the Tangshan Quake

THE TANGSHAN QUAKE


by Ma Huai-rong (马怀荣



Preface

That is change
In Usage of the Chinese Idioms Dictionary
There are terms as vast seas and mulberry fields
They exchange their positions in time and space
Legend goes it that in my hometown Penglai
There was once an Aunt Ma, a goddess
Who was too old to recall her age
When asked how old she was
She just replied: I don’t know
I have only such pictures in my memory
For three times the vast seas have changed into mulberry fields
And the mulberry fields have turned back into vast seas

Legend was too far and folklore imaginative
In the limited experiences of my mortal life
It is true that I have witnessed great vicissitudes
In nature, in economy, in politics and in spiritual life
That was in the Mao Tse-tung Era
For example:
On a purple and dying evening in the autumn of 1976
Just on the day previous to the death of Mao Tse-Tung
In a refugee camp of the Tangshan Quake survivors
In the close suburbs of the resort city of Qingdao
A white-haired old man, wailing and weeping,
Was telling his own story:
Sixty years ago my family ruined in a quake
Except that I myself escaped
When I was a little boy around nine
And now my family ruined again in the quake
And only I myself survived, around sixty-nine
Old and ailing, like a candle butt
Guttering in a wild wind
That was change


Chapter One

July 28, 1976 was an extraordinary day to remember
At three o’clock, x minutes sharp
One hundred kilometers deep in the bosom of the northern globe
A stratum of the earth suddenly broke down
The energies equaled to 1000 Hiroshima atomic bombs
Were released and caused a devastating earthquake
In Tangshan, with 240,000 deaths and 150,000 injured

That was an eventful autumn and a troubled time
Which confused and baffled even the astrologers
A shower of stone meteorites had hit China in the northeast
Rivers had flooded the fields in some southern provinces
Citizens in their old ages first sensed the uneasiness
Fearing that some tremendous changes were to knock at the door
The Chinese people felt it natural to worry about Mao’ health

The Chinese nation never wanted for heroes in history
But each hero was adored usually after a miserable death
A nation without heroes was a flock of wretched creatures
A people who did not adore their heroes was a gang of slaves
Hero worship was needed to attract the nationals together
The Chinese were lucky at the turn of the nineteenth century
On December 26, the Christmas Day on western calendar
To usher in a Mao Tse-Tung

The east is red
The sun rises
China has brought forth a Mao Tse-Tung
He works for the interests of the people
He is the savior of the Chinese
Such were the lyrics of a popular Chinese anthem
In the depths of the hearts of all nationalities
And sung in the spacious space
Carried with the first man-made satellite

That was a time when giants were needed
Hence jumped out the giants
When heroes were wanted
Hence arose the heroes
The Great Cultural Revolution was a sacred campaign
To create god that was most admirable and adorable
Long live Chairman Mao had become a greeting
That was to substitute hello or good morning
The Chinese in those days all went mad or crazy
The flags were red so were their eyes
The students and the villagers believed without any exception
That Chairman Mao could lived up to 150 years old

That was during the Great Cultural Revolution
A red and hot and blazing time
An era full of festival and of fiery and of fever
The louder speakers on the electric poles
Or the trees of different species and in varied areas
Pronounced at the same time and the same pitch
Through every block and every village
Across a territory of 9,600,000 square kilometers
Conveying the voice and the instructions from Peking
The heart of the People’s Republic of China
Of Mao Tse-tung, the greatest leader
And also the grandest king in China’s history

In the year of the Tangshan Quake
I was going up to twenty years old
With my comrades I was in a state of serfdom
Working and toiling and growing in the fields
Of a People’s Commune in Shandong Peninsular
It was a hard time for a young man with ambition
My dream of college had been shattered by the Revolution
On my way home after my graduation from middle school
I wept and sobbed and I cried
For books, for teachers and for further study
My tears did not move God if there would be one
Since I was a peasant boy bound to the earth
To work the earth out was surely my lot and duty

