The Battle Hymn of An Asian Immigrant: Chapter 2

Orren

(Chapter 1)

I was born at home in the backwater of Anhui Province in Eastern China.  I don't have an official birth certificate from a hospital to show the date of my birth by the western calendar.  My parents only remember my birthday through the Chinese lunar calendar.  I have two elder sisters and a younger brother.

My parents never went to school.  My dad was from an impoverished family with an alcoholic father who quickly flared his temper and beat him for no reason.  He really wanted to get some education and be able to read and write.  But, his father's excessive drinking ruined the family finance. While he worked in the field during day time, he taught himself to read and write at night.  He would sit outside of the room where private tutoring for his cousins was conducted, so he could overhear what was taught.  Without paper and a pen to practice writing Chinese characters, he would use his middle finger to practice writing in the palm of his hand.  Through persistence, he acquired the reading and writing proficiency at the elementary level.  That was good enough to secure a job in the local commune, the lowest level of the Chinese Communist Party's government after Chinese Civil War(1945-1949).  
My mom was a homemaker.  She could not read at all.  While my dad was the bread earner, my mom had to work around the house to support the family, while taking care of us.  For a short while, she tried to go to evening school to learn the basic reading. But,raising four of us, she just did not have the time.  

We moved a lot before I was five years old due to my dad's job transfers between different communes.  I was too young to remember any of the places we had lived.  We finally settled in the village where my dad was born.  My family was allowed to select a homestead to build a three-bedroom house.  It was the simplest house you could imagine by today's standards.  The walls were  built with clay and the roof with straws.  There were four small windows: two in the front, the two on the back of the house. There was no heating and cooling system.  We had to fetch water from a pond hundreds of yards away.  Sewage was just poured outside of the house that drained into the ditch outside of our property.      

None of the places we had lived was hooked to the regional electricity grid until I was 12.  So, there were no appliances to speak of.  We had to hand-wash all the laundry at home, then took it to a pond or a creek to rinse.  Cooking fuel was rice or wheat straws, or shrubs we cut down during summer months from the hills miles away.      

Life for us wasn't easy under Mao before the 1980's.  My dad earned a monthly salary that could barely cover the costs of rationed stables like rice, flour and vegetable oil.  My mom raised a pig, dozens of chickens and a dozen geese and ran a vegetable garden to help out.  The geese were slaughtered in the fall when there were no edible grasses or wild vegetables in fields..  The meat was salted and sun-dried for consumption in winter and spring.  Hens were kept to lay eggs. We all pitched in to help.

My earliest memory was about how cold it was during the winter.  With a wood-burning open fire pit, the house was still very cold.  Each morning, we had to put our under clothes into the heavy comforter to warm before we put them on.  My mom always sat my younger brother in front of her while warning the clothes.  I had to do all of this for myself.  It did cause a little resentment which I sometimes complained about.  

My happiest days each year were my birthday and Chinese New Year celebration.  On my birthday, there was no celebration party or a cake, but I would get a boiled egg.  My mom told me that eating eggs would help my memory.  She was absolutely right, for I never missed my egg as anticipation was built up days, if not weeks before my birthday.  We did keep a dozen hens to lay eggs. But they were not for our own consumption.  We sold the eggs at the farmers market for things like new cloth for making clothes, or traded them for consumables like toothpaste, etc at the village general store.

Chinese New Year is the biggest holiday in our culture.  Families saved for months to put out the biggest feast for ourselves and visiting relatives.  We slaughtered the pig for this holiday since every meal during the 7-day celebration will feature pork in one way or another.  People also home-made varieties of bean curd: soft, firm and fried.   For dessert, One of my uncles was a master at making sesame cakes and rice krispie's treats.  He started from the scratch, making the sticking syrup, puffing the rice or frying the sesame until he cut them into squares.  We also got annual rations in brown sugar, cigarettes and wine for adults.   

