A century of poverty

Chapter 58 Patience is Key

Of the several of us who transferred schools, only my younger brother was able to enroll in time. The boy next door, Xiaoqian, would always come to find him and walk with him.

My fourth sister and I will have to wait six months before we can enroll in school, according to Ms. Liu, the second daughter of Secretary Liu.

Dad made me go to the fields with my third sister to "tick the seedlings" (clear weeds and loosen the roots of the seedlings) like the adults. He found me a pair of ill-fitting water boots. These boots were too big; I could easily put my feet in and take them out. I couldn't walk in the paddy field like that. If I took a step and pulled my feet out, the boots would sink in. Dad told me to find two hemp ropes to tie around my legs.

Fourth Sister got sick here and didn't have to get out of bed.

I followed my third sister to the edge of the field. The entire team of farm workers stood in a row, each on a row, digging their hands under the seedlings and pulling out weeds—this was the requirement for tending the seedlings. I watched my third sister do it and did the same.

The accountant, Liu Zhenchang, was the third son of the deputy team leader, Liu Hongpei. He was in his thirties, with a sallow face, a straight nose, and thin lips. When he spoke, his mouth was full of white foam. He followed behind the group to supervise and check the quality of the weeding. Anyone whose ridges had weeds or were not weeded well would be called back to redo it.

My third sister was doing it very carefully, afraid of being called back, and so was I.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw several local girls standing in front, one hand on their back, the other holding a few blades of grass, taking a few steps to paddle in the water—basically pulling up the taller grass than the seedlings. But they were never called back. Among them was a little girl about my age, wearing an old, small green floral blouse and with her hair in a short bun.

Third Sister, no matter how seriously we take things, or how far we go, even if we're just an inconspicuous little blade of grass, we'll always be called back. The more we do this, the further we'll be pulled away from above.

"500 meters per line" means one row, with seventeen or eighteen plots of land. You scratch the end and then line it back up. Just when you see the people in front have reached the end of the field and gone home, we are still halfway there.

Liu Zhenchang also strode up, shouting at us, "I'm telling you guys behind me, I remember who's on which row, and whoever doesn't scratch their head until they go home won't get a single bit of work."

My third sister and I obediently and meticulously scratched. From the moment we arrived in Jinhai, our father instructed us: "Pretend to be deaf and dumb, speak less, and work more." These ten words became our guideline for interacting with people here.

From afar, we saw someone coming to meet us. As they got closer, we could see clearly that it was the landlord's fourth daughter, Liu Shulian. She hadn't gone home yet; she had come up to us much later than those who had left earlier.

On the way back, I learned why my third sister was so unhappy when I met her the day before – it turned out to be the kind of abused labor she was subjected to.

Just when we were in dire straits, team leader Liu Hongpei told my father, "Old Zhang, your family can move to the 'Horse Headquarters' (short for the squad headquarters). The family that used to live in the east wing has moved away."

The stable was a familiar place to us, consisting of four mud houses. The two on the west side were warehouses, and the two on the east side were rice milling rooms. There were open spaces of about ten meters on each side. In the low wall of the open space on the east side, there was a gap, which served as a path for the team members to go down to the fields. There were three rooms in the lower east wing; one and a half rooms on the north side were used by the team, and one and a half rooms on the south side were for newly arrived, homeless households. To the south of the partition wall was a cowshed with walls but no roof, containing more than a dozen cows of various sizes.

To the south of the open space to the west is a row of lower houses, and to the north are the keeper's quarters, stables, and barns. Outside the courtyard wall is a large pigpen, and to the south, up to the water line, is an open area.

Dad immediately led my two older brothers to build a half-kang (a heated brick bed) on the floor of the living room, where they lived. The original full-kang could have comfortably accommodated my mother and me. There was also enough space under the two cabinets, so no one could bump their head while standing on the kang. The half-room outside had a stove, a passageway, and enough room to store some things.

Mahaodong is an open space where a toilet has been built. The firewood we cut has also been dried there. There is also a manure pile for the team and a driveway for getting to the fields.

East of the road are two paddy fields, called Erguandi. East of Erguandi is a large drainage ditch and then a rarely used road. East of the road is a reed thicket of about 180 acres. In the northeast part is the Liu family's house at the east end, where the eldest son, the second son, and the eldest son's eldest son live.

Two ditches and paddy fields to the north of Old Liu's house is the threshing ground of the Sixth Team, a large threshing ground about 100 meters long by 100 meters wide.

The threshing ground extends east to Dagoubang, north to Linggan, south to the county road, and west to the main road leading down to the county. This area, covering several hundred acres, belongs to the sixth team of Daliujia Brigade.

Four streets west of the main road is the road leading to Team Five. It is an east-west road. To the north of the road is the "Youth Point". Further north to the embankment is Team Two. To the east of Team Two is Team One.

