , whom they considered such a delicacy that they wou ld greedily wolf them down, yummy, yummy. The topic of th e youths' lively discussion was a girl. Guilan was from the fir st house on th e west s ide of the village, where Yu Gengqing and his family lived. At eighteen, she still wet the bed. so every day there was a quilt draped over the straw stack at the frOIll door, drying in the sun , When the Gengqings burned the straw in thei r cooke r, it gave off a smell of pee. This problem meant that Guilan had reached the age of eighteen without finding a husband. Rumor had it that she had been engaged once to a man whose fam ily Hve(l in the Dazhang production brigade, a mile o r so from Sanyu, but th at when they discovered about the bed-welling, they broke it off. Once back home, s he was there for good. September and Littl e Dick were arguing about whether Guilan had actually married o r not. One said yes and the other said no, and neither of them would give way. Accord ing to September, on hot su mmer evenings Guilan liked 10 lie on a "lattice bed" in the cool of the Yanma River banks and would sleep there overnight. A Sanyu lattice bed was a frame made of branches through the middl e of which was woven grass ro pe. She lay on the lattice bed with no mailing under her, so when she peed, the urine trickled through the latlice onto the river bank, and the smell was blown dean away by th e mo rning breeze. All Guilan had to do was wash a few grass ropes. She could do this o nly in su mm er. In cold weather, she had to move back indoors, and every

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morning Ihcre wo uld bc a quill sprcad o ul 10 dry o n Ihc Sl raw slack outsi de Ihc Gcngqing ho usc hold . According 10 Scplcmbcr, o nce in Ihe carl y ho urs of Ihe morning on his way back from catching swamp ccls, hc had sccn Guilan aslecp o n thc ri vc rbank Hc WCIll up to hcr and pullcd down hcr tro uscrs. Shc turn cd ovc r and scared the lifc out of him He duckcd down, and Guilan's big bOllom was right in frOIll of his nosc. "Guilan hasn't got any pubes!" he told lillie Dick ~No pubes?» said his friend. ~No wonder she still wets thc bed!" They guffawed . Young Tao racked his brains bUI could nOI work ou l whal "pubes" werc. "She's bad luck, shc is! Bad luck!" Thc older boys spal nOiSily. Wh en hc had fini shcd spil ling, SepIcmbcr lold Ihem Ihal afterward hc had pushed Gu ilan inlO Ihc rivcr. It was comm on knowledge in Ihc villagc Ihal Guilan had fallcn illlo the river and drowned Then the two boys started talking aboul what a prclly gi rl GuiIan had been Hcr white skin was prellier even than Su Qu n's according to Septembcr, who said that if she had fallcn into thc fl our tub , you would not have bcen able to tcll whcre she was. As fo r hcr bOllom (only Scptember was allowed to say anything ahout her bOllom, wilh lillie Dick jusl playing Ihc audience), il was likc a mirror in which you could sce your face. Whcn Su Qun came up in Ihe convcrsal ion, young Tao did nOI wan I 10 hear any more. Hc s larlcd making a fuss aga in aboul going home, bUI Scplcmbcr and lillie Dick lold him Ihal Guilan had lurned inlO a waler ghosl, and she climbcd o ul of Ihc rivcr every night with out a stitch of clothing o n and a tonguc a foot long hanging out of hcr mouth. That just made young Tao cvcn morc anxious to get home.

9 Evenlually you ng Tao made his way homc alone , Iho ugh with considerabl e diffi cu lly. (The flashl ighl was dcad, and hc had 10 go along Ihe haunled banks of Ihe Yanma Rivcr.) Thai nighl, he ran a high fevcr. When Scplcmbcr lurncd up Ihe ncxl morning, yo ung Tao refused 10 speak 10 him. Evenl ually Su Qun managed 10 gel o ul of him Scplcmbcr's slory Ihal he had pushed Guil an inlO the river.

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But Tao knew everything there was to know about the history of th e village, an d after doing a quick calculation o n his fingers, he told his son, "September's talking poppycock. He was on ly nine years old when Yu Guilan died" The real reason that young Tao and September stopped being friends was something else, however_ One day young Tao saw September talking to a group of boys und er a tree in th e village_ Spotting him, th eir chatter and laughter grew louder, and they s neaked glances at him o ut of the corners of their eyes. September was telling them a sto ry about Su Q un . One day she had said to him, "It's so hot today!" To which he had said, ~Not during the day, but it gelS hot at n ight" And Su Qun had responde(l , ~ lt 's hot at night and hot by day too!" In the Sanyu dialect, "hot" and "fuck" so unded the same , and th e boys all burst o ut laughing Looking at young Tao, they said, ~F uck at night , and fuck by day too!" Very pleased with themselves, they repeated this, laughing spitefull y_September was mOSI pleased of all sin ce he had made it up_ They kept telling young Tao that Su Qun had said, "Fuck at night, and fuck by day too!" Wh en he got home, young Tao told them September was a bad egg and that they should not buy any more duck eggs from him o r lend him the fl ashlight. Su Qun spent a long time trying to get o ut of him what had happened, but the boy refused to say, a nd the fam ily never did get to the boltom of it.

