The commission store, Brigade Department and the elementary school were all in the west end of the Dragon Lane, on the Dragon tail. The Brigade Department was in the middle, on the east was the commission store, on the west, the elementary school, only an earth road away from the Brigade. Seen from far, there was a tall pole in front of the Brigade, with a big speaker tied on its top. Judging from this big speaker, they would know about the locations of the commission store, the Brigade Department and the elementary school.
The commission store was originally the warehouse of the village, with six rooms, no yard, wide inside. There was a big door in the center. Opposite the big door in the center was a long and big counter, dividing the room into two parts. In the outer part, there was a small table, a few stools. Against the door was an old chair. In the inner part against the wall were goods shelves, the whole wall was divided into some squares. There were not too many things in the squares: matches, candles, soap and other things were scattered in the square lattice. Small general merchandise such as needles and buttons were first packed in boxes, then placed in the shelf. Red paper, white paper and long wool paper for the dead, big and small, were put at the bottom, There were some empty squares in the shelves, nothing in them. Against the bottom of the shelves there were a few jars, some for soy sauce, some for barley liquor and some for foreign oil(* imported, kerosene). These had to be placed separately. Foreign oil would become volatilize and channel smell. If not properly placed, it would make other goods smell like the foreign oil, no good to use or eat. The jars for soy sauce and barley liquor had to be covered well, otherwise, mice would love to visit the store at night. In this area, villagers did see some dead mice in the store when they went to buy soy sauce. People had complained about it. Such a thing had never happened in Grandma Three’s store.
On the counter were some glass jars, some for white sugar, some for red sugar, some for small sweets wrapped with paper, some for facial cream. At the end of the counter was a big salt jar with white salt in it(Salt was divided into coarse and fine salt. Coarse salt was used to do pickled vegetables, the fine salt for regular cooking.) A scale was hanging over the salt jar, tied firmly with the sliding weight and weighing bucket on it, convenient for the buyers.
In the counter, there were doors on both sides of the goods shelves, two rooms facing the east. The first small room in the east was Grandma Three’s bedroom. Next to it was the kitchen. The families didn’t usually eat in the kitchen. They had to do business. Generally villagers came to buy soy sauce, salt and other stuff at lunch and supper time. They couldn’t see the buyers if they ate inside the kitchen. So they ate at a small table outside the counter. There were three rooms facing the west, for the second son and his wife, Agen Huo and Qin Yatou. This was different from that of regular families in the village. Because the inside of the house was very long, there was also a long isle, with a door in each room, the isle led to the lobby, all connected to the main door.
Strictly speaking, this store didn’t belong to Grandma Three. Her husband died in the army. For public welfare, the local government arranged the whole family to live in the warehouse. Her first son died very young. The second son served for a few years in the army in Northeast as his father did. After transferred to civilian, returning home, he was assigned to work in Supply and Marketing Department, so he opened this commission store in the village. Since the warehouse was big enough, he didn’t ask the village for more benefits. He took care of it and made it for both business and residence. It was good.
More exactly, the store was run by her second son “Er Kuazi”. Usually Grandma Three didn’t stay at the store. Although she was not involved in the business, she kept herself busy. She helped cooking in the local hospital. Once in a while, she did some babysitting.
Saying it a hospital, it was actually a medical station. There was no difference between doctor and nurses, three people in total. The last name of the person in charge was Wang. Villagers didn’t call him Doctor Wang, but Mr. Wang instead. Grandma Three cooked for them. Every day, she washed vegetables and cooked for them. She did everything according to Mr. Wang’s instructions such as what food for today and what for tomorrow. She was very good at keeping the place clean and tidy. Not only doctors in the Station praised her, but also the president and director of the Village clinic did.
Her husband was also named Wang, who was a resounding tough fellow in the army, rushing forwards in the battles without thinking about his own life. A few heroic events later, he became a platoon leader. The head of the army thought highly of him. “Platoon Leader Wang, You are great. Keep up the good work!” How he wished to keep up the good work, unfortunately the enemy’s bullets wouldn’t let him to keep up. He died in the battle in his early thirties. When the news came to the village, Grandma Three heard it and fainted. She could hardly believe it was true even when she woke up. She cried and cried, finally into a tearful person. The seniors in the village knew, “Life is too hard for the Third Yatou.”