Liu Zhenguo was the secretary of the Da Liujia Brigade. The accountant was Liu Shichun, the fourth of the four brothers from the Lao Liu family in the sixth team of the Da Liujia Brigade. There was also a branch committee member in the brigade, Gao Guozhu from the first team, who managed several hundred young people who had gone to the countryside in the youth camp. He was also known as the camp commander.

Because there are many young people here, there are more than a dozen youth dormitories and a whole building of canteens. The tables and chairs inside are neat, spacious and bright, and all the walls are red brick. The "club" is the cultural activity center for young people. It is a single-story building with a height of about two stories, covering several hundred square meters, and stands in the center of the front row of houses of the youth settlement.

North of Youth Point, there is a vegetable garden specifically for young people to eat, managed by an old farmer who knows how to grow vegetables.

In contrast, to the east of the road is the large water pit for the youth settlement. It is a pit several hundred meters long. In the summer, young women often squat by the pit to wash clothes. In the autumn, it is filled with water. In the winter, not only young people drink from it, but when the smaller pit dries up, the old farmers from the fifth and sixth teams also come here to fetch water.

My family temporarily settled in one and a half rooms in the east wing of the horse stable.

At that time, Huan'er's family lived in two large mud houses built behind the horse stable, very close to us. Huan'er's cousin, Guo Linghua, who was pregnant, lived in her house. Guo was also brought by Huan'er from the inside of the pass, and her household registration was under theirs.

That year, during the rainy season, the rain was frequent and heavy. In the cattle pen, which was separated from my house by only one wall, the rainwater could not flow out, and the muddy mud and cow dung were up to the cows' calves in filth.

The cows in the pen, drenched by the rain, circled around, bellowing incessantly, their moos rising and falling in waves. The clattering of their hooves disturbed people's peace during the day and kept them awake at night.

Flies swarmed the windowsill; a single fly swatter could kill a dozen, yet the number seemed endless. The plastic sheeting nailed to the windowsill was covered in fly droppings within days, turning black and requiring constant wiping. One of the basins on the stove in the outer room couldn't be covered properly, and its rim turned black within half a day.

As the sun sets and there is no wind, swarms of mosquitoes buzz and perform their "grand show" above the cattle pen and outside my window.

In the morning, my family gets up very early to pick up the table before people go to work.

After dinner, we all went about our own business, leaving only Grandma and Dad sitting on the kang (a heated brick bed). Mom finished cleaning the stove and wiping the cabinet lids, and the room became quiet.

Suddenly, he heard "Four Bald Men" knocking loudly on the small handrail of his twelve-horse hoe outside the window; the workers had arrived.

Jiang Lang, dressed in a military green shirt, wearing a military cap and green rubber shoes, swaggered down the main road toward the horse stable.

His family were sent down from Dalian. His father was a labor reform laborer who stayed in Dalian to work as a tailor. Only his mother, his brother Jiang Feng, him, and their three sisters came to Jinhai. His mother, brother, him, and second sister Jiang Qi were the four laborers, while his third sister Jiang Hong and fourth sister Jiang Yan went to school. The family of six had four working, and by the end of the year, they had some extra work points. Every Spring Festival, his father would bring them fashionable clothes or fabrics, as well as snacks from the market, so he felt superior.

Indeed, while the local girls always beamed when they saw him, only one of them likely developed a relationship. The one who beat him to it was Fu Jianrong, the eldest daughter of the Fu family who lived behind the horse stable; the two had already established a romantic relationship.

Fu Jianrong's older sister is Si Tuzi's sister-in-law; the two are related.

The fourth bald man's real name is Liu Zhenchi. He is the fourth son of Captain Liu. He is twenty-two or twenty-three years old, over 1.8 meters tall, with a thick head of black hair, a big face, big eyes, a wide mouth and thick lips, and a face full of black freckles. He is strong and has a big waist. He acts and behaves without restraint.

Jiang Lang arrived at work early. As soon as he entered the horse stable, he saw that the bald man had already laid out a pile of parts in front of the "Twelve Horses," his hands covered in grease as he cleaned and installed them. He exclaimed loudly, "Damn! You're here early!"

The bald man yelled in a loud voice, "Who's like you, you bastard? Who went to 'Old Cat' (Fu Jianrong's nickname)'s haystack again last night?"

Jiang Lang: "Who the hell do you think you're telling me whose rotten rice stack we're going to crawl into? If you're so capable, you lead that person to crawl into it yourself!"

Four Bald Guy: "You're so vain! One day someone'll smash that thing to pieces!"

Their conversation could be heard clearly from inside our room.

Grandma, at her age, had never heard such words before, and found them extremely jarring. She asked, "Is there a fight outside?"

Mom: "No, it's just people talking."

Grandma: "Is that supposed to be speaking? It's clearly swearing."

Dad: "This is different from our family's customs."