raise them all. How anguished, sad and helpless mother must have felt!
She did manage, however, to have the eight children brought up all by herself. But she was
too busily occupied with household chores and farming to look after the kids so that they
were left alone crawling about in the fields.
Mother was a hardworking woman. As far as I can remember, she would always get
up before daybreak. In our household of more than twenty members, all women would take
turns to do cooking for one year. Apart from cooking, mother did farming, planted
vegetables, fed pigs, raised silkworms and spun cotton into yarn. Tall and of strong build,
she could carry two buckets of water or manure on a shoulder pole.
Mother worked hard from dawn till dusk. When we kids were four or five years old,
we found ourselves automatically helping her with farm work. At the age of eight or nine, I
could not only carry heavy loads on a shoulder pole or on my back, but also knew how to
farm the land. I remember whenever I came back from school and saw mother busy
cooking in the kitchen with sweat streaming down her face, I would immediately lay down
my books and sneak out to carry water on a shoulder pole or graze the cattle. In some
seasons, I would study in the morning and work in the fields in the afternoon. During the
busy season, I would spend all day working by the side of mother. It was then that she
taught me a lot about the knack of farming.
The life of a tenant farmer’s family was of course hard, but we somehow managed to
scrape along because mother was a clever and able woman. We used oil squeezed from
seeds of tung trees to light our lamps. We ate rice cooked with peas, vegetables, sweet
potatoes or coarse grain, and all seasoned with rapeseed oil—food which landlords and
rich people would scorn to eat. Nevertheless, mother’s cooking was done so well that
everybody ate with gusto. Only in good year, could we afford to have some home-made
new clothes to wear. Mother would spin cotton into yarn and then asked somebody to have
it woven into fabric and dyed. We called it “home spun fabric”. It was as thick as copper
coin and was so durable that after the eldest brother had grown out of the home-spun
garment, it could still be used by the second and third brothers in turn without being worn
out.
It was characteristic of an industrious household to be well-regulated and well-
organized. My grandfather was a typical Chinese farmer. He went on doing farm work
even he was an octogenarian. He would feel unwell without doing farm labour. He was
found still working on the farm even shortly before his death. Grandmother was the
organizer of the household. She was in charge of all the farm affairs, assigning tasks to
each member of the household. On each New Year’s Eve, she would work out all job のの文の檔の共の享の與の在の線の閱の讀の
assignments for the coming year. Mother would be the first to get up before daybreak.
Soon grandfather would be heard to rise from his bed, followed by the rest of the
household. Some went about feeding pigs, some cutting firewood, and some carrying water
on a shoulder pole. Mother always worked without complaint despite hardships. Amiable
by nature, she never beat or scolded us, le alone quarreled with anybody. Consequently,
large as it was, the whole household, old and young, uncles and sisters-in-law, lived in
perfect harmony. Out of her naive class consciousness, she showed sympathy for the poor.
Despite her own straitened circumstances, she often went out of her way to help out those
relatives who were even more needy than herself. She lived a very frugal life. Father would
occasionally smoke a long-stemmed Chinese pipe or drink some wine. To prevent us from
falling into the same habit, mother kept us children under strict control. Her diligence and
frugality, her generosity and kindheartedness—all have left a lasting impression on my
mind.
Chinese peasants were honest a