The Dragon's Village: An Autobiographical Novel of Revolutionary China (38 page)

When Wang Sha told us that the county leadership had chosen the Spring Festival at the Lunar New Year as the date for the conclusion of the land reform, we all knew that this was most appropriate. There was no need to discuss the matter. But we would have to hurry to complete the division of the land and property confiscated from the landlords. This was no easy task. Livestock, tools, and grain, as well as land, had to be dealt with along with furniture, warm clothes, and food. The division had to be done in one sweep and everything evened out so that all the peasants were more or less satisfied. Those who received good land could not expect to get the best livestock; if someone got a warm coat, he could not expect to be privileged in the matter of housing as well.

What the peasants were most vitally interested in at the moment, however, was food. The spring hunger was upon us. When you knocked their storage jars, they sounded hollow; some were completely empty. Cheng and I learned that some poor peasants were already borrowing grain against what they would receive in the future. One old couple had even mortgaged their expected portion of land for a few bushels of grain. When we heard of this we proposed that the Poor Peasants' Association immediately do something about it.

We were all hungry. The pian-er gruel was thinner than ever. I had an empty feeling at the pit of my stomach. As long as I was busy doing something, anything, I forgot about it, but it was always there ready to force itself on my attention. I understood then why the peasants had been so lackadaisical in the wintertime. They had been hibernating, saving energy.

But when the time came to divide up the land and put in the new land markers, everyone who could walk came out to the fields.

It was a bright, clear day. The cold air was dry and the frozen earth was brittle. The empty bowls of ponds were cracked and peeling. Scraggly weeds gripped the soil like sparse hairs on a balding head. Gusts of dusty wind swept over the fields as if to gulp down the ragged throng. The group from the Poor Peasants' Association carrying surveying plans, measuring lines, and markers led the way and a great crowd followed them. Old men and women hobbled along; children hopped and skipped among them. Even the sick got off the kangs if they could and, bundled up against the cold, made their way to the place where the first markers were to be driven into the earth.

Something moved hesitantly in a clump of dry weeds. A pair of long ears wiggled over the tips of the thistles and then moved very fast. A small brown animal scurried across a bare patch.

“Rabbit!” a boy shouted with surprise and joy. Several men threw stones at it and, when these missed, snatched up clods of earth for another try. Our hungry eyes lit up. Visions of stewed rabbit meat made our mouths water. But in an instant the chase was over. The rabbit won—it was no ordinary rabbit that could survive in these hungry lands—and we all came back to earth.

The measurers worked steadily all through the morning. They went about their task dispassionately, or so it seemed, but the spectators watched with intense interest. There was not so much a look of joy on their faces as of disbelief held in suspense. Most could hardly believe that that great expanse of earth would really soon be theirs.

At the end of the day, Cheng and I went to eat our evening
meal with our peasant host. I sighed. The pian-er gruel was little more than water, but it was a comfort to me—psychologically, at any rate. It was believed that if we filled our stomachs with water, the little food we ate afterwards would swell and make us feel as satisfied as if we had had a full meal.

I sighed again, this time in anticipation. When I got back to my room I would enjoy the second course of my dinner. Xiu-ying's mother had given me a pancake and I had saved a piece of this and some pickles. Delicious!

I closed my door and felt with my hand under the straw mattress, groping for my pancake. Strange, it wasn't there. Perhaps I had put it under the pillow. Since I had no cupboard or chest of drawers here, I kept some of my clean clothes and underwear under my pillow. I opened them out one by one and looked around the kang. No, nothing. I grew worried. I pushed the mattress aside and inspected each seam. Nothing. Was my memory failing me? I could have hidden it somewhere else, perhaps in the straw box that Xiu-ying's father had plaited for me. I pulled out the box. That pancake could easily have gotten mixed up with all the stuff I kept in it. But it was nowhere to be found.