New Year was also a time for a change of wardrobe.  My mom was a very good tailor.  By then, she had worked for months, selecting, cutting cloth and sewing new clothes for us.  She also helped neighbors in cutting cloth into the right sizes and shapes to make fitting clothes for their families.  Each of us got a new pair of home-made shoes, too.  On New Year's eve, my sisters and I would parade around the house with new shoes and clothes in our hands.   

We did not have a playground to go or any toys to play.  I don't know what toys my sisters played with.  My brother and I made our own toys, using clay or tree branches.  When I was about six years old, my parents went to the capital city to see a gynecologist.  They brought home a toy hand-gun and some exotic food for my brother and me.  I quickly picked the gun over the food.  That was the first toy from my parents as far as I could remember. I immediately showed it to my friends, brandishing it in excitement.  

Life for farmers was even tougher. Because of my dad's government job, we received barely sufficient rations each month.  Farmers always got the shorter end of the stick in terms of grain distribution.  Harvests fluctuated from one year to another, but the tributes, also called "agriculture tax" to the government must be paid and mandatory sale quota of harvests must be met at relatively fixed amounts in grains.  If farmers had not carefully balanced grain consumption between seasons, they could end up starving next spring before harvest of the new crops came on line.

One late spring, our next door neighbor did not show up to hang out with us for a few days.  This never happened before.  They were very close to us.  They had two adorable toddlers I often teased with.  They helped us with some of the heavy chores, like fetching water from a pond hundreds of yards away.  My mom went over to check on them.  The whole family were lying in bed, weeping.  They ran out of rice and the whole family had not eaten anything for two days.  My mom quickly came home and picked a small bag of rice and rushed to their house.  For the next few weeks, we had to eat a little less each meal and substituted them with sweet potatoes that was for our pig.

I asked my mom how come the farmers who plowed the field, sowed the seed, weeded and fertilized the paddy field in the spring summer, and harvested in sweltering summer, go hungry.  My mom said: "They are a little better off now.  Ten years ago, many of them starved."  

Many years later, I read about the great famine in China from 1958-1960.  I suddenly remembered what my mom said about the villagers who starved.  I was very curious about what happened.

From 1958-1960, a widespread famine hit even China's most grain-producing provinces, including my home province of Anhui.  It is estimated that as many as 20 million people starved across the country.  Witnesses recounted that dead human bodies were strewn near door steps, under trees and by the roadside.  In some of the hardest hit provinces, entire villages were wiped out.  Researchers and survivors noted that there were no major natural disasters, such as floods, drought or insects during these years.  They concluded that the famine was a man-made tragedy, resulting from the CCP's radical, socialist agricultural policies.  The cover-up and mismanagement of the crisis by various levels of governments played a role, too.      

To win the Civil War(1945-1949) against the Nationalist Party, CCP promised farmers land ownership.  In the regions they gained political control, CCP confiscated land from feudalistic landlords and redistributed it to farmers who had no or little land.  For a brief period of time, agricultural productivity rapidly increased, and grain outputs outpaced population growth.  Hungers were gradually decreased among the general population.

But Since 1955, the CCP fanatically drove the collectivization in agriculture sector across the country in order to align its economic system with socialist system in the Soviet Union.  It  started with the forced transfer of land, farming animals such as horses and oxen to Collective Farming Units.  Farmers became day laborers and received rations.  Farm production, distribution and even consumption were under the right control of various levels of local governments.   

In counties like ours with abundant water resources, rice and wheat were the designated crops to grow.  After each summer and fall harvest, farming units had to pay tribute in the form of grains to the provincial government.  Then, mandatory sales to state-owned companies must be made in order to provide the rations to urban residents.  The remaining harvest was distributed to each household based on headcounts after estimated seeds was set aside for the next year.        

