My Childhood Friend, Yang Xianzhi

Yang Xianzhi was my neighbor when I was a child at Zhijiang Teachers’ College. It was probably around 1962. We lived in a row of one-story houses near the school entrance, beside the gymnasium at the eastern end of the campus. His family lived in the southernmost house, and mine was in the middle. I was five years old at the time, and he was one year older. There were several other children of school employees, and we were always playing together. Since Xianzhi and I were neighbors, we spent the most time with each other.

We loved playing in the gymnasium. It stood right across from our houses, about twenty meters away. It had originally been a temple. At one end was a round doorway, while the other end was open. Faint Buddhist paintings could still be seen on the walls. The building contained climbing ladders, climbing ropes, mats, parallel bars, horizontal bars, a vaulting horse, uneven bars, and other equipment. It was where the students took gymnastics classes.

Normally, no one supervised the place, so we could go in and practice whenever we wanted. We somersaulted, climbed ropes and ladders, chased one another, and played all sorts of games.

Xianzhi’s father, Yang Guoxing, was a teacher from neighboring Xinhuang County. He was in his thirties at the time and worked in academic administration at Zhijiang Teachers’ College. He had grown up in the countryside and most of his relatives still lived there.

His mother’s surname was Tang. She was an elementary-school teacher in her twenties and came from Zhijiang town. Her family home was on Xiaobei Street, just outside the school gate, about two hundred meters away. I heard that Teacher Tang had originally been a student at Zhijiang Teachers’ College. She had fallen in love with Teacher Yang, who was much older than she was, and they married after she graduated.

Teacher Tang was young, lively, and beautiful, with a lovely figure and a sweet voice. Whenever I happened to see her, she would greet me with a broad smile. I always felt close to her.

Perhaps because of their considerable age difference and their incompatible personalities, they argued frequently after they married. Sometimes, after a quarrel, she would return to her parents’ home and stay away for several days. I remember seeing her leave home with her luggage on several occasions.

Before long, Xianzhi started elementary school. He attended the affiliated elementary school next to Zhijiang Teachers’ College, also known as Lotus Pond Elementary School. At the time, I thought going to elementary school was something very important. Whenever Xianzhi told me about school, I listened with great interest.

We still played together after school. Besides the gymnasium, we liked playing beside the small pond next to it.

In winter, the pond would freeze. We liked using little sticks to push pieces of ice onto the bank and hold them in our hands. In spring, there were many tadpoles in the water. We came every day to watch them grow until they turned into little frogs.

 

In summer, duckweed floated on the surface, and frogs would occasionally leap from the grass along the bank into the pond. We liked finding a small, thin, flat piece of tile or stone and skimming it across the water. It would glide forward along the surface, sending up a series of increasingly dense circles until it finally lost momentum and sank. We competed to see whose stone could make the most rings.

What I remember most vividly was frog fishing, something we had learned from the adults. We would find a stick or bamboo pole a little over a meter long and tie a piece of string to one end. Then we would find a pumpkin blossom, pinch off a small piece, roll it into a lump about the size of a broad bean, and tie it to the other end of the string.

We would swing the pumpkin-blossom bait into the grass and gently shake the stick or bamboo pole. The yellow lump would bounce up and down among the grass. A frog, thinking it was an insect, would leap up and swallow it.

Before the frog realized what had happened, while it still had the pumpkin blossom firmly in its mouth, we would jerk the stick upward with one hand, lifting the frog out of the grass, and quickly grab it with the other.

Because there was no hook, as there is when fishing, even the slightest delay—or a failure to catch the frog in time—would allow it to release the bait and escape. Adults found it difficult enough; for us children it was even harder. I remember that we tried several times, but I cannot recall whether we ever actually caught a frog.

The following year, I also started school, while Xianzhi entered the second grade.

Not long after the autumn term began, one afternoon after school, we went to play beside the little pond again.

Suddenly, Xianzhi asked me, “Lewei, what is three times three?”