Rats were running across the beams overhead, chattering. The rats—could they be the culprits? I thought back over my movements of the previous day. I had been in a hurry to leave, and when I stuffed the half pancake under the mattress it might have fallen under the trestle table next to the kang. Perhaps some of it was still there. I'd better rescue it right away, before the rats came back for it. The light was failing and my room was dark. It was even darker under the table. I was reluctant to light the lamp as I didn't want people to know I was home. I planned to enjoy this evening in solitude. All I could see under the table was a dim shape about the size of the pancake. I raked under the table with a twig. Only lumps of caked mud came out.

I spent a restless night, a long night with many dreams. One exquisite dish after another was set before me. I wolfed them all down, all my favorite dishes—stewed
pork with a rich sauce, roasted Peking duck, steamed fish, a special kind from Yangzhou with sliced ham, mushrooms, and bamboo shoots, fried lobsters with fresh snow peas … I ate so much that I woke up with a salty, bitter taste in my mouth. My old pillow was lumpy. To spread the cotton inside more evenly I put my hand into the pillowcase. I felt something cold and sticky, and pulled it out. Wrapped in a handkerchief was my lost pancake. The yellow corn shone like gold in the room's darkness.

I wanted to enjoy every minute of it and broke off a small piece. I held it in my mouth, savoring it as long as I could. I summoned up my will power to keep from eating it all. I munched a bit more and put the rest back into the pillowcase. This time, to take better care of it and to hide it more securely, I folded it into some clothes. Now my pillow felt as soft as the ones stuffed with down at home. I rubbed my cheek on it, and rested easily.

The next day the work of marking out and dividing the land continued, and when I grew tired, I imagined taking out the other half of my pancake from my pillow and savoring it to the end. But, finally, fancy was no substitute for reality. And by the time the sun was high overhead, my knees had gone weak and my legs could no longer support my body. I had never been so hungry in all my life. Mercifully, Little Tian, the new deputy chairman of the Poor Peasants' Association, announced the lunch break.

The virgin widow and I walked with our backs to the icy wind and our hands tucked into our sleeves. When we came to a low bank that gave some cover from the wind we both slid down into its shelter. A few steps away stood two children about four years old. They were chewing on some dry-looking millet stalks. But they just gnawed on the ends. They didn't know how to use their teeth to peel away the hard outer skin and get at the juicy core beneath.

“Ling-ling, I'm hungry.” The virgin widow's eyes were unhealthily bright. She stared at the stalks in the children's hands, devouring them with her eyes. “Do you know what I'm thinking about? I want to snatch those
stalks out of their mouths. They are dried up, but they are better than nothing. They might help.”

“No, don't!” I admonished her. But then I thought guiltily of my treasured hoard.

She took my hand and pressed it against her belly. “It hurts,” she complained. Her head drooped. The wind caught the hair at the top of her head and blew it around her face.

The two children still stood there watching us and chewing on the ends of the stalks. The virgin widow motioned them to come over to her.

“You're not getting to the sweetest part. Come here. I'll show you,” she said in a soft voice and, to my surprise, she managed a smile. Her sallow skin was the same color as the earth around us. When she smiled, her wrinkles deepened and looked like the cracks in the parched and hardened soil.

The children looked at each other and giggled. They shuffled a couple of steps nearer. The widow held out her hand. The ragged little boy, more venturesome than the little girl, came nearer to her and she fondled his tousled head. She took hold of the stalk.

“Let go. You don't know how to do it.” And she pulled the stalk out of his grasp.

He looked robbed.

“There, now. Show him how to peel it and give it back to him,” I advised. I was afraid that they would burst out crying.

She pushed my hand away and took another nibble, spitting out the hard skin and chewing on the soft pith. “See, this is the way.” She took another nibble. Then she looked at the small boy's face. Suddenly ashamed, she handed me the stalk. I handed it to the boy. He snatched it and both of them ran away from us as fast as they could.

We heard voices raised and looked over the top of our wind shelter. It was Little Tian shouting to some stragglers.

“We'll start work again as soon as we've finished our meal,” I heard him call. “You must come and check on our work.”

“Let's go home,” I said. But we hadn't gotten even halfway back before we had to sit down and rest again. At my feet I noticed a busy detachment of ants moving a small piece of turnip to their home. They were almost there when I picked up a long dried leaf to brush them off their booty. They panicked and scattered. I picked up the piece of turnip and wrapped it in my handkerchief.