As government officials jolted for promotions, they started to inflate their grain outputs.  That was the only measurable achievement they could tout.  Higher reported grain outputs would trigger more tributes to be paid and increases in mandatory sales. That would leave less and less grains for the farmers.  Initially, hunger was sporadic, especially when some villages started distributing the grains that were set aside for seeds.  The issue was swept under the rug until the next spring when they needed the seeds for the growing season.  Also, the loss of food for farm animals reduced the drought power and made agricultural operation less productive in the following year.  The famine hit the farmers and their families first.  Urban residents were little impacted due to their relatively stable rations.  After they tried to help their starving relatives in the countryside, they gradually became victims themselves.      

While the CCP officials covered up the famine, the international communities tried to help.  They offered humanitarian food assistance through many channels.  But the CCP could not swallow the pride to accept aid from western countries they had derided for decades.   

From a very young age, my parents instilled in us the time-honored values rooted in Chinese culture.  Such values include deep faith, respect for tradition and social norms, self-reliance and hard work.  Chinese society is not predominantly a Christian society.  But, people do believe in the existence of a God-like figure, not necessarily in the name of Jesus.  "God is only three feet above your head watching!" is a warning you hear everyday.  The virtues preached by Chinese thinkers and philosophers complement with the fear of God to create a value system that resembles that of a Christian society.  Such a value system has guided individual behaviors even when it faces assaults from communist ideologues and powerful political leaders.

We believe in ultimate punishment by God for heinous crimes, evil ideologies and radical life style practices that are contrary to common sense.  The punishment comes in the form of "五雷轰顶(wu lei hong ding)", which means "five lightning strikes that kill".  It serves as a poignant reminder that if you displease God, you will pay heavy prices.  We often heard incidents that people died in the field during the stormy season with electric shocks when thunders roll.  Fear of this kind of punishment kept my brother and myself out of big troubles.         

My parents had a unique way to teach us about the value of independence and self-sufficiency.  My dad would often repeat what he probably heard from his parents: "If your sons are better than you are, why do they need your money?  If your sons are not better than you are, why would you give them money?"  Initially, I did not understand what these words mean. As I grew older, I gradually realized he was talking about the transfer of wealth from parents to children.  It was a general expectation that children should outperform their parents in terms of creating family wealth.  If you don't, you do not deserve any inheritance.  That was his way of saying "Hey, kids, you are on your own!"  In fact, under Communist rule, there was no private ownership of anything, except the household belongings at that time. He had nothing to transfer to us. But he made the point.  

My mom, in her plain-spoken way, would tell us that there were two ways you can live your lives.  One is "hand palm up", while the other is "hand palm down".  When you live your life hand-palm up, you accept hand-outs from somebody else.  When you live your life hand palm down, you provide for others.  It is your choice: a life with dignity and respect, or a life with self-pity and embarrassment.  

These values were taught through story-telling and dinner table conversations.  In winter, as we gathered around the open fire pit, she would tell such stories which were passed down from her parents.  Other stories she told could be themed in patriotism about ancient warriors defeating the invading forces, or romance about the love stories of historic and imaginary figures.  In summer, as the night revealed its charm and mystery after a sweltering day, the heat wave started to retreat.  But, the bedrooms were still too hot for us to sleep.  We camped out under a leafy tree in the front yard until the mid-night breeze cooled the house.  This was the best time for story-telling.  The moon shines so bright that it burns.  We had to make a few moves to stay in the shade as the moon gradually rotates across the sky.  By this time, my mom had waved the palm-leaf fan to shield us from the mosquito for hours.  My mom would draw our attention toward the sky, telling us the many legends about the moon in Chinese culture.  She also helped us locate the many stars that stories were told about.  We all finally returned to our rooms for the night, taking away something we could think or dream about.  

In addition to the values we learnt from our parents, social expectations also influenced us in significant ways.   
Here are a few phrases you often hear in Chinese, or broadly in Asian societies:
"不受苦中苦，难为人上人"  If you don't suffer the most, how can become the most successful and honorable character?
"种瓜得瓜种豆得豆"  You reap what you sow!   
"三 人 行 ， 则 必 有 我 师" On a three-men journey, one of them can teach me something new.
"精益求精" Always seek excellence in whatever you do.