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FOUR

Primary S(hool

I Young Tao had reached the third year of primary school before the family's banishment to the countryside, but $anyu's primary school only had two classes, the first and second years. So it was no\ really a primary school, only half of one, or rather less than half of olle since primary school then consisted of rive years. After the second year students had to go \0 Gczhuang Primary, just over a mile away. Because of the distance and the fact thallhc family had only just arrived in the vill age, Tao decided that his son should go to Sanyu Primary- So young Tao dropped back a year. Sanyu Primary had only one teacher, a Mr. Jill, who also doubled as ilS head. There was just the one schoolroom in a mud-brick building with a thatched roof. It was fairly dilapidated, although still in much better condition than the Taos' temporary home in the cowshed _ Mr. Jin was not daunted by the apparent difficulty of teaching two grades in one classroom . He put the two groups on opposite sides of the classroom, with a passage down the middle. Behind the dais was a patchily painted blackboard. While the first group was copying, the second group listened to the teacher, and vice versa. 50 the two groups ran smoothly side by side. Mr. Jin, hands behind his back clasping the textbook, walked complacently back and forth down the aisle_ The dais, the school desks, and the benches on which the pupils sat were made, like many objects in common use in 5anyu, of mud bricks_ Village cookers were of sun -dried mud bricks; the household cupboards where food was stored were also made of clay (and

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were known as clay cupboards), The braziers used for keeping warm were pressed from clay, and of course so were the houses themselves. The schoolroom, made of mud inside and out, was no exception. Apart from the blackboard, which was knocked together out of a bit of coffin wood, it contained not a single piece of wood or other material. The mud·brick schoolhouse had been built from community funds and was similar to the other Sanyu buildings in every respect. The desks and benches were all made by the students themselves without any outside help, from their kneading the clay \0 laying the bricks to final plastering, Instead of making proper sun-dried mud bricks, the students saved time by digging wet clay directly from the river. The clay had grass and weed stalks in it, so there was no need \0 add rice and wheat husks to the mixture, They gave the clay a good kneading, just like kneading dough; beat it; and finally formed mud bricks out of il. In fine weather you often saw children squatting on the river banks, lifting mud bricks high above their heads and smashing them down with all their might, over and over again. The riverbanks presented a lively scene: the loud thuds of clay being thrown and thlOwn again mingled with the cheerful shou\!> of the children. The compacted mud bricks were the basic material from which the (Iesks and benches were built. On top of this went a layer of thin clay mixed with rice straw, Once one layer had dried, another was added until eventually the cracks became finer and were hardly noticeable. As the students bent over their desks, the cuffs of their padded jackets rubbed the table tops so smooth that before long they shone like coal Since the desks and benches were made of only clay, they did not last long. They frequently had to be renewed, so clay kneading and bricklaying were regular ongoing activities. Gradually young Tao began to find them enjoyable. Collecting dung was the st udents' other daily task. In fac t it was an even more regular one than kneading clay. A child going to school without a satchel was not an uncommon sight, but one without a manure bag was not a proper student. On a trip to the market in Wangji, Tao bought his son a manure bag made of woven willow so that young Tao could carry it to

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school. It rubbed his shoulder raw to start with, even empty, but he got used to it. It was much heavier when full, but he did not mind the weight. The heavier it was, the happier it made him since one of the tasks set by Mr. Jin was to hand over to him thirty pounds of dung per month. Every day after school, young Tao took his manure bag an d roamed around the edge of the village, but where was he to find anything worth collecting? First, the villagers held firmly to the belief that their own night soil should not go on other people's fields (so they never crapped outside their own enclosures), and the same held true for their animals. Second, none of the Villagers ever went around without their manurc bags, and they were extremely sharp-eyed and nimble-ringcred. They had had ycars of practice. There was no way that young Tao's cfforts could comparc. The most young Tao could hope to find was a scrap of dog turd or a bit of sheep droppings, usually so dried out by the wind that it did not stink anymore. The villagers did not bother with bits like that as they had no value as fertilizer. Young Tao carried on collecting dried dog turds, even though he could see they had no substance, just the form of a dog turd Actually there were so few to be found and they wele so dried up that they had no weight at all, it was like carrying wood shavings. So he walked around with his bag banging emptily against his bottom , which caused him a certain amount of anxicty. Young Tao had heard tell of the existcnce of mounds of cow (lung. These came not from the usual yellow callIe, but from water buffaloes. Sanyu had five head of callIe, of which two were water buffalo. Just seeing them poop was an event in itself, let alone being lucky enough to shovel the results into one's manure bag. Finally one day young Tao saw a water buffalo pooping, a small mountain of dung plopping down behind it. Every time one pooped, there was ten or twenty pounds of the stuff, and sometimes there might be an enticing forty pounds of just-dropped manure steaming gently on the ground. One poop was enough, morc than enough, to fill a manure bag, although young Tao would not be able to pick such a bag up once it was full, let alone carry it to school with him . Young Tao dared not imagine such a stroke of luck. But very early one morning, before the mist had dispersed, it did happen, and young Tao found his mound of water buffalo manurc.

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He half filled his bag and raced t o the school with it, em ptied it, and raced back again. Before anyone else realized, he had made three trips and cleared the lot He was delighted. Aherward, young Tao could scarcel y believe it had happened . He almost felt he had been dreaming, and maybe he had.

2 All the dung the stud ents collected was handed over to Mr. Jin and used fo r his allotment. The students did all the cult ivat ing of his allotment too. Mr. Jin did not do any of it. He was not a loca l; he had been a soldier before. Apparently he was qualified enough to have found ajob at least at commun e cad re level, but because of his Mloose morals,H he had ended up in Sanyu and had married a local woman . O f course all this had happened many years before. He now had a son who was as tall as he was . Young Tao had hardly ever seen the hoy, who was at midd le school in Hongze Cou nty Town and was Sanyu's on ly upper.m iddle·school student. He hardly ever cam e home; he would turn up o nce in a while a nd be gone the nex t day. Most of the tim e it was Mr Jill alld his wife at home. There were two buildings on the Jins' land: the schoolho use and the J ins' house, which stood behind it. Both had been bu il t by the brigade , and both were of mud bricks and thatch, but thei r home was in much beller conditi on. A dozen meters separated th e two buildings, the schoolroom's back window facing the Jins' front door. As th e s tudents went into class, they usually saw Mrs. Ji n si tting on a s tool outsid e her dc-or, stitchi ng a shoe sole , knitting a scarf, or doing some oth er chore Mrs. Jin was ugly and looked old enough to be Jin's mother. She never looked up from her work or talked to the students or indeed to any of the oth er vi llagers J in himself cut a Bohemian sort of figure with his pall or and hi s hair parted far down one side. In winter he always wore a long sca rf wound several times around his neck, with the end hangi ng down below his jacket hem . His student son (h essed like his father, with a sca rf that hung far down his back. Like the s tudents with their kneading and dung-collect ing chores, Mrs. Jin's daily du ty was knilling sca rves.