The virgin widow was also looking desperately for anything edible amid the weeds. Careful not to drop my spoil, I walked slowly, scanning the ground. When I had first arrived in Longxiang I didn't know one grain from another, or so-called wild vegetables from bitter and inedible weeds. They all looked alike to me. But within these last few weeks, my senses sharpened by hunger, I had become an expert and a connoisseur. I could tell food from weeds at a glance. One wild vegetable with almost invisible hairs on its stalk was palatable but not digestible. Another had its own special bitter taste but was edible. Wild garlic shared only its name with the real thing.

We looked up hopefully at a locust tree. This flowered first of all trees and an appetizing meal could be made of its flowers and buds. But it was still too early for it to blossom. Then as my eye roved around, a tiny spot of red caught my attention. Something edible? Whatever it was, I dug it out, so tenderly that the twig I used didn't bruise it. It was a red pepper, half of it rotted away. Someone had dropped it. Perhaps he had dropped others. I dug around eagerly and found two more peppers, again only partly spoiled. This was my lucky day.

“I want to give all this to Da Niang,” I told the virgin widow on a sudden impulse. “She can salt the peppers mixed with wild vegetables.”

Da Niang thanked me profusely for my gift. She washed off the peppers and the piece of turnip and wild vegetables in a bowl of water. After cleaning the bits she put them one by one into a jar which contained a few wild vegetables pickled in brine. She stirred the wild vegetables and
the pickles up to the top and pressed her new acquisitions to the bottom where there would be more salt.

“Thank you, my dear girl, thank you for thinking of me. I miss you since you moved away. I keep hoping you'll come back to my cottage.”

“Da Niang, I nearly got killed by your good friend, Tu's wife. You know that, don't you?”

She stared at me as if she were only vaguely aware that I had said something important. It took a full minute before the meaning became clear to her. She exclaimed, “I won't let anyone hurt you. You don't understand me. And don't think too badly of Tu's wife. They say hell has eighteen circles, but for her it's bottomless. She's sinking deeper and deeper into it.”

Da Niang spoke in a toneless voice. She too had walked the circles of hell, and she told me the story of Tu's wife as if it were her own.

Tu's wife had lost her first husband in the worst famine that anyone remembered in the Northwest. There was a drought and every single plant died. The leaves on the trees turned black and shriveled. The people ate dried bark. It was said that they ate dead bodies. Neighbors were afraid to look each other in the face. She watched her husband walk away with two other villagers to search for food, but they never came back. She waited for him all through the night. She sat there at the cottage door with her small daughter cradled in her arms.

She waited for four days but he didn't return. Finally, in desperation, when everything had been eaten up, she took the child and went off with all she could carry in a bundle on her back. She had no idea where she was going. She simply followed other people fleeing from the famine. In a town filled with refugees she got some food from a street kitchen set up by Buddhists. When the food there ran out, she took to the road again. She found herself by a railway station. The turmoil of the famine had affected the railway. There was no order at the station and people crowded onto the trains without tickets. Nothing could stop them. She too clambered onto a wagon with other
refugees. They traveled all day, but when the train stopped, a crowd of hungry people forced their way on, shouting and angry. People around her whispered, “There will be bloodshed! Let's get off!” And before she knew what was happening, she found herself out on a road again, running along in the dark with a crowd of fleeing people. Somewhere to the side of her she could hear the muffled sounds of fighting. Then a rush of feet. Someone stumbled and almost fell. Cursing, he lit a match. Its flickering light showed the half-naked body of a woman spread-eagled on the ground. She didn't know if what she saw was real or a dream. She closed her eyes, but when she opened them again she saw the same scene and even worse. A burst of flames lit up the darkness. Through the opened doors of a cluster of cottages, men, women, and children rushed out in panic. Then suddenly the whole hamlet was ablaze and crackled and spurted sparks. She caught a glimpse of a man who looked like her husband. A firebrand crushed him. But some other part of her mind said that it was a bad dream. She wanted to rest, rest …