I Had to Do Something: My Mom’s Story, Part 2

(continued from Part 1)

The children in the countryside were happy every single day. They didn’t think of themselves as poor — though in truth, their lives were genuinely poor and hard. It seems happiness lies not in how much you have, but in how much you want.

On December 9, 1969, answering the Party’s call, our family moved from the big city to Sunying. In that poor, remote corner of the mountains, what we felt most was the kindness and honesty of the farmers, and, for the first time in a long time, our own safety and sense of being accepted. Never in my life had I seen with my own eyes ridge after ridge of bare, barren mountains; never had I felt northern Jiangsu’s bone-piercing winter wind. And yet every one of us felt settled, steady at heart.

“Never See the Beast’s Face Again”

You see, for the two years before our move, our family of seven had been scattered across six different places. My father and mother were each at different May Seventh Cadre Schools, laboring day after day to “remold their thinking.” My father was expected to “come clean” to the Party and the organization, or else beware the iron fist of the proletarian dictatorship.

A note from Bernice: “May Seventh Cadre Schools” were rural labor camps established during the Cultural Revolution, where government officials, teachers, and intellectuals were sent to do farm work and undergo political “reeducation.” Families were often separated for years, like my grandparents were.

My older brothers were in the military, at university, and sent to the countryside for labor. My younger brother and I were at that hazy in-between age, too young to make sense of what was happening around us. With no parents or older siblings at home to guide us and no teachers at school to teach us, we had no sense of time and no idea what tomorrow was for; we simply drifted through the days. My parents never told me, “You’re in charge of the house now — take care of your brother,” because when they left, they themselves had no idea how long the cadre school would keep them, or when they might come home for a visit. Thank heavens, their salaries arrived on time every month. We had more than enough to live on; making a living was never our worry. We had a big, empty house; what we lacked was a home that had our parents in it. My parents, too, had gone far too long without a chance to see each other. Heaven knows how much they wished to confide in one another, how much they needed to keep each other’s spirits up. When would this absurd, endless mental torment finally end?

So when the Party and the state called for cadres to be “sent down” to labor in the countryside with their families, my parents answered with genuine eagerness — at last, the whole family could be together, even if it meant the poorest corner of northern Jiangsu. As our vehicle neared Sunying, my father, with his wry humor, spoke the first half of a two-part saying our whole family knew well: “Zhang Guolao rides his donkey backward—” and I finished it: “—and never sees the beast’s face again!” Then we all looked back at the road behind us, and smiled at one another. Yes — whatever else the future held, of one thing we were certain: we would never go back to that life.

A note from Bernice: Zhang Guolao is one of the Eight Immortals of Chinese legend, famous for riding his donkey facing backward. The saying works like a riddle: sit backward on a donkey, and you never see its face. The real meaning: “I never want to see the face of that beast again” — the “beast” being the life they left behind and the people who persecuted my grandfather.

Let me ask you. If the choice were yours, which would you take?

A: A home that is poor and the work hard — but the family is together, and your heart has a place to rest

B: A big house with food and clothing to spare — but the rooms are empty, and you live each day in fear

We had lived in B. We chose A, gladly.

The Zhangs Next Door

Our closest neighbors in our new home in the countryside were the Zhangs. Mr. Zhang had two sons close in age to my brother and me: Dazhouzi and Zhouchengzi, sixteen and fourteen. Dazhouzi was timid and quiet, head down in his work. Zhouchengzi was stubborn and kindhearted, never without a tune on his lips. Like their father, both boys were hardworking and honest.

Mr. Zhang often dropped by after the day’s work and would sit for a long while. He had a stutter and never started a conversation, but he made himself comfortable at our place, and sometimes he’d doze off right there in his seat. My father would draw him into chatting, learning about the village’s people and goings-on.

Mrs. Zhang ran everything inside the house and out. She was cheerful, full of self-respect, always ready to help — and she looked out for our family especially, newcomers that we were.