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TheJinsdid not do any farm work. The fact that their allotment thrived was due to the efforts of his studenLS. Although young Tao had drop ped back a year and was in the second year in Sanyu, he was still the youngest in the school The village children started school late_Their average age was thirteen, and fourteen - or fifteen -year·olds were not unheard of. They often had to repeat a year, some of them three or four times . They might not have been any good at their books, but they were old enough to be good farm workers And if they were strong and good dung collectors and worked theJins' allotment willingly, then they were the teacher's pets. Both class monitors were excellent farm laborers. During school breaks Mr. Jin li ked nothing beller than to sit in the schoolyard with the students, playing copper coins and kicking a shulllecock around. To play coins you chalked a circle on the ground and put a copper coin in the center. You had to stand outside the circle and hit the coin inside with another coin. If you hit the coin and they both stayed inside the circle and did not fly out, then they were both yours. Mr, Jin sometimes lost, but only occasionally. Watching Mr. Jin throw his coin was a rare pleasure. He stood far behind the line and lifted one leg behind him, at the same time leaning forward and stretching his ann out so that his scarf hung (Iown, almost brushing the ground. His coin flew straight as a die and landed with a ping on the coin in the circle . He was not only extremely accurate, but he also performed with flair. No one could beat him . If a student did manage to practice hard enough to begin to beat Mr. Jin, the teacher simply changed the rules. For example, you won only if the coin fell OULSide the circle. He made the rules, so he obviously had the right to change them . Plus, even a student who learned Mr. Jin's technique could still never learn to throw the coin with the same elegance. He was simply acknowledged to be the OCSl. They also played a game with a kind of s huttlecock made of coins tied into a piece of rag, with feathers stuck through the mid(lie (the coins had holes in the center); Mr. Jin was never beaten at this either and for the same reasons: he was good, he had style, and he could change the rules. It was he who decided whether they kicked one coin or two; whether the coins should have three chicken feathers or more than three attached to them; whether they

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kicked once with the top of the foot or the instcp or the sole of th e foot, or twice with each part, o r once with the top, twice with th e instep, and three times with the sole, o r in reverse order, or o nce (lOp), Iwi ce (i nslep), o nce (sole), and so on.Jin nOI only laid down the rules, but h e was also the umpire, so it went wilhout saying Ihat he was always going to win.

3 Mr. Jin's skills were manifested not only in games; he was also ingenious at devising punishments for his students . When students arrived late , he would chalk a wavy lin e on the blackboard and make them rub it o ut with their noses. He made the line as wiggly as poSSible, like the ripples of a strea m. The students had to rush along, alternately standing on tiptoe and kneel ing on the grou n(l, sneezing as they wenl The students were always eager 10 see laiC arrival s, so long as il was n ot themsel ves, for then they would have a spectacl e 10 walch. Mr. Jin rang Ih e changes frequelllly so thai whallhey walched was rarely the sam e as before, and before Ihe students gOI tired of o ne thing, there was something else on offer Ru bbing the blackboard wit h one's nose was not the only punishm ent for latecomers. Mr. Jin also mad e them hold aloft the Little Red Book of quotations from Chairman Mao while they did a d ance and sang Beloved Chairman Mao, the Red Slin in Glir Hearts. Young Tao's heart beat faster as he rem embered that tumultuous time back in Nanjing. Even mo re exciting was the punishmelll called "Doing Penance before Chairman Mao" O n the mud wall above Ihe blackboard hung a portrait of Ch airman Mao, and the students being punished were forced 10 kn ee l in fro nl o f il by Ih e two class monitors. Th e victim s would often wail and beg for mercy and st ruggle to stand u p, bUI Ihe monitors, robuSI youths, would hold Iheir hands behind their backs, press o n their heads, and fo rce them down. Th e reason for this pOintless resistance was Simple: under the victims' knees was not the usual smooth mud n oor but a heap of broken glass and tiles. Mr. Jin made a point of collecti ng such shards to usc for this punish ment.

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There was very little broken glass in Sanyu, and collecting it required considerable effort. So Mr. Jin carefully swept it up with a dustpan after each punishment in preparation for the next occasion. Those being punished had to roll their trouser legs up and bare their knees. Padded trousers were hard to roll up, so they just had to take them off. They knelt before the Chairman, their naked lower limbs a pallid white, and when they got up, blood ran down their legs. It was always the puniest students who were no good for physical work to whom Mr. Jin meted out punishment. The tall and strong, the good farmhands, not only became class monitors but also enforced the law. The severity of the punishment of course was not completely arbitrary. It depended on the crime . Arriving late was trivial and got a rubbing out with the nose or a song and (lance for the Chairman. Doing penance before the Chairman was a severe punishment, meted out fc·r a serious crime- for instance, when children who had not collected enough dung sneaked a couple of mud bricks into their manure bags and were discovered al weighing time. The prospect of being punished scared young Tao. He was small and slight and the youngt..,,::>t in the school too, no good at farm work, and he never produced his quota of manure . But Mr.Jin never punished him; in fact he kept his distance and almost behaved as if he did not exist. Young Tao was afraid that one day Mr. Jin might (10 an about-face and innict all his punishments in one go, and it would be too late to cry then. He went in fear of his teacher but still wanted to be close to him, so he did not know what to do. There was another problem Every day when young Tao went to school, he had to walk right th rough Sanyu As he approached the school, he passed a house, surrounded by a couple of hundred tall trees, that belonged to the brig,~de militia commander. The militia commander had two large dogs, well known in the village, one black and one brown with a black spot above each eye. Such dogs, known locally as "four-eyed dogs," were reputedly extremely ferocious. Young Tao did not dare pass the militia commander's house on his own and made the trip to school every day with four or rive friends . They crept by the house, and as soon as the dogs appeared, they ran as fast as their legs could carry them . The dogs tore after