I had made up my mind to study by myself
I was good at mathematics and used to get full marks
So I went to buy a mathematic textbook
To my dismay, I could not make clear even the examples
I got to realize that I must try another way
Liberal arts are easy for self study
Why didn’t I take up the subjects in the curriculum?
So with the shabby money earned by the whole family
For eight months from wheat planting to wheat harvesting
I bought a radio and began my broadcasting English course
Study itself for me was indeed a pleasure
But I had to endure and suffer
At that time VOA was a confirmed enemy radio station
And to learn English somehow meant high treason

I was crazy for reading and learning
Everything from newspaper, pamphlets and the classics
Everything in printed form I came across
I was lucky to have a nice neighbor
That owned a small-sized family library
One of whose hostesses was Clouds
Once my primary school teacher

In the year when the Tangshan Quake came
I and my generation were called educated youth
Chairman Mao said: It is quite necessary
For you educated young men
To go to the rural areas in the countryside
And receive the reeducation
From the poor and lower middle peasants

I was among them and began to see
The life and the world with my own eyes
On the day when the quake came
I was in a sound sleep in small hours
In a little rural village thousands of miles
Beyond the centre of the quake
My family and the neighbors were awakened and shocked
We felt the horror aroused between the shakes
Men and women, old and young
Stirred from their sleeping, driven, scattered
(Of course, those who met death in dreamland in Tangshan
Went on sleep peacefully forever without disturbance
And fear and pain and daytime worries and troubles
And were free from the endless bother of political struggles)
Hurriedly fled outside of their flats and houses
Shouting, crying, howling, weeping and chatting

I thought the war had broken out with the Soviet Union
I was dreaming of an atomic bomb exploding at backyard
I was about to throw a grenade to the enemy battalion
Suddenly an invisible hand pushed me down to an abyss
I stood on one hand of the clock to check the time
Somehow it turned rapidly around my eyes
I grabbed with me something not my son but a pillow
I cursed my husband in dream, mistaken
Because he was so aggressive that he always troubled
And wakened me in my sleep…

It was about daybreak and it began to rain
Clouds found herself naked all of a sudden
She began shrilling and covered her breasts with both hands
And she got even more embarrassed
That more covering was not possible
All the dwellers in the neighborhood at once realized
That they had been all naked and gone back to the primitive times
It was the worst natural disaster in the twentieth century
In the history of the People’s Republic of China
Tangshan, the heavy industrial city was in a few minutes
Leveled completely to the ground

Oh, Tangshan, the poor capital city of coal
Was dead and to wait for a would-be reborn
Earth stumbled there
Time curved there
Space deformed there
And wonders and marvels were to mushroom there
Of life and death
Between ruin and resurrection

The quake stirred the residents and brought them together
In a distant seaside village across the Bohai Bay
Rains were pouring down night and day
We pitched up shacks and tents covered with plastic bags
For more than two weeks we missed the familiar faces
Of the sun and the moon and the stars
Terrors ran through from village to village
Rumors flew like bats from window to window
The goatherd reported with terror
That his rams and ewes refused to mate
The half blind accountant of the production brigade
Measured the depth of water in a well
And he chanced to get a hint from the Mother Earth
He predicted that such strangeness and change
Occurred only when a dynasty was to go to its end
And the old monarch was about to take departure
Without any bulletin on wall
And he was taken away on the very day
A few days later he returned to the village
With lips broken and teeth missing

The village head was a good and honest man
Wearing his straw hat and a plastic bag as raincoat
Knocking from door to door conveyed the recent news:
A new quake is coming and is sure to come
Tonight, tonight and it was tonight
Just at midnight and around the courtyard