I still remember like yesterday when Zhouchengzi went up the mountain to graze the ox, and on his way home he passed our door carrying a handful of tender red berries cradled in his tattered felt hat. “Try some fupenzi,” he said — wild raspberries. He motioned for me to cup both hands, then turned that worn old hat over and shook it until the very last berry tumbled out. Looking at that grimy hat, I honestly didn’t relish accepting. But the open-handed generosity of giving everything he had, and the sincerity behind it, made it impossible to refuse.

Shrimp from Dragon Ditch

Behind our house ran a little creek called Longgou — Dragon Ditch. Zhouchengzi taught me to scoop shrimp along its banks. You took a rice-washing basket and plunged it down hard where the waterweeds grew, waited a moment, then lifted it carefully against the current — and not one of the wriggling, jumping little shrimp could get away. A few rounds of this, and you had the makings of a feast.

I would rinse them clean right there in the creek and carry them home. My mother seasoned flour generously — Sichuan pepper, chili powder — thinned it with water, tossed in the little shrimp to coat them in wet batter, and fried them in oil. The smell was incredible. Mama had me carry a bowl over to the Zhangs.

In those days, our family continued to receive coupons to purchase monthly rations of cooking oil and grain. The farmers could not purchase rations and did not have cash anyhow.

A note from Bernice: In this era, food in Chinese cities was distributed through a coupon system — you needed both money and government-issued coupons to buy staples like grain and cooking oil. City families like my mom’s received a guaranteed monthly allotment to buy the staples. Farmers were expected to live off what they grew.

When Heaven Did Not Answer

One day, Mrs. Zhang came to our house and, with great difficulty, asked my mother to lend her grain coupons. Choking back tears, she said, “Mrs. Wu, Zhouchengzi is sick. I need to take him to the county town to see a doctor. The barefoot doctor came and gave him medicine, but it isn’t working. These past two days he seems worse. He won’t take food or even tea now.”

No wonder we hadn’t seen him in days. No wonder that even a fragrant bowl of fried batter shrimp set before him couldn’t tempt his appetite. We had thought it was a cold. We never imagined it was anything so serious.

A note from Bernice: “Barefoot doctors” were villagers given basic medical training so they could provide first-line care in the countryside, where there were almost no physicians. They handled minor illnesses and referred serious cases to county hospitals — if the family could afford to go.

A few days later, Mrs. Zhang dragged herself home alone, utterly spent. The villagers walked out to the village entrance to meet her. All the way in, she cried out to heaven, and heaven did not answer; she bent and beat the earth, and the earth gave nothing back. Every cry tore the heart; every word brought tears. The villagers had no words. They could only weep alongside her.

For more than a year afterward, no one heard Mrs. Zhang’s hearty laugh. Mr. Zhang stopped coming by to sit.

Later, we learned it was acute hepatitis with jaundice that took that young life. I knew nothing of medicine, but I knew this much: it was a dangerous illness, but not an incurable one. Treated in time, it did not have to end so tragically. There had been no money for treatment, and Mrs. Zhang had believed her son could tough it out.

The Weight of a Needle

Watching the Zhang family in their grief, a piercing helplessness settled into me that I could not put down. Fate had brought us to this land. We had received the kindness and shelter of its people. And for the first time in my life, consciously and seriously, I asked myself: what can I do for them?

I wrote a letter to my closest friend, who was then a nurse in a military hospital. Ten days or so later, I received a book more than an inch thick: A Barefoot Doctor’s Manual. It had a red plastic cover, and inside were pictures of common Chinese medicinal herbs and their uses, charts of the body’s acupuncture points, the points to needle for common ailments, and more. A few days after that, a small bamboo tube arrived, and inside it — of all things — a “pen”: a hollow pen barrel holding more than ten acupuncture needles of different lengths.

That book and that pen of needles sat heavy in my hands. I truly felt the weight of them.

(to be continued)