“The Third Yatou” then was Grandma Three today. She married at the age of 15. She looked like a lotus, pretty, with a beautiful face and a good body feature. All the young men in the village were envious. Her husband was only 8 at that time. Nobody called her Grandma Three. All the villagers knew that she was sold to Wang’s house as a child bride. Most of the families called her “The Third Yatou” . “The Third Yatou, take the little dog boy to the village end for a walk.” Her mother- in-law ordered. The little dog boy was her husband. The dog boy had nasal mucus all day long, following his wife. The children in the village laughed at him:
The little dog boy, a snotty tiger,
And two big yellow dogs at the door;
The little dog boy, a slug,
Two big yellow dragons in front of the house.
No matter “Big yellow dog” or “Big yellow dragon”, they were both making jokes about the little dog boy with nasal mucus, long and yellow, ugly. At this moment, the little dog boy’s nose blew air, two big bubbles came out of his nose. He cried out in a buzzing voice, “The Third Yatou, the Third Yatou, come to roll my nose. Then I will let you lick my bowl.” In those years, both adults and children could hardly be adequately fed. If not at the New Year’s Day or other festivals, people could not eat rice or rice porridge. The little dog boy was their favorite child in the Wang’s family. So all the families saved hard trying to feed him some rice once in a while. At that time, it was even hard for the children to have rice porridge. So it was good for them to have a rice soup. When it happened to have rice porridge, they always drank slowly into the mouth, then sent out their tongue to lick the bowl around, without anything left in the bowl, not necessary to get washed. They couldn’t stand to leave even a drop of rice soup in the bowl. In the little dog boy’s eyes, it was a great thing for him to let the Third Yatou lick his bowl with some leftovers in the bowl. The Third Yatou was a big girl after all, she was afraid of being ashamed. She felt unhappy to lick her man’s bowland it was showed off by him. So she had a gloomy face and put out her hands to roll his nose, a little bit heavy on purpose, twisted her fingers when she finished. The dog boy felt painful and cried out. By then the Third Yatou would coax him conversely, otherwise if he complained before his mother, she would get a scolding, or more seriously she would get a few slabs from her mother-in-law. The mother-in-law didn’t treat her nicely. She would promise the little dog boy to take him to Wang’s house for storytelling and drama singing.
During the day, the Third Yatou cooked, washed, cleaned. In the evening, she took her husband to the blind man Wang’s house. Wang, with an Erhu① in hand, talked and sang, which made the girls and boys itch in their hearts.
A 20-year old sister, a 10-year-old husband,
Carry him to bed every night;
Taking him as husband was too young,
Taking him as son was too old.
Half of the lotus leaves in the wind,
Old wife and young husband was a wrong fate;
The flower will wither to wait too long for the husband,
The living lay beside the dead.
The blind man Wang sang like this every evening. His singing made this 15- year- old girl become enlightened and sensitive. She became a married woman before she consummated in Wang’s. With the first time, this kind of thing would always happened again and again…… Eventually, it came to light. So Third Yatou was severely beaten by her mother-in-law, trying to find out the man who had sex with her. But she wiped the bleeding at her mouth, and never told it out. The mother-in- law was so angry that she stripped her off her clothes and tied her naked to a stone roller, making a fool of her in public.
In the world, the greatness of life was really amazing. The Third Yatou had been living in humiliation, but the little life in her tummy, after the pain of pregnancy of a young mother for ten months and the coldness of the world, was borne in the fuel house of the Wang’s. When the mother-in-law saw it was a boy, she gave up the thought of driving her away from home. In the spring that year, the Wang’s consummated a marriage for the 16-year-old child bride and 9-year-old little dog boy.
Two more people were added in Wang’s family, which the villagers would never have thought of.
Even though the little dog boy had a runny nose at the age of eight or nine, pulling the Third Yatou’s Chinese gown, never dared to go anywhere by himself, his courage was unusually small. However, who could have imagined that he ran alone to join the army at the age of seventeen or eighteen without telling anyone? The whole family got very worried. With the war going on, how good it was to stay at home. The little dog boy was too young to join the army. He really didn’t knowhow high the sky was and how thick the earth was/ had an exaggerated opinion of his abilities.