In my next door tent was a lady, Clouds lying awake
Whom I called sister-in-law after she had married my street
I had very good senses and can perceive and discern
The faintest noise when a beetle rustled through the leaves
And I could guess right and picture the scene
How she was turning left and right in a graceful gesture
Gently beside her two daughters
Her parents were snobs and she married fame and fortune
Her husband was lucky to have an excellent mother
Lilac, a retired middle school math teacher

Clouds was worrying about Timber, her husband
Who had quitted his class and took a train to Tianjin
From there to walk on foot to Tangshan
To find if Lilac and Lily were still alive
Lily was his only sister, a cadre
From Tangshan Agricultural Research Academy
Who married, not following fashion, late in her life
She had just given birth to a boy, at the age of forty
And Lilac waited on her during the first month

Clouds expected her mother-in-law an early return
She would rather Lilac care for her own daughters
Lilac had got a letter from Clouds as an ultimatum
She dared not delay or make any postponement
Immediately she bought the ship ticket back to Penglai
Tidying up, she was busy planning her return trip
Out of gratitude and kindness
Lily urged her mother to stay a few days
And she went to refund the ship ticket
Things often happened by coincidence
With the ticket changed and the money refunded
Came along the quake, the devastating earthquake

Beyond my tent and inside another mosquito net
I could hear the gentle sighs of Clouds
If my arms were long enough
I could touch her finger tips and stroked her hair
I had been familiar with the smell of her body
The fine odors of her tender skin were giving out
Through the peaceful wind and the quiet rain
Sniffing such familiar fragrance had been once my childhood joy
And it wavered my heart and stirred my imaginations

By and by, in the state of a trance
The school days in my boyhood loomed in my brains


Chapter Two

I loved Clouds, my primary school teacher
Pretty, clean, with smiling eyes and charming lips
As if was Queen the first in my childhood education
Despite the fact that she maltreated me
When a new calculation in arithmetic was being done
She found me a fault and dismissed me outside
And let me sit in the sun making up for my homework
When I finished and entered the room
A black curtain dropped before me
I got dazzled and could not see anything

Sometimes I was blamed for other’s mistakes
I wondered but I could not understand
The price and cost of love were beyond my apprehension
The truth was that our two families were different
Contradicting, and of the two antagonistic classes
Class struggles were put into first importance
Children’s favors came not from psychology
But from appreciation, interest and curiosity
For childhood punishments I had a strange habit
Father’s whipping and beating I could not bear
But tortures from the teacher I accepted as fun
Maybe it was from the defects of human race
Deeply rooted in boy’s inclination for the opposite
Sometimes the more she maltreated me
The more I enjoyed her beauty and fragrance

I can still recall to my mind this day
The morning my father first sent me to school
In the west chamber of the guesthouse of a landlord
That was to become the village school library
Presented by college students sent by Mao Tse-tung in 1963
To start the socialist educational movement
In the year after my school admission
I was not up to six years old then
And the crotch of my trousers was open

Father and teacher were conversing about Lenin
Father was so eloquent and talkative
Clouds was so active and expressive
I remember I was lying prone on a wooden chair
Carved with delicate and intricate designs
And covered with an ancient layer of dark brown paint
The threshold for admission was not high
Just come in and sit down and listen
On condition that the child was willing to sit still
And his family could afford a bench or a stool

The entrance examination was not a question
Parents had taught me at home how to read and write
I had learned more than four hundred characters
And knew the way of number addition to itself
The facilities in the school was quite simple
A wooden plank rested on bricks at both ends
Stools for seats were self made and of different sizes

The first day at school I was deemed a bad boy
When the first period was over and the bell rang
I missed home and ran all the way, shouting mother
I returned after the bell for the second period had rung
Only to find a row of naughty big boys were shut outside
For deliberately breaking the class disciplines
With Log as their chief
They were delighted in repeating the same grade
I was young and new and innocent
But was ordered to stand with them as a punishment