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them, barking madly, at least until they had passed the next coupl e of houses. Wh en the dogs turned back, the ch ildren stopped running and made a show of hurling a few pieces of mud at the retreating animals. Young Tao regard ed th ese dogs as nothing better than beasts of prey from th e mountain forests and was terrified of them, even if th e "m ountains" were nothing more than riverbanks and the ~for­ ests" were the command er's trees. Tao tri ed to teach his son to be brave. He dug him up some stones, putthem in his pockets, and told him, ~When the dogs come at you, throw the stones at them ." He told him never to run away, as the more he ran , the more they would chase him . He sho uld stan d his ground and face them; belief st ill , he should cro uch down; then the dogs wo uld think he was going to pick up a stone to throw it at them . He challenged young Tao by asking him , ~Have you actually seen the com mand er's dogs bite anyone?~ ~No. »

~ They

may look fierce," his father said, ~but they're st raw dogs. Straw dogs don't bite people; they're only good fOf chasing chickens and ducks. The OJH."S that reall y bite are great big mastiffs. There aren't an y of those in Sanyu. Besides, the comm ander's trees aren't really a mountain wilderness . Ou r own trees will be taller than his in a few years' time." Eventually, with his fath er's encouragement, young Tao pl ucked up the cou rage to go to school alone. Tao said the same to his so n about Mr. Jin. He told him to usc his head and find th e teacher's Achilles' heel. So young Tao had a good look and soon found out something. Mr. Jin might be good at games and at inmcting corpo ral punishment, but he often misprono unced words when he fead aloud to the studen ts. For instance , he pronounced ~tumultuous~ as ~tea­ multuous" and "earnestly" (as in "earnestly admonish~) as ~hef­ nestly." Wh en you ng Tao told his father, the latter responded, ~He's teaching th ose kids twaddle!" Mr. Jin assured them that Nixon was the son of Nehru because bot h their su rnames began with the sou nd "'Nee.» Tao guffawed at this. And his teacher's howl ers graduall y made young Tao fear him less.

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4 AboUI th e tim e when Ihe Taos start ed to build their new house, a new tcacher came to the school She was a girl of scarcely twenty who had also been banished from Nanjing, but she was an urbling, not a cadre_ The urblings had come a year earlier_ There were thiT· teen urblings scattered through the production learns that made up the Sanyu brigade, and young li, the new teacher, had been se nt over from Number 4 Production Team Young Tao had mel Li before she came \0 the school, as she had

bee n a messenger for the product ion brigade. She spent her days fo llowing after the party secretary, Mr. Yu, ca rrying a nylon net bag. Sometimes she did the rounds of the teams on her own , still with her bag, delivering hooks or study materials, relaying Yu's instruc-

tions, or taking messages back to the brigade office. She had probably been given the position as a teacher because she knew Mr. Yu or because she liked reading The villagers habitually called the teachers "Sir~ or "Miss,~ but no o ne called Li "Miss.~ As far as the children were concerned, she was "young Li . ~ Li did not mind. She was used to it, as that was what they had called her when she was a messenger girl. After Li's arrival , Mr. Jin did not need to teach any more classes (apart from "farm l abor~ classes), and he became even more slack. After addressing them at assembly, he would go and stand at the bridge, on the lookout for latecomers, although during break he would continue to play coins and ki ck shuttlecocks with the students. Even when he took farm laoor classes, he only walked along the dykes at the edge of the fields, his hands clasped behind his back, supervising the work Li, on th e other hand , made a point of joining in all the farm work, although, as young Tao soon realized, she was the least able worker (himself excluded) in spite of all her enthusiasm . Young Tao and Li should have been drawn together by the fac t that they were both from Nanjing and both hopeless at farm work. In aCl ual fact, young Tao was al pains 10 avoid Li and was terrified in case anyone should sec similariti es belween them . li, in contrast, took a special interest in the boy. On several occasions, she grabbed his hand in front of everyone and bombarded him with questions like, "Have you settled in?" "How do you like

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the food?" "Arc your mom and dad well?" And so on and so forth. She spoke to him in the Nanjing dialect. Young Tao made his answers as brief as possible and gave them in the Sanyu dialect. li was plump and fair skinned, which also made the boy feel uncomfortable. It reminded him of what September and little Dick had said about Guilan and what September had said that day in the village. Not only were li and young Tao the least able farm workers, but th ey were also the fairest skinned in the village. They had so many things in common that young Tao's unease began to turn into someth ing like loathing. One spr ing morning during break, Li stood propped in the school doorway enjoying the sunshine. The students squeezed past her, each time pressing her plump thighs. They kept going in and out, but li seemed to be completely unaware of what they were doing and just gazed absently into the distance. The field in front of the school was beginning to turn a tender green. On the other side of the stream, a black and a brown dog were mating. In the schoolyard there was a general racket as Mr. Jin and his students pinged their coins into the circle. Suddenly someone shouted, and the chi ldren raced to the stream and began to throw dods of earth at the dogs 011 the other side. The dogs yelped and tried to nee but could not get free of each other despite all thcir dforts. The chi ldren yelled and hurled their missiles in increasing excitement. One of the class monitors rushed back to the classroom (and not to press li's thighs this time) , then rushed out again with the broom. Other children followed behind, arm ed with branches and st iCks, spades and shovels, and headed over the bridge to surround the dogs. The militia commander's dogs (for that was who they were) were by now facing in opposite directions, although with thei r hindquarters stuck fast together The brown dog was a bit bigger and just strong enough to pull th e black dog along a few feet, but the bl ack dog still struggled so that the pa ir movcd along in fits and starts, yelping as they went At this point li stopped propping up the doorpost and looked around for Mr. Jin . But the teacher was still playing coins, laughing heartily, and following proceedings with keen interest. Li was nonplussed . Then, on impulse, she ran to the bridge, blocked the children's way, and said something unpardonably stupid. "Who lied those dogs up?~ she said. MGo and