When my sisters reached school age, my mom made an unusual decision to send them to school.  It was unusual because children at that time usually were helping hands with house chores at young ages.  When they got older, they joined their parents to work in the fields.  Also, no family would send girls to school.  When my brother and I were 6 years old, we followed their footsteps and enrolled in classes, too.  

When other mothers saw my mom being always on the go, they asked her why she would send all of us to school when we could help her out. My mom said that she wanted her children to have a different life than her own.  Actually nobody at that time could envision a life beyond working in the field for us.  When I asked my mom why she sent us to school, she said that she was frustrated that she could not read.  She called herself a blind with perfect sight.  Every time she went to a new place, she could not decide which bathroom to enter.  Those are the open air public bathrooms with only "male" or "female" in Chinese on the entrance.  She had to wait in the distance to see which entrance a man or a woman walked out.  She also said even if we would work in the field for the collective farm, we would know when we were shortchanged for the credit hours we worked.              


About ten years later, when my brother and I were able to go to college and have a completely different life than the ones of my childhood friends have, many people praised my mom for her foresight to see what other parents did not see.  I think it was more of her love for us than her vision that she made the unusual decision.  She just couldn't put the burden of life on our young shoulders early in our lives.  She wanted us to have as happy a childhood as she could.  In our culture, we have a moral scripture for parents 前人栽树 后人乘凉, which means "Ancestors plant the tree for their offspring to have the shade." Parents are supposed to make the sacrifice for their children to have a better future. This obligation is enshrined in other Asian cultures, too.   


The "school" we went to was not a real school with such facilities as a library or a playground.  It was just a wing in an Ancestral Hall without proper plumbing and lighting.  It only occupied  two rooms for classes and one room for the office.  It only admitted students from the first to the fourth grade.  The first graders shared one classroom with the fourth graders, while the second graders and third graders took the other classroom. Only reading, writing in Chinese and arithmetic were taught.

The school did not receive any government funding.  It was actually set up because the well-meaning elders of the family clang which owned the Ancestral Hall believed their grandchildren should at least receive some basic education.  They petitioned for government help, but got nowhere.  They finally took the matter into their own hands.  Since the CCP took power, it had really failed the farmers and peasants in rural areas who put everything on the line to help it win the civil war.  The CCP not only caused the great famine in the late 1950's, but also failed to make any meaningful investment to improve their lives.

We had to walk on a narrow road and the footpaths through paddy fields to school every day.  On rainy days, the road got really slippery.  If I fell, I definitely would fall into the muddy rice field.  I had to walk real fast to keep balance. The fun thing about the way to school was I could catch fish from the rice field sometime in spring.  My sister once stumbled over the nest of wild geese on the way and discovered half a dozen eggs.   

When I reached the second half of fourth grade, I had to transfer because further teaching was beyond the capability of the two teachers.  The new school was on the outskirts of a town about a mile and half away from home.  It was surrounded by paddy fields and a fish pond with a walkway to the town center.  It was a standard school with a campus, separate buildings for classrooms, offices and teachers' dorms. There was an open air basketball court and a few table tennis tables that were built with bricks.  The school had a cafeteria for students who could not go home for lunch.  I walked to school early in the morning and came back home in late afternoon no matter what the weather was like.  

Initially, I felt inferior to my new classmates because I did not come from a real school.  As I did not have any friends, most of my time was spent on study.  My end of the semester exam scores were significantly higher than most of my classmates.  That caught me by surprise and prompted me to even work harder.  By the time I graduated from elementary school, I was ranking third in my class.