Please don’t think that Clouds was a demon
She was young and wished for a better future
She and her immediate members despised my father
For he was expelled from the Communist Party
My father was self-confident, too confident
To know his own weakness deep in human nature
He took great delight in showing off his knowledge
And his experiences and his philosophies
In truth he had gone through vicissitudes in life
And actually saw much of the world
He used to get intoxicated in his gifts and strategies
Failed to detect the daggers hid behind a sweet smile

My father was a veteran during the Anti-Japanese War
The war for the Chinese to get united for salvation
Soldiers were as many as men
As a matter of fact they differed from each other
Some served as long as they raised pigs
Or cooked meals and planted crops
Owing to his smartness, diligence and devotion
For only five months he served in the basic level
He served in one of the P.L.A. headquarters

Destiny was determined not by design but by personality
My father failed to grasp the opportunity of history
He went to a dead end in his political career
In 1951 when the Korean War was going on
He was a company commander in charge of
Training and sending the new recruits from Yantai
To Dandong, a northeast city on the borderline
The new soldiers had got aboard on the train
The commissar gave my father a letter
A home letter by his father to the effect that
In this life and this world he should never have the chance
To see his mother with his own eyes
On reading the letter my father wept
He regretted that he had not bid his mother farewell
When he fled to join the Eighth Route Army
Led by the Communist Party and MaoTse-Tung

He asked for a leave but was rudely turned down
Military emergency refused any personal affection
If you be a service man
You would not be a man
My father was a filial son and loyal to his family
Tempered in war and chastened by hardship
He became courageous and resolute with wisdom
He weighed up his military career and at last saw his sense
Since whatever he wanted to do he must do well
At a moonless night he stole into a truck
That transported military supplies past his home village
He felt on his shoulders doubled responsibilities
His service was only to give his mother a better life
For mother’s health and happiness he would give up anything
What made the matters worse was not what he had done
But his mind so strong, resolute and undaunted
Shakespeare was right in his saying
The evil that men do lives after them
The good is oft interred with their bones

In my boyhood I had to pay for my father
In those days classes and politics were most sensitive
Around the villages and among the farmers
Landlords and scoundrels we had many in number
But a traitor to the revolutionary cause was rarity of rarities
I was extraordinarily clever in the schools I entered
No one could beat me in quizzes and examinations
Father loved me and took me as pupil of his eyes
So a misfortune on me brought the enemies more satisfactions
Oppressions among boys were sometimes more cruel
Once a bully hit my nose and it was bleeding
One of his gang encouraged him not to be feared
Saying that it didn’t matter for his father was a deserter
I have to seek asylum and at last I found one
He was a bully who was willing to stand firm on my side
His father had changed his name for each term
From Spirit, Scholar to Flag
In the hope that he would not stay in the same grade
Flag was three years older and we were relatives
His eldest sister married my junior uncle
Flag became my king and I was reduced to his subject
Bullying and humiliation from the outside were not permitted
But he had the privilege of torturing me at will and at ease
Once I did not know why I made him annoyed
Flag knocked me down to the ground
And pinched to smash the glands in my armpit
Whenever I complained the injustice to Clouds
She seldom spoke for me but glanced with cold eyes
But from her looks I could read nothing but beauty
For which I would rather have my skin skinned twice

Clouds had a sweet voice and her songs I can still sing
Mountains upon mountains stretch in the distance
Clouds over clouds are curling and lingering
Terraced lands overlap each other in layers of green
Folk songs are flowing and flying with the wind
Who could deny that my village is nice and fine
Wind of songs flow and fly with the spring breeze

