let Rae and Lian go hungry anyway! Besides, these days many families in the big yard are buying rice from the peasants. The leaders have not said anything about it.”
That was true. So afterwards my parents dropped the subject once and for all. Aunty and I continued to visit the peasants at dusk, when our rations were about to run out. My parents gave Aunty more money for groceries and asked no questions. Neither did the latter report how she spent the money. She was completely trusted.
On other days Aunty got up at sunrise and went out with a bamboo basket. I knew she was going to the big stony bridge to buy frog legs, which people in Beijing called “field chicken” legs. In the sixties, the big yard was surrounded by large stretches of rice fields and lotus ponds, home for numerous frogs. In early spring I liked to watch tadpoles swim in the sparkling stream. For days they would remain the same. Then one morning, suddenly, little legs spread out from the sides of their bodies. Their color changed from black to grass green. They had become frogs, jumping, diving, swimming, and singing.
On starlit summer nights, they turned the rice paddies into an enormous open-air opera house. The fragrant breeze of rice and lotus flowers wafted their songs. The whole world seemed to be listening. By and by the moon came out from behind the willow trees. The grass was moved to tears. Night after night, I fell asleep to such noisy and peaceful lullabies.
If after 1958 there were hardly any birds twittering among trees in Beijing, during the famine the frogs were nearly wiped out. The peasant boys were out catching them every night with fishing rods. Before sunrise, the little singers were taken out of their bamboo prisons. First they were skinned alive. After that, their organs were torn out. Their bodies were washed in the stream and pieced together on sharp bamboo sticks. Soon the customers would arrive. Most of them were old women like Aunty. A string of five frogs would sell for around two yuan, a day's salary for a skilled worker in Beijing.
Since the trade was so profitable, the opera house was quickly emptied out. At night, a few scattered croaks reminded people of a big void. But I must confess that in those years when I saw Aunty come back with a bloody lotus leaf package, I was more glad than sad. For I knew that we would have a delicious dish at dinner, a meat dish! In fact, I not only ate the meat, I even chewed and devoured the smaller bones.
During the famine, Aunty not only bought food from various places, she produced food as well. That made her very busy once again. So busy that she no longer had time to study. With the help of Father and me, she reclaimed two pieces of land in the big yard. Each was a little over a hundred square feet large. Next she set up fences to separate our land from the sacred territories of our neighbors. Then we debated about what to plant. Eventually Aunty put in corn because it was high-yielding and sturdy. When the corn sprouted, she sowed beans among them to utilize the land to the utmost. After the beans grew up, she was hardly home. The crops had to be watered and taken care of. But most of the time she was simply keeping an eye on them.
Not far from our garden plots were chicken coops made of broken bricks and asphalt felt. One of them belonged to us. Watching over those feathered creatures with wings and legs was even more difficult than guarding the crops. One day a hen named Phoenix Head was missing. Aunty and I went all over the big yard to look for it. “Gu-gu-daa! Gu-gu-daa—!” Aunty kept calling until her voice grew hoarse. But there was no answer. The hen seemed to have vanished into thin air.
This made Aunty very upset. After three hours, we came back home utterly exhausted. But in less than ten minutes, she jumped up and went out again. This time by herself she searched all the garden plots and peeped into other people's chicken coops as well. After dark she had to give the hen up for lost. When she returned home, she looked as if she had lost a child.
Perhaps the hen was like a child to her. She bought the chicks from a peasant when they were tiny, too small for anyone to tell if they would grow up to be hens or roosters. Raising them in a famine was no easy job. Aunty and I went all over the big yard to gather edible herbs. After we carried them back, she would wash the greens, chop them into fine pieces, cook them, and carefully mix in some tiny bits of corn flour. In addition, she tried to catch worms for the brood. Only four of the chicks turned out to be hens, and Aunty gave each one a pretty name. All were laying eggs for her faithfully. Now suddenly one of them was missing. Most likely it was cooking in someone else's wok, almost ready to be served as a delicious dish. This thought made Aunty so indignant that she lost her appetite and cursed the thief under her breath for a whole evening.
9
A Vicious Girl
If the Great Leap Forward and the famine were like tidal currents that swept over China, affecting the lives of tens of millions, my private life in those years was like an undercurrent. The anxiety and despair I kept to myself.
All my trouble started with Lian, my younger brother, who was such a perfect boy. At the age of three he had large brown eyes, plump rosy cheeks, and soft black hair. When he smiled, tiny dimples floated up. All adults loved kids with such “wine nests,” which unfortunately I did not have. Lian's good looks must have given him confidence. Thus he was never shy and the one thing he enjoyed most was to socialize with people. On the bus, in the street, at home, in his kindergarten, at stores . . . everywhere he went, he was well liked.
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