It was true that misfortunes never came alone. Not long after the little dog boy went to the army, the Third Yatou’s little son got sick with a strange disease, with a high fever, couldn’t eat and drink. About one month later, so quickly, that lively child died. With the death of her child, the Third Yatou wanted to commit suicide. Because of him, she suffered so much being talked behind her back, so much humiliation, cold eyes, who could bear the hardships, bitterness and taste of them? “You were a debt collector. Why did you come to the world to look for your spirit?” Her water of bitterness from the past eight or nine years was like a flood from the River of Xianghe, pouring out to the dam and the fields. “Do you want me to lose face? In these years, I raised you up with a handful of shit and urine. Now you began to understand, to call people. Why should you die?” She complained and cried.
“Darling, my darling, come back home, come back home——!” She shouted and cried in the Dragon Lane, in the village, everywhere, with hair straggling over her shoulder, either like a woman nor a ghost, exactly like a mad woman. She wished that God would send her little boy back.
Her son would not be able to come back, but her husband did come home. The sad news about the Third Yatou spread very fast and wide. The little dog boy who was in the army in Huangqiao couldn’t remain calm any more, asked for a leave and rose to his feet,coming back to Xianghe. He vaguely knew that the adults in the family never talked about the consummation between him and the Third Yatou,neither did he ask voluntarily. Anyway, he was brought up by her. When he would not go to sleep at night, she had to put her nipples into his mouth to put him to sleep. He was grateful to her.
The Third Yatou became dazed, almost half dead when the little dog boy got home. He picked up her sprawling on the bed, cried aloud, “My sister, my sister. Your little dog boy has come home to see you——”
Heart disease needed heart medicine. Seniors in the village gave him a good idea. The Third Yatou became sick because of the death of her son. The only way to make her recover was to get her to have another child. This time, it was his turn to take care of her. Just as expected, in the next spring, when the little dog boy had his own son, the Third Yatou became completely healed and came back to normal. Looking at the happy couple, the villagers would say, “He served in the army after all, different from other young men. He was marvellous.”
For some time, the army moved to the county town of Chu. The little dog boy came home more often, even became attached to his home. The result of becoming attached to his home soon showed up. At that time there was no policy of birth control. So, the Third Yatou was soon the mother of three children, two years between each child. The Third Yatou would naturally not be a drag on her husband. The revolution was a honor. This truth was told by her husband. Every time when she saw him off with the three children, she remained surprisingly calm as if her husband was not going to the battle, but on a trip, would come back in a few days. Five or six years had passed like this. The Third Yatou didn’t even realize how many times she had seen him off, welcomed him back home.
Finally one day, the Third Yatou was unable to welcome her husband back home except for a few old clothes he used to wear, plus an old military kettle with a bullet hole in it, so it was no good to hold any water. The man from the government told her that her husband was very brave in the battles. The army was proud of the soldiers like him. The Third Yatou could feel something terrible happen. Finally she realized the death of her husband, “Wow, ——” she cried out and fell down on her knees under the old willow tree, unconscious.
Not knowing from what time, people called the Third Yatou as Grandma Three. Many years had passed, but people in the village still remembered she was the third child of her mother’s family.
In the rural busy season, Grandma Three did babysitting for the neighbors. She wove linen as she pedaled the cradle, hummed the ditty to coax the child to sleep. The wind is coming, The rain is coming,
Tiger Ma① is coming,
Baby, sleep, sleep……
No one knew why the children in the village were afraid of Tiger Ma. When it
was mentioned, they would become better behaved. Today, no one even knew who it was.
Grandma Three hummed, swung until the child went asleep. She stopped weaving linen, looking at that old willow tree in the Dragon Lane, straight stupefied, with faint eyes.
Southerners were barbarous, northerners were big and clumsy. “Er Kuazi” was the second child of Grandma Three, but naturally he was not a Northerner.
“Er Kuazi” was running the store. Looking from the gate of the store on the west end of the Dragon Lane, people would see him sitting at the counter, looking solemnly as the owner. When he was too busy, he would ask his wife Duck Li to help him. “Help me. Soy sauce for 5 cents.” Duck Li would took over the bottle from “Er Kuazi”, put on the measuring bucket, using a long handled terminal, to pick up soy sauce from a big jar, then scaled and poured it into the buyer’s bottle. Here, to buy soy sauce was not called to buy, but to “pickup”. “Pick up” was shown by the whole process. Using a terminal. Five cents for two terminals. If busier, “Er Kuazi” would ask his sister Qin Yatou to help.