Contrary to the class’s expectations
There rose catlike noises from a classroom corner
At high pitches and with thrilling quivers
It was Log, son of the village warehouse keeper
By dint of his sweeping family connections
He bullied the weak and the young in school
And even found fault with the teachers and the masters
To that the whole class began to respond
Squawking, squalling, squeaking and squealing
Roar and laughter rose up and up, on and on
Nearly drowning the voice of Clouds
And the singing she conducted went out of tune of harmony
Clouds was hot tempered and got extraordinarily angry
She asked Log to stand up and come to the blackboard
Without fear but with honor Log jumped and jotted to the front
Clouds held Log tightly by the ear
And slapped him in the face
Log was annoyed to have lost his face in class
He cried and cursed and called Clouds names
Clouds became flustered and exasperated
She would never stop until she had beaten Log to death
Feather duster broke and the broom and teaching rod
To make the matter even worse
Log became desperate and he rose up to fight back
Clouds was crazy with anger
She lost her reason and could not grasp the proper moment
She removed a stool leg with which to hit Log’s bottoms
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight…
With a long wail Log fell to the ground, breathless
Clouds revealed her essence and was mistaken in judging
Whether Log was pretending to be dead
Strength increased under her arms and pal ms

Log was diagnosed as injured by the County Hospital
His father took Log with the stool leg
On a bicycle and wheeled him to the Education Bureau
The case was rare in the commune and handled with emergency
Within a week came an official notice
Clouds was dismissed and went home farming
She fell down somehow from the colorful rainbow to the abyss
But her successful marriage was to make up for everything


Chapter Three


Tangshan was ruined in a few minutes
Tens of thousands of lives were buried alive
But there were those who were so lucky
That they used to be described
As having not butchered cows from their old generations
During the collapse of the flats and buildings
A double bed flew to the middle of the street
From the third floor window that was shaken to drop
As if the gravitation ceased to work at the moment
The weight lost itself into another universe
The bed landed on the ground safe and sound
The wife blamed her husband for his movement in sleep
While the snores of her husband varied in pitches and tunes
She shut up the door of the mosquito net
And was about to go on with her sleep
Suddenly she heard somebody bustling nearby
Who was so bold as to obtrude upon their room
She felt for the light switch in the darkness
A gust of wind blew up their mosquito net
Suddenly the couple heard quake was shouted
Hurriedly they rose up and jumped out of bed
Only to find their third-year boy missing
They began to calling their boy
To their astonishment
The lucky little boy was sitting on other’s roof singing
The couple lost no time holding the boy in arms
They checked up his body and their own
There were no wounds from head to toe
And not a chafe on their skin

But Lilac and Lily were not so lucky


Chapter Four

A few minutes after the quake had occurred
A helicopter from Peking where Chairman Mao dwelled
Was flying through the air of Tangshan suburbs
Hovering, gliding, circling and whirling
The aircraft was operated by Strong, the pilot
A commander in the P.L.A. air force
His mission was to search and find the centre of the quake
Preparing for the emergency aid by airdrop
Strong tried every way to contact the ground
But there was neither any reaction nor response
Strong went on with his search
He would never give up until the centre had been aimed at

Strong’s heart was heavy with remorse
And he felt on his shoulders doubled responsibilities
Lily, his girl friend years before was living in this city
Was she alive?
Under which roof was she buried?
How had she been getting on these years?
Was she married?
Could she have pardoned him?
Rain clouds like wadding cotton covered the autumn sky
Man of courage felt like crying but choked with tears

Lily was an outstanding girl in a hundred
A campus belle in all the schools she had entered
When she was a senior in Nanjing
She was attracted by Strong, a brilliant young man
He studied to be an airman in an aviation institute
Strong was as handsome as Lily was beautiful
They fell in love at first sight
In an early spring day in an outing
Under an ancient cedar tree at the Observatory
They talked and talked and talked
From climate to forest and then to distant outer space
About everything, about anything, about all things
Two hearts clashed and the dynamism of the youth burst out
Prompted by the whim of the moment
Each preferred to engage in the other’s major
The power of the sexual attraction even made the clock
In the Observatory Tower gained and sometimes lost