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unti e them! " The children burst out laughing, and the class monitor responded, "Please, Miss, the dogs arc sc rewing !~ "What nonsense! Don't use suc h dirty language! ~ "It's not nonsense_The dogs are screwing! Ask Mr. Ji n_ ~ O f course li did not go and ask Mr. Jin She suddenly understood , and aggrieved and shamed , she burst out crying_ Glinded by tears, she neve r saw th e o utcome of the great bailie between man and beast. But the ping-ping of the coin game and the children's raucous laughter COlllinued to ring in her ears

5 Young Tao detested li even more after this. He had not understood what was going on when the militia commander's dogs were mating, but at least he had not, as she had, made up his mind that someone had ti ed th em together li's authority crumbled as a result of this incident. The students not o nly did not call her "Miss," but they no longer listened to her. It was bed lam in the schoolroom _ If li dared to tell disruptive stude nts off, the response would be, "Who tied up the dogs then?" The gi rl would turn red to her cars, drop her textbook, and, forci ng back her tears, rush out of the room. Then Mr. Jin would appear, stop li from fleeing, and mete out punishment to the troublem akers. Spreading ou t th e broken gl ass before the blackboard, he would order the st ud ents to kneel and do penance before Cha irman Mao. The bare-legged miscreants, blood running from their knees, would weep and curse LL All the imprecati ons were heaped o n her head since no one dared say a word against Mr_ Jin li tried to restrain Mr. Jin, but th e laller ignored her remonstrations and wo uld COlllinue to ask the kneelers, "Do you submi t nowr If the stud ents did not, then they would be pressed down again_ There would foll ow anoth er bout of weeping a nd wailing and call ing li all the bad names they could think of. Eventually, li wou ld faint and in this way bring the scene of bedlam to a n end . Soon everyone knew that li co uld not stand the sigh t of blood, es pecially human blood when there was a lot of it a nd it made a big pU(ld le. Whenever she fainted, she collapsed onto the floor at the front of the classroom, and th e chi ldren left thei r desks and rushed

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up to surround her. Mr. Jin would support her back and pinch her upper lip hard , and if that did not work, he would box her cars. O nce he bent down and gave her mouth-to-mouth resuscitatio n. At this, dozens of dirty hands reached o ut and had a good feel of th e girl's clothes. It made young Tao remember the day the pig-herder children had surrounded him and done the same thing. Each time , after a period of torments, li ca me to, and a couple of strong lads were ins tructed to carry her to the Jins' big bed to lie down . The kneeling punishment was so effect ive that Mr.Jin grad ual ly abolished the nose-rubbing an d the song and dance punishments, and everyone, whet her a fault was mino r o r serious, had to kneel before Chairman Mao. Knees bled, and Li fainted. The students being punished were no longer so unwilling to face their pun ishm ent, alth ough they st ill wept and wai led. In fact, if no one had been ma(le to kneel for a while, the students felt something was lacking. Then they would be deliberately naughty to annoy (or rather to please) Mr. Jin . The simplest way of doing this was to say to li, ~Who tied them up then?" o r ~Please, Miss, the dogs are screwing!"

6 The year after the Taos had moved into their new house, young Tao left Sanyu Primary and started in the third year at Gez huang Primary, a mile and a half away. Then he heard that Mr. Jin had bee n arrested. One day the mil itia commander s ummo ned him to the brigade office, and as soon as he went thro ugh the door, two uniformed soldiers rushed out and clapped handcuffs on him He was accused of raping an urbling, li li of course left Sanyu Primary after that and was transfe rred to Laohe commune nearby, where she continued to be an urbling. Her two younger brothers, who as fellow urblings had lived with her in Sanyu, went too The brothers, who were twins, escorted their delicate little sis ter to their new ho me. Watching these two big, hefty fellows disappea r into the distance, the Villagers fo und it hard to believe that li could have been abused by Mr. Jin . By th e sam e token, with the girl under the protection of two such stalwart guardian spirits, they were not overly worri ed about her future.

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Sanyu Primary got a new teacher, and theJins' allot ment went to rack and ruin. Mrs. Ji n was forced to do the gardening herself. The son left the cou nty middle school and came home, with none of h is former airs, and no longer even wearing his scarf. The villagers felt some sympalhy for the Jin family's disgrace. They blamed li for causing all the lroubl e. She had walked away from it, bUl Mr. J in would spend the rcst of his life in jail. As they put it , ~ I f the bitch doesn'l lifl her lail, how can the dog moun t her?" And, "Mr. Ji n made her happy, and he's the one who got the blame! n The arguments about Li continu ed long after she had lert Sanyu, among the urblings too. Their views of course were somewhat d iffe rent from th e villagers'. According to the urblings, what had happe ned to Li was owing to her ignorance. 11 was obvious the dogs had been mating; how coul d she have thought someone had tied them up? Her miSlake h ad allowed Mr. Jin lO take advantage o f her_ Si nce sh e was h ere in the countryside as an urbling, it was im perative lh at sh e accepl reeducalio n by th e poor peasa nLS_ BUl she h ad had a sh eltered upbri nging, had let her brolhers shoulder the burden of the farmwork, and had been slack at reforming her outlook She had been firSl a mcssenger, th en a teacher, and had never really grasped the hoc. If you did not grasp the hoc, how were you to learn the necessary facLS of farming life? The more they talked, the more they felt they were righl. O ne urbling was ready with an example from her own experience. Before leavi ng the city, she had heard that according to country folk, no one from the city cou ld tell wheat from leeks. That was true , but there were no wheatficlds in the city, so lhere was no wheat to be seen_ There were, h owever, leeks in the vegetable markeLS, so the urbli ng in question weill and boughl herself some leeks, took them home, and spe nt a whole afternoon inspecling them_ Her a rgu me nt was sim ply thal if she could learn to recognize leeks, then what looked like leeks but were not mUSl be wheat. The test ca me when she arrived in Sanyu. A villager pointed to the wheat and suggt'"Sted it was leeks; he pOinted to the leeks and said , "That's wheat, isn't it?" She got the answers righl. However, her questioner seemed dissatisfied . not to say disappointed . So the next time the villagers pOinted to the wheat, she gave the wrong