“Get her half a jin of red sugar.” Qin Yatou would rise from her “Foreign machine” and went to help her second brother. Sometimes she would complain a bit. “Why not askAgen Huo to come to help? I have got a Chinese gown to make quickly for my client.” Agen Huo was the younger brother of “Er Kuazi”, the third brother of Qin Yatou. He was idle and did nothing all day.
It was normal that you didn’t see Agen Huo. It would be abnormal if you saw him there. “Lazy at home, hard-working outside.” This was a good description of people like Agen Huo. Although he was short, with slim arms and legs like a thin frog, he was famous in the village for being hardworking.
In every house in the village, no matter it was a wedding or funeral, or when they had visitors, he was always invited. Not because he was respectable, but because he was very good at doing legwork. He knew very well about who had enough tables and chairs, who had extra bowls and plates among 40 households in the west end of the village. This was what he had been trained for in the early years. He liked joining in the fun. Whenever someone had some event, he would offer himself for help with moving some chairs, looking for plates and bowls, doing some chores. Then he would work with the general helpers to get some leftover food as a good meal. After getting home, Grandma Three used to ask, “Agen Huo, where did you go again?” “It happened that Hunchback Tan got guests, he asked me to help. Drink some barley liquor.” Hunchback Tan lived on the Dragon waist in the west end, well-known for catching fish. So he had a nickname as “Fishing devil” .
Grandma Three looked at her third son who refused to help himself, thinking of her dead husband for no reason. She felt sorry for her husband that she didn’t bring him up well. He discredited his brave father.
However, Agenh Huo didn’t think he wasn’t doing well. He was very successful in the village. Speaking of it, they might not believe that he worked with the team leader Xiang Dashao in the first team, although he belonged to the fourth team. Xiang Dashao liked his hard-working personality, asking him to do some odd jobs for him.
Agen Huo was very pleased. Xiang Dashao didn’t worry about his ways of handling affairs. When arranging farm work, he would let him work with women, asking him to watch out who worked better for their points. At that time, there was no practice of “More work, More gain”. All the work points of the villagers had to be evaluated.
Agen Huo was not too young now. Working among the women, he felt satisfied. He sang very well, which was put to use. As the saying went. Three women made a play. It was hard to avoid coaxing when women stayed together in a group. When they felt bored at work, they would make a mess to refresh themselves. Jokes such as the father-in-law went into the daughter-in-law’s bedroom for fun, the elder brother slept in younger brother’s wife’s bed, and so on, would come out of these women”s mouth. After they got married and had children, these women wouldn’t feel shy to pull open the chest cloth and put her white nipples into a child’s mouth to feed in front of a man, This was within reason for a local custom.
Naturally someone would askAgen Huo to sing a popular tune. “Agen Huo, Sing a passage!” “Yes. Sing a song.” Agen Huo didn’t begin to sing immediately,he squeezed the shoulder of the women who coaxed, then suddenly passed his hand across the woman’s chest, very skilfully. “Call me nicely, then I will sing.” He was insatiable. “Good boy, sing!” “If you sing well, I will suckle you!” These women were nut jobs. No matter how ugly the words were, they could say.
Nevertheless, Agen Huo got proud to open his charming voice:
Poor peasants(Hum), lower middle class.
Be of one (Ah)mind(La),
We are of the same family (Hey)under the sun……
①The local tune of Huaihe River came out. The excited women yelled, “Sing some Dirty ones!” They began to laugh and tease. Then Agen Huo squinted at the girls’ necks, and sang one at their request.
In the first watch(* Chinese ancient way to keep the time, two hours for a watch, around 5-7 p.m.), the little nun guards the meditation room,
Holding a wooden fish in hands, her eyes brimming with tears……
In the third watch, the little nun was sleeping in the dim moonlight,
A young man walking into the nunnery,
The two appeared on the balcony, hand in hand,
Having sexual intercourse like fish and water mingling together.