Strong was the most promising student in his institute
And trained in the first group to serve the air force
Besides his personal political constitution
The identities of the family members were of first importance
Their love doomed to be abortive and did not last long
Strong parted reluctantly with lily
He chose his future at the cost of love
That was on another spring day in an outing



Lily buried her face in her hands
When she raised her head he had left
And returned to his seat and flew to the blue sky
From the day on lily began wearing a bonnet
She hated to look up into the sky
As soon as she heard the sound of an aircraft
She began to feel agitated and restless and uneasy

The tender sex usually show little interest in politics
They live just for beauty, for love and for sacrifice
Lily never knew why politics chased after her
Like a savage fly and a crazy dog
There was an old saying in China:
A beauty often has an unfortunate life
On a hot Monday morning before her graduation
She was called to the dean’s office
A large envelope was laid before her eyes
Lily was sensitive enough to know what had happened
But she was too naïve to predict what would happen


Chapter Five


Timber’s carriage was anchored midway
He was momentarily dazzled by the scene
And he saw with great shock and terror
That the rails were twisted and the roadbed collapsed
All services of communication were paralyzed
Refugees were scattered everywhere
Thirsty and hungry and sleepy
He sat among them by the roadside for a rest
Faintly he heard planes booming above the clouds
And saw trucks loaded with P.L.A. men dash in dust
In the direction of Tangshan, the quake stricken city

Timber was reticent by nature
He taught arithmetic at a primary school
Mathematics made one concise and precise
He never uttered a more word when the logic was clear
His haggard appearance showed doubled sympathies
His worried eyes would never betray his identities
Roaming with the refugees he listened to their stories:

On July 28, three o’clock sharp
Number 40 passenger train from the northeast arrived at Tangshan
For a short pause of a few minutes
Some got off and some went aboard and the train marched on
Among those alighted was a middle-aged women Stick
Who came to Tangshan where her husband was working
To give birth to their second baby
Stick brought her elder daughter with her
As soon as they arrived home for a rest
The earthen bed began to shake
Chop, her husband, was quick enough to react
The idea that flashed across his mind was
That the war had broke out with the Soviet Union
He was a militiaman and had once received military training
He wakened his wife and pulled his daughter
By the braids and ran out with her in armpit
The women survivors gathered around to look after Stick
Stick calculated with her fingers and announced
When should the baby be due was not at hand
Just at the moment she felt a pain in the belly
A slender little leg of the baby had come out
Stick was sent to a first aid clinic by the P.L.A.
An army official said that emergency treatments were given
To the injured and not for a woman in labor
Because the facilities were so simple and conditions poorer
Under normal circumstances the hope of survival
Was first of all given to the mother and not to the baby
Nevertheless the surgeons put Stick on a wooden plank
They had never been midwives but they tried
Through hours of hard labor the women was successfully
Delivered of a healthy baby

Just a few minutes before the quake came
Another baby was awakened and made troubles
Under a roof of the Agricultural Academy
Lily was awakened by the cries of her newly-born boy
The boy was noisy and naughty
He had enormous ears and a square mouth
And took great delight in daytime sleep
Never slept peacefully through the night
Bow, his father, the amateur violinist
Had to change his performing position while carrying him
And held him in both hands with a slight slope
As if he was reading an ancient thread-bound Chinese book

Lily rose and milked him and put him in Lilac’s arms
That was a warm cradle with soft folk rhymes
The baby was named earth from which human beings come from
And to which her mother had devoted
And for which she had worked
And suffered and was determined not to give up
And the little soul’s existence add weight and interest
To a family that formed not of love but of need

Timber’s feelings towards lily was complicated
Her sister had brought about a lot of troubles
To herself, to himself and to their family
The most worst of all was that
Their mother was likely to have lost her life in the quake
Timber trudged hard among the throngs and the crowds
Of the refugees but in the wrong direction
Others fled with backs towards the city
While Timber walked just to the city centre
Among those who pushed their luck from outside
To search for and to find their blood relatives