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answer: "o f course they're leeks," she said . "They taste nice if you slice them and fry them with eggs." This allowed the villagers to have the last laugh: ·'Once a townie, always a townie. Can't even tell wheat from leeks! " It was one thing to tell the villagers what they wanted to hear because it was a necessary part of reeducation. But it was quite another really not knowing wheat from leeks. And li really had no t known that the dogs had been mating

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FIVE

Animals

I Young Tao had several dogs during his tim e at San yu_ The first was Patch_ Patch's mother was Lii Suying's black an d wh ite dog. Young Tao had mel th e dog on their first d ay in Sanyu, when he fed her a bit of meal. So they were al ready acquainted when, the next spri ng, the bitch had a litter of pup pies, and young Tao brought o ne ho me. like his mo ther, Patch loved meat; unlike her, if he wan led some, he could get it. His mother had probably eaten only o ne bit of meal in her life, and thai was the bit young Tao had given her. She had not had an y s ince then , hut her son could cat meat to his heart's conlen l. When they m oved into the new house a nd Patch did not w ant 10 come, yo ung Tao tempted him over with a dish of Slewed pork O f course the Taos d id not cook meat especially for Patch. He ate j ust the same as everyone else in the famil y. Since the Taos had a varied diet, so did Patch: every day he got plenty of good, fatty meat, and he acqui red a taste for everything else they ate too. He got some of the chi cke n feed that Su Qun cooked up from husks and rice. And he ate poop and drank pee when he gOI the chance. After all, he was still a dog. When he was a pu ppy, he would sq ueeze in through the dog hole every morn ing, stick his head inlO the spittoon at the bottom of th e bcd, and lap u p the contents. He frequently gal beaten for this bad habit and gradually stopped when the fam ily was aro und. But behind his masters' backs, who knew what he did? Palch regarded mice and small birds as tasty morsels and would oflen catch and eat th em . Young Tao had also seen him eat grass

77

and even lumps of earth. With such a good appetite, Patch grew fast and was bigger than his mother, La Suying's bitch, in less than a year. In fact, he was the biggest and fattest dog in the whole of the Sanyu Number I Production Team . Outside the production team, the only dogs bigger than Patch were the militia commander's brown dog and the two at the Xiaodunkou shop. Everyone knew the commander's dog, especially since the business with young Li The other two were communally owned and kept specially to guard the store; they were different because they were real mastiffs, and they got their own grain rat ion. Young Tao dreamed of the day when Patch would be a bit bigger and he could take him to meet them. 11 was Patch's thick and shi ny coat, however, that really made him st and oul. The black hair shone lustrous, like human hai r, while from a distance the white was like silver. Underneath this shiny coat, his nesh rippled ent icingly The villagers were consumed with envy at first when they saw the Taos feeding meat to their dog Then they relaxed Theyactually hoped that the Taos would fatten him up even more, into delicious dog meal. Patch was convening the Taos' meals into food that they could cal. They had already found out that the Taos did 110t cat dog meat, especially not Patch's meat (they quite understood this). But dogs were there to be eaten. If he were not, it would be a waste of a nice, fat dog. The villagers speculated that Patch's pelt would make a lovely warm mat, big enough for a whole bed. You wouldn't need a brazier in midwinter if you had one of those. Turned into a fur-lined jacket, he would be so hot thai you would get prickly heat, and as fur-lined trousers, he would be a sure cure for rheumatic joints. You could also sell his dick and his balls to the commune for thiny cents. It was a pity they were sold per piece. Priced by weight, they would have made a lot more money. These comments sometimes reached the Taos' cars. The family became extra vigilant when they heard all this. Tao forbade them to feed Patch meat, but even without meat, there was still a lot of fat in their food, a nd it was clear Patch was not going to lose weight in a hurry. Luckily he was a dog who was keen to gel on in the world. Sanyu-born and -bred he may have been, but he was a real social climber. (Eating the Taos' meals made him

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forget his roots. If villagers came to call, he would bark furiously.) He rarely went beyond his front door unless it was with his masters, or with the other dogs. He never went to La Suying's to see his mother, and he would nOI even look at any food Ihe villagers tried 10 tempt him with. Butlhe odd thing was thai whenever someone with a Nanjing accent dropped by- an urbling or a banished cadre, for instance- he would wag his lail and fawn over him or her. None of Ihis endeared him to the villagers In fact it gave them all the more reason 10 wanl 10 strip off his pelt and devour his flesh. Even if Patch had nOI been so fal, there is no doubt thai they would have felt the same way. The Irouble was thai Patch was dingy wilh members of his family. If they wen I out, he inslanlly tagged along behind as they dropped in on this or that villager and then accompanied them back home. But on Iht.'Se occasions. he was never oul of his masters' sigh t (or falher, Ihey were never out of his), and so the villagers did not get the ch an ce 10 lay hands on him. Su Qun was the only one of the Taos who rode a bicycle. Her Flying Pigeon bicycle, bought when young Tao was born so that she could gel home from work to breast-feed, had been brought to Sanyu from Nanjing along with the other furniture Now Su Qun cycled to and from Wangji Markel 10 buy the basics the family needed. She also used it to fetch Ihe grain ralions from the commune grain station for herself, Tao, and Grandpa Tao . Every time he heard Ihe bicycle bell or saw Su Qun put on her gloves, Palch gOI up. He knew Su Qun was going out and raced ahead of her to the bridge leading out of Ihe enclosure . There he waited for her 10 pass and trOlled along behind as far as the riverbank. BUI Wangji Market was five kilometers away, and Patch was not allowed to follow her allihe way, so young Tao's task was to keep an eye on him when Su Qun was about to leave and stop him from getting up or drive him back from the bridge. Once, however, about five minules after Su Qun had lefl, Patch slipped across the bridge and rushed madly after her. The road was fulled and Su Qun was cycling slowly, but slill faster than a walking pace. He muSI have gone al quite a lick 10 calch up with her before the villagers discovered him. By Ihis lime Su Qun had gone some dis lance. She gOI off her bike and went back toward the dog,

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throwing clods of ea rth at him and stam ping to frigh ten him off. Patch had never seen Su Qun so angry and knew he had done wrong. Tail between his legs, he slunk off back the way he had come . Wh en he was out of sigh t, Su Qun got back on her bike and rode on toward Wangji Market. Needless to say, Patch never arrived home. He met the vill agers on th e way, and th ey kill ed and ate him. For a month afterward , Tao and young Tao made separate searches of the village, but without success. Walking through th e village streets, they found themse lves in volu ntarily st icking their noses up into the air and sniffing as hard as they could. O nce they smd le([ something that might have been dog meat, but then in a sudd en gust of wind it was gone.