As he sang, some people even took action, especially at this melon land with soft grass. The girls and women went into the melon land like a group of birds returning to their woods, singing and laughing. Listening to Agen Huo singing as they ate melons, they felt very easy. The hungry women couldn’t stop eating, so not long after they were very full, and couldn’t hold their urine. Find a field ditch with some shade of melon leaves, squatted down to pee. Agen Huo couldn’t wait for the chance to have intercourse with her like a hungry cat. A moment later, Agen Huo dropped a sentence, “Take a break, I will tell the team leader in the evening to add you 3 more work points.” After that, he left the ditch with hard breath.
The real busy time of the store was at the New Year’s Day and other festivals. It was not busy at ordinary times. Therefore, it was more than enough for “Er Kuazi” to run it alone by himself. He was kind and polite. Besides, the goods on the shelves were daily necessities, such as needles and threads, etc. Women couldn’t work without them; Cigarettes and barley liquor that men needed; facial cream and shampoo that girls liked; Matches and foreign oil that every household needed every day. Here people called matches as Foreign fire, coal oil as imported oil. Children in Grade
Two or Three at home would always correct their parents by saying, “This is called match, not foreign fire. That is called coal oil, not imported oil. I have told you again and again.” Mother just gave a little smile, “Yes, you have told me many times, but people all called them like this. This has formed our habit.” “Er Kuazi”, in his forties, was very smart and quite in line with the situation. He learned it very quickly. When children came into the store, “Uncle Kua, get me two boxes of matches.” “Ok. Two boxes of matches for you.” He replied with much stressing on the word “match”. If a senior came to the store, crying out,” Give me two boxes of Foreign fire.” “Ok, two boxes of Foreign fire.” “Er Kuazi” passed the matches to him with a smile.
“Er Kuazi” served in the army in the North for a few years. After returning home, he changed the words “I get it” into “I know”. All the villagers felt strange. But after he finished saying something, he always repeated, “Do you know? “It became his pet phrase as he always said it. That was the reason why he was given the nickname of “Er Kuazi” .
One year, when he was stepping on the water wheel with some men in the village, “Er Kuazi” fell into the river by accident, grunting in the water. He sprang out of the water and cried out”Help!” But the men thoughthe was making a joke, so they just laughed at him, “You act quite similarly!” After a while, the men saw something really wrong happened, then went down into the water to drag him out. He was full of water like a frog, glaring at them, said, “I am not good at swimming. Do you know?” “Don’t know.” The man was terribly sacred.
“Er Kuazi” didn’t return home directly after the service in the army. He was assigned to work in a power factory in Northeast China. He was young at that time. He fell in love with a girl in the factory. They couldn’t separate with each other. Young men tended to be hot-headed. He completely forgot he was engaged to a girl called Duck Li in the year before he left for the army. This year he received a letter from home asking him to go back. His father died, his mother was getting older day by day. It was better for them to get married. He didn’t go home at the Spring Festival. Grandma Three came to the factory with Duck Li. The two girls cried in another’ arms when they saw each other. He was taken home by Grandma Three. The girl in the factory was pregnant for two months, which “Er Kuazi” didn’t know. She saw him off to the ship with tears in her eyes. Later, he never returned to the factory to work. He got married with Duck Li, opened the store. Northeast China became more and more vague in his memory. Ever since then he had never mentioned it.
The Brigade Department was the political center of the village. Because of this, the building was better than those of regular villagers. There were two rooms in the front and back, with a main room in the middle, built with red brick solid walls and red foreign tile roof. There was a big yard, its walls were also built with red bricks, half of the walls were solid, the other half were built with double diamond patterns, looking nice. The front room was very close to the Dragon Lane, with a passage way in the middle, dividing the room into two. On one side was a bamboo bed for the security guard to sleep. Monk Cai was the security guy. On the other side was the medical station. A few wooden cupboards, benches, a bed were used for the doctors and patients. There was a hospital in the village, so the clinic was only for small problems. Patients with serious problems had to see Mr. Wang. Sister Shui didn’t see them. Sister Shui was a barefoot doctor(* a nickname for part-time paramedical works in rural areas trained in simple techniques of diagnosis and treatment) in the village, very sensible in dealing with people. She didn’t look down upon people because she was daughter of the party secretary, depending on his influence. The villagers all liked her. Sister Shui took good care of people who came to buy some pills for the cold or sniffles, to get a bandage for some wounds while working in the fields because of carelessness.