Chapter Six

At the intervals of the sorrowful autumn rains
Clouds asked me to help her fasten her tent
That was under four different trees
One corner of the tent was fixed to a chestnut tree
Before night the rope was tied properly
Strange to say,
At midnight the rope untied by itself
And such cases occurred over and over again
Clouds was a late comer and she did not know
The mysteries of the creation
The tree was planted by Fig, Timber’s grandma
She despised the Clouds’ and refused to acknowledge
The validity of Timber’s marriage
Fig had passed away years before
Somehow she could still make her power felt

Clouds was short but had a strong will
She was determined to have the knot tied
Yet she failed as many times as she tried
She became annoyed and began to weep

The chestnut tree was about my age
And I took it as my intimate friend
For under which many deals were done
Between Fig and me
Fig was born in the evening of the Qing Dynasty
She had lived longer than her most of her generations
And was lucky to have seen the vicissitudes of life
Fig came from a distinguished family
And maintained her maternal name after her marriage

In my childhood memories
Fig was too old to walk properly
Whenever she was moving
She had double crutches under her armpits
The lower part of her body waved
In enormous large robes just like pendulums
Each morning and each evening
She would sit on the threshold or by a tree
Watch the boys passing and going
She had given special attentions to Log
Who came over to be spying and scouting
Log’s elder brother was dean of the village
He acted willfully in tasting fruits in every garden
The plants in Fig’s garden were exuberant
From apple, grape, pear to peach
Especially mulberry, white mulberry
Rarely seen in the immediate vicinity

I should say Fig’s garden was a myth
The story went around the neighborhood
That it was a sacred land
Every spring Fig planted beans into the soil
While in autumn she harvested melons instead of beans
Such hearsay I never readily believed
But Flag assured me that his father did see it done
In the wall of my backyard I kept a secret passage
That was made by rains and snows year in year out
Father blocked it up with the bottom of a broken urn
From the narrow crack cats and mice
And sometimes I could travel freely
Fig’s garden hence became my promised land
I traded the secret to Flag for a handful of popcorn
And a promise of safer and more effective protection

Summer season came around with an exuberant garden
All plants and wild herbs were growing luxuriantly
Making a mysterious forest for little beings
A mimic military campaign was then carried out
By Flag and I to look into the fauna and flora
In the bosom land of corn and sorghum
Melons and melons suddenly broke into our sight
To our joy and dismay,
Some smelled sweet and fragrant but had bitter tastes
None of them were really water melons
They must be of different species
At the outside being their distant relatives

Flag knitted his brows and a stratagem hit him
A crow was crowing above his head on a branch
Flag claimed his patent for the new discovery
And his authority over the nomenclature of the beings
He took out his home-made dagger and wielded
Under his feet was an enormous east melon
With which Flag insisted on something being done
That was indeed a strange and original idea
He risked universal condemnation to operate on melon
He cut a triangular chip and hollowed the content
He moved his bowels inside and sealed the gap

I was not useless in satisfying my own curiosity
With an iron nail I carved an old poem
On the round smooth skin of a middle-sized melon
Bright was the moon light in front of my bed
Like a layer of thin frost on the ground
Raising my head I gaze at the light moon
Lowering my eyes I can’t help growing homesick

Autumn turned around with the harvest season
Fig smiled with a beam of joy at the big round melons
The one with scriptures did not draw her attention
When she with her kitchen knife cut open the biggest melon
The fowl smell stung her nostril so badly
At the top of her anger she began to laugh and shout
Damn you naughty little boys
I’ll skin you
Oh, no, no, no,
Something good should be reserved
And repaired and kept in good condition
You tender hands may scratch my itches
Your little cock was indeed a good toy

When my family first moved to the street
And we became fig’s neighbor
I was afraid of Fig at the first sight
As if a country rat occasionally met a royal cat
But she smiled at me and kindly addressed me
She even offered me something good to eat