2 Soon after, a vill ager brought them a just.weaned puppy. It was a completely unsolicited gift. The Taos had not said they wanted another dog. Young Tao was delighted. The puppy's coat was pure wh ite, so he call ed it Snowy Tao felt the villagers had ulterior motives: they wou ld wait until Snowy was big and fat and then cat him up. It was obviously a plol. But seeing you ng Tao's delight, he did not have th e heart to send the puppy back. Snowy settled down at the Taos. Thanks to his good diet, he cou ld not avoid growing hugely fat, although Tao constantly warned them not to give the dog meat or whatever else they were eating. A bit of chi cken feed would do and would stop him going th e way of Patch. Young Tao actually obeyed because he was concerned about Snowy's fat e. But Grandpa Tao took no no ti ce. He fed the dog three meal s a day, not because he cared for Snowy especially, but because he was generous by nature to everyone, and that included dogs. He was lavish in his treatment of the villagers, therefo re even more so where his own family'S animals were concerned . There were con· stan t battles between Tao and Grandpa Tao about thiS, and these somet im es became very acrim o nio us, as you will read later in these pages. It was just Grandpas way of doing things, Tao realized , and as his fat her was very st ubbo rn , Tao eventually gave up the ba ltIc .

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When he was fully grown , Snowy was just as heavy as Patchnot as big, but fatter. Then there was his coat, which was s uch a (Iazzling white it could be seen for miles. Added to this, he was in th e habit of roaming around the village in search of bitches. So one day the village ve t came home with Tao, and preparations were made to castrate Snowy Castration was a bloody affair, but no one in the famil y raised any objections. Tao told his son to hold th e dog down. Then he fetched a three-pronged gardening fork and pinned Snowy down with a prong on either side of his neck. This effecti vely separated Snowy's head from his body, and Tao sunk the fork deep into the earth so that there was no way the dog could move. The vct took out a knife , felt gently between the dog's legs, and suddenly there was a gush of blood. Snowy yelped loudly, and young Tao, who was holding his back legs down, nearly j umped o ut of hiss kin. Wh en released from th e garden fork, Snowy jumped up and ran off toward the prod ucti o n team field s to the so uth of the house, hopping o n three legs. He ye lped as he ran and left drops of fresh blood behind him that made a dotted trail on the ground. Young Tao fo ll owed his tracks as far as th e banks of the Yanma River. Snowy had stopped by then but still stood with one leg raised. His cro tch was all bloodied, and the hair o n his legs was a ll red too. Young Tao made seve ral attempts to get ncar Snowy, but each time the dog jumped away. When the boy stood st ill, so did he , looking at you ng Tao with eyes full of fear. Intermittently he wh impered. This scene on the riverbank continued until it grew dark. Young Tao stayed with Snowy because he was afraid that ifhe left him, th e dog wo uld no t get home on his own. He remembered that when they had moved to th e new house, Patch had refused to leave the cowshed with si mil ar obstinacy. And Snowy of course had good reason to be upset In the growing gloom, Snowy's white coat fad ed away until o nly a pair of dog's eyes and the ripples on the su rface of the water glittered in the darkness. Young Tao crept closer and closer until fina ll y he succeeded in touching Snowy's damp head. The castrat io n put a stop to Snowy's roaming. Even when the fami ly went o ut , he cou ld no t be bothered to follow. He lay s unning him sel f by th e front door and did nothing but cat a nd sleep. As far as he was conce rned , his castration was all to the good, as now he

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could devote himsel f to eating and drinking. It was impossible to stop him from getting fatter and fatt er. Th e fatter he got, the less he wanted to move, and the less he moved aro und, the fatter he got. Added to this, his coat, gleaming white as a cherub's bottom, glistened as he wand ered around the ho use. Of co urse the vill agers saw him wandering around too, hut not very often. Snowy led a eunuch's life of peace and idlen ess for nearly a year. Gut nothing lasts forever, and one day he was faced with a new threat. Rum ors spread abou t an epidemic of an extremel y serio us disease called leptospirosis. Dogs had something to do wit h the way it was spread, and the cou nty government ordered a dog c ull. Th e villagers had no idea what leptospirosis might be, no r had anyone caught it , but they definitely approved of c ulling dogs. The fir st dog that they th ought of was the Taos' Snowy. O f cou rse th ey had 10 work up to culling him gradually. Hot bean curd could nOI be gobbled down in a hurry. or in olh er words, more haste, less speed . The Sanyu brigade organized a dog-cullieam, a nd September and lillie Dick were in il Th ey started with their own dogs, which, puny Ihough Ihey were, could slill be ealen. Rather Ihan the usual dog-eat-m eat , il was a qm.."Slion of eat-dog-meat. ror some time, the village dogs barked all day, and the ai r was filled with th e fr agrant s mell of dog meal. Snowy took refuge under the bed. Th e villagers were becoming addicted to dog meal. Gut they paid this heavy pri ce with one si ngle goal in mind: gelling thei r hands on th e Taos' Snowy. Finally o ne day, armed with cudgels a nd shovels, they arrived at the Taos' door. Tao had no good reason for refusing 10 allow them 10 cull Snowy. He was the o nly remaining dog in Ih e whole village (even the militia comm ander's dogs had been kill ed), as well as the fattesl and strongest. Telling Ih e team thai Snowy had laken refuge under th e bed and wo uld nOI come out , Tao delegaled responsibility 10 young Tao: if he could get him out, then th ey could take him away and kill him . The team gathered around young Tao and told him to get Snowy out. Tears streaming down his fa ce, young Tao tem pted the dog o ut of the house with a bowl of stewed pork. The culling team, waiting o utside , ambushed him with shouts and blocked off his escape