Sister Shui learned this medical skills in the People’s Hospital in the county town. Although Mr. Wang in the village also took students, the hospital in the commune had training classes, her father Xiangyuan didn’t let Sister Shui go. “This involves such an important matter as the life of a human being. If you want to learn, I will send you to learn it in a big and formal hospital.” At that time, Sister Shui just graduated from the junior middle school. She felt eager to learn when she saw a few of her schoolmates became barefoot doctors. Xiangyuan didn’t agree immediately. He wanted to give her time to think about it. To be a barefoot doctor was not a very good job. Seeing patients meant to serve others.
Sister Shui had made up her mind to learn it. Her father had to give in. With the help of a friend,he sent her to a medical training class in the People’s Hospital in the county town. He never expected that she would turn out to be good at it, becoming an excellent student. However, she came home with pregnancy being an unmarried girl.
It was said that she fell in love with a man in the training class. One time in class, the teacher played some slides, talked something about having sex. Most of the girls in the class became too ashamed to look up, with hands covering their faces, but couldn’t help opening a few fingers to peep. Those male students were laughing, looking around at the girls. Only Sister Shui and that man listened calmly. She didn’t cover her face, nor looked down. She listened very attentively, looking safe. He didn’t get too excited like others, watched the slides calmly and listened to the teacher, taking notes in detail. There was a lecture given to a large number of students every day in the training. After class, he invited her to take a walk outside. She didn’t say anything, but went out with him. The two came out of the town silently, to the east suburbs, where they had sex. It all came naturally. They knew this would happen. In the class she felt her chest distended, and he felt blood-heat all over. It was soon over for one year of training. He told herthathe would go to Xianghe to find her. He would marry her in a dignified way. She nodded, nodded hard.
After returning to the village, she first practiced for a few months with Mr. Wang in the hospital. Later, the village opened a medical station where she became a barefoot doctor. During the day, she saw patients, writing prescriptions, doing injections and fluids. In the evening, she lay down in bed, touching gently her growing tummy, hoping that man would come to see her. Finally a letter came from him. After the training, a leader talked with him about marrying his daughter. Although she had a crippled foot, she was beautiful. It happened that there was a chance for him for further studies in the provincial capital for three years. So he said he agreed to the opportunity. He was born in the countryside, nothing in the world was for a country boy. He wanted to go out, no matter what happened. He also said he couldn’t bear two girls in his mind. He would marry another girl, but never love another one. But this was too bad for Sister Shui. Sister Shui trembled with tears falling on the letter. She replied, no blaming and complaints. She didn’t tell him that she was pregnant. Only said she was a country girl, too and understood him.
Sister Shui became a laughing stock in the village. Xiangyuan got terribly angry, “She was so bold, no law of the land.” She knew what it would happen if this kind of thing came to light. She would lose face. The villagers would look down upon her. No man would marry her. She locked herself in the room, would not let anyone in, including her mother. She cried a few times, but when she became calm, she didn’t feel that hurt. Anyway, she had fallen in real love, he loved her. She knew in heart that she was not a bad girl. She wanted to make everything reasonable and clear. What was she going to do with the baby in her tummy? It was their amatory crystal. She couldn’t deal with it according to what her mother said. Sister Shui must have her own idea. This had something to do with her life.
Seeing their daughter locking herself in the room for a few days, Xiangyuan’s wife was worried if she took things too hard and was going to do stupid things. “You silly girl. There were so many good things to do, why did you just do such a stupid thing?” The mother was angry, resentful and worried. She was angry because her daughter didn’t prove herself to be good, making her families looked down upon in the village, moreover, her husband was the party secretary. She was resentful because that the man, who should be given a thousand cuts, was a shrinking turtle①, after doing that kind of thing to her daughter. She was worried that the girl might not be able to survive the gossip of the villagers and what if she went to a dead end? She didn’t have good ideas, sitting on a bench at home, with tears in her eyes. “You brought up such a daughter, she made me lose face.” Xiangyuan complained his wife, but didn’t show his anger to his daughter, fearing that she would take things too hard if they gave her too much pressure. So he threw his anger at his wife. “Why do you cry? We would be free from worry if she died.” Xiangyuan was still very angry, walking around in the hall-room, looking for something to pound, but couldn’t. There was an iron thermos bottle on the big table, but he was reluctant because it cost a few yuan②, it’s a piece of furniture.