When I was young boy
I took incredible interest in fig’s fantastic story
About her village and her marriage and her storage
……

It seemed to me she always had cakes in store
When her candies got melting and cakes moldy
Secretly she beckoned me to the chestnut tree
Passed me a package and whispered in my ear
Never let your father know it nor let my family members

Fig alone had a large house to dwell in
That stood lonely in a large garden
Lilac, her daughter-in-law with Timber’s little family
Lived in the opposite yard in their respective houses
Fig was old and easily lay down with illness
She had a headache and she wanted painkillers
She was exhausted and she felt like smoking
She wanted to have her letters posted
But there was nobody nearby at her disposal

Therefore she asked me to go shopping for her
The country store was not very far
About one kilometer away westwards
Each time I did something useful for her
As tips she would give me a five-cent coin
In the palm of poor boy growing with goats
The coin was round and large and heavy
One cent meant a pencil or a piece of paper
Six cents could buy a ping-pang ball
I took great joy in running errands for fig
In school we were taught to learn from Lei Feng
To help the aged, the weak and the disabled
But father reproached me for Fig not belonging to that kind

In my diary I kept down my good deeds
But Clouds never gave me praise in class
Instead she hinted that something ancient
Under the old lady’s roof was missing
Had she known her own fate in her virginity
That she was to become hostess of that garden
So it was national for her to deem any outside
Support or assistance mere obstruction or invasion

In the eye of her own generation
Fig was licentious and bore a notorious fame
Among the village folk and legend
Willow, fig’s husband was much talked about
But nobody knew where had gone
According to Fig’s imaginative narrative
Willow left the garden when her third baby was young
Without any disaccord and without saying goodbye
He went aboard on a ship powered by wind
To northeast China where another lady was waiting
There were some villagers migrated to the Northeast
Year in year out, none of them saw his shadow
Fig had a cloud of doubt in her mind
So she went to a fortune-teller for help
The teller drew a picture on a piece of paper:
A drop of water in the ocean
A plant of tree in the forest

With the assistance of her parental home
Fig successfully brought up the three children:
One daughter and two sons
He named her eldest son Pole after his father
And her second son Pillar
Her only daughter she treasured best
And she named her Sunflower

Lilac married Pole because he was a literature genius
His composition book was always lying in class
Above and across those of the others
By sheer force of genius and at tender age
He went to a big newspaper run by KMT
And ascended from a common editor to editor-in-chief
Pole was once a student of Lu Xun by correspondence
Deeply influenced by his styles and way of thinking

Pillar, the second, too swayed by his mother’s influence
He quit school and went with a dagger to the Northeast
To seek his father and duel with him
He left young and was never seen before Fig’s death
Nor was any letter of correspondence
Sunflower was Fig’s only daughter
After graduation from middle school
She taught voluntarily at the village school
Unable to bear her mother’s way of communication
She roamed far and flew high to Shanghai
The teaching tool she made was preserved in the village school
Cloud admired everything of her and became her successor

Fig’s family members were by no means ordinary
The secrets got exposed one day before
The Great Cultural Revolution in 1964
When a group of college student came publicizing
The instructions of Chairman Mao
Pole, Pillar, Sunflower and Lilac were all KMT members
Pillar once worked for the Japanese invaders
And was a war criminal and held in prison
In history book of Chinese modern parties
To become CPC members was not difficult
So long as you do not fear sweat and blood
The admission to the membership was out of question
While membership for KMT was quite different
Fortune and fame and culture were necessary and essential

Pole, Pillar and Sunflower went their respective ways
One died young, the other missing and the last in Shanghai
Fig had a very good memory
She could even tell things of her last life
Once she showed me a toy of iron rings of varied sizes
She played with one hundred and sixty years ago
She bore in her mind the correct addresses of her children
She used to dictate a letter to me
For me to note down and to send to the post office
But she got replies or responses only from Sunflower