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route back insi de. With a last desperate bound, Snowy made fo r the back of the house. There, under the back window of the living room, he was killed. When young Tao went around to the back with th e dish of pork, he saw Septem ber dragging Snowy over the bridge. There was a drop of blood under Snowy's nose, but apan from that , he was as s now white as ever. That evening th ere was an especially s trong a roma of dog meat in the village. Word swiftly got around that the Taos' dog had been done to death. It was like Spring Festi val They all converged on the threshing nOOf, carryi ng bowls and dishes to enjoy Ihe feast of dog meal. The Taos of course did not go. But at least this time they had the consolation of knowing who had killed Snowy and who had eaten him , unlike with Patch, whose death remained a mystery. The villagers had no reason to be anything ot her tha n completely honest about eating Snowy. Afterward, his pelt was priced and sold to Mr. Yu, th e head of th e Sanyu production team, with the money going inlO the learn coffers Wh en Tao went to his house to discuss farming business, Yu would raise th e ragged piece of cotIon wadding covering th e lattice bed and stroke the dog-skin rug undern eath. "This is your Snowy's pelt. It's really warm!~ He said this with no ill intent. It was meallt as a compliment. Snowy's di ck and balls were given to September, a rewa rd for his hard work during the dog cull , and he sold them 10 Ihe commune for thirty ccnLS.

3 The Taos' third dog was brown and so was called Brownie. He was a survivor of th e dog cull A peasant from th e village had risen early one day to go to market and passed a dog-killing ground A bitch had been s ki nned and the body hung from a tree, the fangs bared Underneath were three puppies, apparently belonging to th e bitch One was still breathing, and the peasa nt (it was Youyi), seeing no o ne in Sight , picked it up, put it in his basket, and brought it back to Sanyu. Dead dogs were common at that time (otherwise the carcass of the bitch and the pups would no t have been left uncollected by the roadside), but live dogs were extremely hard to get hold of. Youyi took the pup home an d reared it carefully.

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The dog cull was in the closing stages, and the villagers turned a blind eye. By the time Brownie was half grown, the cull was over, and no one talked about killing dogs anymore . Sanyu was silent but for th e crowi ng of cocks (Brownie did not bark, perhaps because he was still traumatized). The distress that the Taos had suffered at Snowy's death had eased, and young Tao was beginning to beg fo r an oth er dog. Tao discussed it with Youyi and bought Grownie. Gut the deal was concluded between humans, and no one told Grownie. As any dog would, during the day he wwt to the Taos to eat since the food was good there, but at night he returned to guard Youyi's house . Tao talke(1 to Youyi about this on several occasions. So Youyi stoo(1 at his bridge, and when he saw Grownie com ing, he drove him back with a stick. And the Taos tried to coax Grownie in by feeding him even better and more abundant food. Gut Brownie did not mind poverty, and neither of these tactics worked. Brownie carried on eating at the Taos and being Youyi's guard dog. Ind eed, there were reports that Youyi was only pUlling on a show of brandishing a sti ck at Grownie for the Taos' benefi t and that actually the dog was warmly received at Youyi's o nce he had come back from dining at the Taos. As Youyi felt Brownie's silky coat and watched him grow big and strong, he began to do some calculatio ns. This dog of the Taos woul(1 die o ne day, and as he was its former owner, still bound to the dog with ties of affection, skinn ing the carcass a nd eat.ing the meat would naturally fall to him. What a joy if he and his family cou ld have exclusive enjoyment of Brownie's nesh and pelt! The Taos gradually realized what Youyi had in mind and began to put some distance between themselves and Grownie. Now it was Tao and hi s son who stood at the bridge ready to drive th e dog back, no t Youyi After they had done this a few times, the dog stopped corning. He was Youyi's dog now No one even called him Brownie, just "dog" or "the brown dog" or "Youyi's dog" or "Youyi's brown dog," in the village fashion, although the Taos could not reclaim the ten yuan they had paid for him . Apparently Youyi's family killed and ate Brownie before he got skinny again. That was what the Taos heard, anyway, but they did not want to enquire too closely.

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4 There was another reason for the Taos' giving up Brownie, and that was that they now had Blackic_ l31ackie was of course a black dog, and when he arrived at the Taos, he was still vcry small, just weaned in fael (like Patch and Snowy) The cull was now completely al an end, and everyone was beginning to keep dogs again, small ones. 11 was strange that there were no large dogs. Where had all these small ones popped up from? [\ was impossible to lell exactly where. 1t was as if they had not needed mothers and fathers, as i f they had jusl grown oul of the trunk of a tree or lcapl oul of a mound of earth_ Anyway, every village household now had a small dog, and strangers passing through the village were greeted by a pleasant chorus of puppies yapping Blackie arrived at the Taos aboul then; this was good timing, as he loved 10 be one of the crowd The Taos had learned a lesson from having Patch and Snowy, and they did not feed Blackie meat or anything else that they ale. He got chickenfeed to cat-and scant portions of it at thaI. On such a diet he was always hungry. He grov no bigger than the rest of the village dogs, and his coat was a dull black. Then Blackie got mange. Su Qun knew quite well that a dusting of anti-inflammatory powder or an application of manganese dioxide 10 the affecled area would cure it immediately. Gut Tao dissuaded her from her impulse 10 doctor him. Blackie's mange spread until he had bald palches all over and looked like he had a tally old jacket on. He had become a real ~mangy dog,~ one that it would never occur 10 Ihe Sanyu villagers 10 lay a hand on. Thanks 10 his mange, Glackie lived a long life, the longest of all the Taos' dogs. He enjoyed his freedom, was not castrated, mated with any village bitches he liked, and prowled around the village and its environs at will, without anyone wanting to eat his nesh. He was not only mangy, but he was also almost wild . The Villagers likc