Without anything to vent his anger on, Xiangyuan sat in the hall-room, smoking stuffily. But he couldn’t feel the same taste of smoking “Liangbianfen” as before. It was useless even to smoke the best cigarette because he was not in the mood. The mother looked at Xiangyuan, hoping he could give their daughter some advice,discussing for a better idea to solve the problem once it happened. But Xiangyuan only sat there like a Bodhisattva, with smoke billowing in front of him. Although he looked quiet as a Bodhisattva, Xiangyuan was considering and weighing in mind.
After smoking three cigarettes continuously, Xiangyuan had made up his mind.
There were three main rooms in the Brigade Department. The one in the middle was a meeting room, where the leaders had meetings and handle things. The one in the west was for accounting, with abacuses on the tables. At the end of the year, it was very busy there. All the work points had to be calculated for the seven production teams of 130 households, “Dividends” had to be distributed. It
was deemed to be busy with so much work to finish. What to do if too busy? Work overtime in the evening. If work couldn’t be completed in the day, then it had to be done in the evening. The one in the east was the office for the key political persons and the party secretary Xiangyuan, with one desk and one cane chair, both were half old, but not new, against the window in the south. There was a speaker on the desk. Xiangyuan sat at this old cane chair, giving important messages, announcements and instructions through the speaker. Those important instructions were not of his own, but from the commune or the county, like repeating the words of others like a parrot. Those announcements about farm work were what he learned from his own experience in farming for tens of years, plus the references and assistance of the agricultural technician, Genshui. The villagers were willing to listen to what Xiangyuan said. When his voice was spread out to every household through the speaker on the bamboo pole standing out of the window, the villagers got guidance of what to do.
Xiangyuan’s office was large, with a few file cabinets as partition, the external part was used as office and the internal area as a rest place with a frame bed. This special bed was not simple with many stories. Many people, especially women, had seen it. Those, who liked to gossip and who were in conflict with Xiangyuan, made up a doggerel to describe him:
Xiangyuan was a monk who didn’t follow the rituals,
With a gun in his crotch,
Wanted to have sex whenever he saw a woman,
People asked him why he did so,
He vowed to wipe out all the reactionaries.
“Playful monk” here had nothing to do with the same character in the book of <All Men Are Brothers>①. The villager used to call those men who liked to have sex with women secretly as “Playful monk”, meaning intriguing men. As to “Vowed to wipe out all the reactionaries” was a libretto by the main hero, Zirong Yang in the model opera of revolutionary Peking Opera<Outwit the Mighty Tiger Mountain>. Someone teased him by saying, “No wonder why the secretary wanted to “fight” whenever he saw a woman. In his eyes, all the women were reactionaries. It’s good to “fight” and to be wiped out.” “But too sorry for his gun② to work hard.” Others described his “Sexual happiness” as follows,
Xiangyuan is so popular,
Be a bridegroom every day,
Enter the bridal chamber every night.
Has mother-in-law everywhere,
And countless children.
These were only said and spread behind him. No one dared to say anything like this before him. No one had seen him having sex with any other woman besides his wife, let alone catching on the spot.
As the saying went, you had to see them both if you caught adultery in the act. Xiangyuan walked in the Dragon Lane, with his Zhongshan Suit, nodding politely to people and said hello, “Have you eaten?” “Yes.”
There was a row of four classrooms in the elementary school right across the Brigade Department, with a style of outside corridors. Two makeshift classes in Grade One and Three, Grade Two and Four. Added up to over forty pupils. The government assigned only one teacher in the school, working as both the principal and worker, teaching as well as ringing the bell. How could only one teacher handle all these? There were over forty pupils in four classes. He had to walk between two classrooms for one period of class, taking turns to teach two grades. Besides there were too much trouble to keep “Active” and “Quiet”. It was necessary to keep balance not only in one classroom, but also between two makeshift classes. Teacher Sun couldn’t stand this any more, so he went to the secretary to complain and to ask for help. “I won’t be able to continue if you can’t give me another teacher to help.” Teacher Sun was a little bit out of breath when he reported to the secretary, pushing up his black eye glass frame as he said. In fact, his black eye glasses didn’t often fall down. Only when he was nervous, he had nowhere to put his hands. Then he wanted to do something. Someone touched his cheek, someone touched his head. Teacher Sun pushed up his eye glasses.