Besides school, life in the countryside was an open book for me to learn.  I learned by observation and doing.  My mom assigned me to feed the pig and geese.  I would need to go to our vegetable garden to gather lettuce leaves for the geese.  For the pig, I had to go to a creek half a mile away to harvest the underwater plants.  These kinds of job really taught me responsibility.  If I missed their dinners, the pig would come to me and gently rub my ankle as if to remind me.  The geese would follow me wherever I went, stretching their long necks and clicking their beaks as if they were eating.  I also observed how my mom managed the garden.  It provided all the vegetable needs for the entire family, so planting required careful planning.  I learned about all the vegetables we grew, ie. their planting season, the timing to weed, fertilize, or even to aerate. That was my biology class.  

Running so many things, my mom told us she simply could not assign specific duties to each of us.  She said to us: If you notice something around the house that is out of whack, go and fix it.  If sometimes we missed obvious issues, she would tell us to train your eyes. This kind of expectation put us on alerts to always stay connected to what was happening around us.  I find it to be a good way to develop observation skills and encourage initiatives.  I later incorporated it into my parenting.

I also learnt many techniques of farming.  We did not buy day-old chicks from the hatchery.  We hatched our own young chicks.  In early spring, one of our hens wanted to be a mother.  She became very horny and behaved noticeably differently from other hens.  My mom would first make a warm nest for her.  Then, she took one of us to go door to door and asked our neighbors if they had a roaster.  If they did, my mom traded our regular eggs for their eggs.  I helped my mom put the new eggs in the nest under the mothering hen.  In about two weeks, my mom would check each egg to see if there was any development.  She put a lamp near the nest, took out the egg one by one and held each against the light.  If there was a formation that looked like a chick, she put the egg back into the nest.  If it looked murky inside without any formation, she put it aside.  In about two more weeks, pecked holes started appearing on the eggs.  The holes became bigger each day until the chicks pushed themselves out of the shell.  We fed the young chicks with lettuce leaves, mixed with some grounded grains for about a month.  Then, the chicks would be let out to roam around the house to find their own food, such as worms or bugs so we did not have to feed them as much.   

One of the good things about growing up in the countryside is that we stayed close to mother nature and harvested the bounty it has to offer.  Spring time is the best time for us to channel our extra energy for such a bounty.

One late morning in April, a big rain storm just passed.  My brother and I went to play with our friends, figuring out something to do.  One of the kids said: Let's go catch some fish."  That was really a good idea.  When there is a heavy rain storm in monsoon season, all the fish love swimming upstream to creeks and paddy fields.  You can put a mud dam around a body of water if you think there are fish in it.  That will encircle the fish, then you drain the water.  Fish will be exposed and you catch them just as you shoot sitting ducks.

As we pondered and debated where to go. we all agreed to go big.  So, we went way out of our village to a vast area of paddy fields with ponds in between.  It was very muddy and slippery roads we had to walk over.  We finally came to a large paddy field with a footpath around it.  Some sections of the footpath were broken by gushing water from the nearby pond.  Fish must have swarmed the field.   

We quickly put ourselves to work.  First, we repaired the broken footpath to seal the field.  Then all hands were on deck, literally to scoop the water by hand from the field.  Very soon, fish started jumping into the air as there was less air underwater for them to breathe.   We were all pumped up and worked as hard and as fast as we could.  Some of us even started catching them.  Then, we realized that we did not have anything to hold the fish.  The only thing we had were our clothes.  Without a blink, we all took off our pants and shirts, tied up the openings on them.  We got so much more fish than we could squeeze into our clothes.  We put some of them back into the pond.  We were on the way back home almost naked.  We thought that our parents would be so proud of us that they would give us big hugs.  This could very well be the meat to feed a family for a week.

When my brother and I got near our house, my mom saw us through the window.  She quickly jumped over the front door, starting yelling at us: "You two still remember to come home, I thought you were drowned or got washed away by the flood."  She had been running around the village to all my friends' houses to look for us.  We showed her the fish.  That did not do much to lower her temper.  These days, the biggest nightmare for parents in poor and isolated areas of ours was their children getting drowned.  They did not have drug, alcoholic addictions or gun violence to worry about.  We simply couldn't afford these.      

Orren

....