Xiangyuan attached great importance to the school. As soon as Teacher Sun put forward the problem, without discussion with the main school in the commune, Xiangyuan made his decision on the spot that the village would provide a substitute teacher. This person would be given work points at the end of the year, without getting salary from the main school in the commune. Thus, Chunyu, who just graduated from the junior middle school, was selected by Xiangyuan as the substitute teacher. Xiangyuan selected Chunyu, not only as a substitute teacher.
Chunyu taught in the makeshift class of Grade One and Three. For the first few days, Teacher Sun didn’t let him teach in front of the teaching platform. It was not as good as the one in the complete elementary school, much worse than that in the elementary schools in the country town. It was irregular, not a formal one, mostly a small table in front of the pupils’ desks, with a box of chalk and a blackboard brush. A teacher stood in front of it and began to teach.
Chunyu first sat in the classroom and attended the classes for a few days before teaching. Teacher Sun rang the bell in the corridor with books under his arm,” Dingdang, dingdang, ……”①. Chunyu entered and sat with the pupils in the class of Grade One and Three. He sat at the end, looking at Sun, gesticulating with hands and feet, scolding some pupils sometimes for their disobedience. The monkey boy in the class saw Chunyu studying together with them, he felt funny. How could an adult study with the children?A few monkey pupils who were familiar with Chunyu turned back and hoped to talk with him, but were stopped by Teacher Sun, asked to stand against the wall as a punishment. This made Chunyu lose face. “I didn’t talk with them. You can just criticize them, instead of punishing them.” In fact, he was angry because Sun should have introduced him as the substitute teacher in the school. What was wrong with substitution? He was still a teacher. It’s embaQuite a few days later, Sun asked him to teach in front of the platform instead of sitting at the end of the classroom. The first period Chunyu taught was arithmetic and Chinese in the class of Grade One and Three. This was different from a single grade class. In a single grade class, Chinese was Chinese, Arithmetic was arithmetic. In a makeshift class, Chinese for Grade One, arithmetic for Grade Three. The older kids in Grade Three behaved better, so Chunyu first gave them a few sums in the arithmetic. Then he taught Chinese to Grade One, the topic was a poem <I love Tian An Men Square in Beijing>①. Before teaching, he sang it once softly, it was a popular song in his early childhood. The monkey boy in Grade Three wanted to laugh when he listened to Chunyu’s unpleasing voice. The boys wanted to laugh because this was Chinese lesson, not a music lesson. Was that funny? “Please be quiet for your work!” Chunyu pointed to those pupils who were secretly laughing. He didn’t knowhow to say this, but he learned that from Teacher Sun. Chunyu was satisfied to see the pupils in Grade One listening to him attentively. Then he began with some questions, “Do you know where The Tian An Men Square is?” “Yes, in Beijing.” The boys rushed to answer. Next he asked another question, “Where is Beijing?” “I don’t know.” “In a faraway place.” Some of them shook their head, some clever ones said “Far away.” To be honest, Even Chunyu didn’t know where Beijing was. He had never been there. How could he know?
But one thing he knew that Chairman Mao lived in Beijing. Chairman Mao gave out “highest directions” at Tian An Men Square to the people all over the country. At one time, Chunyu wondered how high was the “highest directions” . Was it high as long as standing at Tian An Men Square? Was Tian An Men Square very high? “The highest directions” were amazing. Every day, the speaker in the village was broadcasting them, sometimes were awaken by the speaker, shouting,” Attention,please. Now it is broadcasting the highest directions.” It was true that the highest directions were spread within the night.
Since he himself didn’t know where Beijing was, he couldn’t talk too much about it. Then he introduced Tian An Men Square. It was much easier because there were many pictures of it in the textbook. Chunyu still talked about it according to hisrrassing to ask him to sit with the kids in the class.own thoughts. At that time, there was no teaching method of heuristic education. It was just his own imagination. He thought intuitively that it would easier for the kids to remember the new words one by one only after they understood the whole text. It would be better for him to save more energy to teach.
Many years later, the heuristic teaching method became very popular, which a rural substitute teacher would never have thought of it.