I thought for a moment. Three threes—weren’t those two threes? “It should be six,” I answered.

Xianzhi looked completely puzzled. “My teacher says three times three is nine, but my father says it’s six. I don’t know which of them is right.”

I had just started first grade and understood only addition, so I was just as confused as Xianzhi.

Whenever relatives from Teacher Yang’s rural hometown came to visit, they brought local specialties. The one I remember most vividly was ciba, a kind of sticky rice cake.

Ciba is a traditional local food. It is usually made from glutinous rice, though millet can also be used. First, the glutinous rice is soaked overnight and then steamed. Beeswax is melted in vegetable oil until the oil turns yellow. The mixture is used to coat the inside of a stone mortar about a foot and a half in diameter.

A basin of steamed glutinous rice is then poured into the mortar. Two people each take a wooden mallet with both ends coated in the yellow oil and alternately pound the rice until it becomes a sticky mass resembling dough.

Pounding such a large mass of glutinous rice requires excellent coordination. Even with the oil, the rice still sticks to the mallets, rather like taffy. When one person pulls up the mallet, the other must aim at the rice clinging to its bottom and strike it down, knocking the mallet free.

If the timing is wrong, the second person may strike the mallet itself—or, if too late, the sticky rice may be pulled out of the mortar along with it. The rice is extremely adhesive and requires great strength and concentration. Even outdoors in the twelfth lunar month, when the temperature might be several degrees below freezing, the people doing the pounding would become so hot that they could wear only thin clothes.

The pounded rice was placed on a door panel coated with oil. Using a thin hemp cord, they cut away the rice stuck to the mallets. They then divided it into fist-sized portions and pressed each one flat into a round shape. Once dried, these became ciba.

After the winter solstice, the cakes could be placed in a water jar filled with water and preserved until spring.

Around the Chinese New Year, whenever I visited Xianzhi’s home, Teacher Yang would always say, “Xianzhi, Lewei is here. Go get two ciba.”

 

 

Xianzhi would bring out two cakes, place the fire tongs over a charcoal brazier, and slowly roast the ciba on them. As the cakes heated, they gradually softened. After roasting for several minutes, he would turn them over until both sides were golden brown and slightly charred. The cakes would slowly puff up, eventually splitting their outer skins.

At that moment, the whole room would fill with an irresistible fragrance, and our mouths would water.

We ate the hot, fragrant ciba together and felt that we were enjoying the happiest and most delicious food in the world.

Besides glutinous-rice ciba, there was another kind made from millet. It was golden yellow, and when roasted, it smelled even better than the glutinous-rice version. But millet ciba was rare. Whenever Xianzhi’s family happened to roast some for me, I would remain happy for days.

The year before the Cultural Revolution began, Zhijiang Teachers’ College moved from town to Muyoupo at Qili Bridge. The site had once been the base of the Flying Tigers led by the American General Claire Lee Chennault during World War II. The college exchanged campuses with the former Zhijiang No. 2 Middle School.

Xianzhi and his father lived in a house on the slope near the airfield. His mother and younger sister still lived in town. My family lived lower down the slope, near the riverside road. Both houses had once been dormitories for members of the Flying Tigers.

Although we now lived a little farther apart, it did not prevent us from playing together.

Xianzhi’s father was very capable and an excellent cook. He prepared all the meals at home. Whenever the food was ready, he would walk to the high bank beside the house and shout:

“Xian—zhi! Dinner’s ready!”

His voice could be heard from very far away. As soon as Xianzhi heard it, he would run home from wherever we were playing.

Then the Cultural Revolution came and quickly disrupted everything.

When the school became covered with big-character posters, Xianzhi’s family moved away. My father was also denounced and pushed aside. Of the more than ten children who had once played together, one after another they all left. In the end, I was the only one remaining.

There were no children to play with, and no more good things to eat.

One day in the summer of 1968, I was required to go with the adults to the Zhijiang sports stadium to attend a mass rally of ten thousand people denouncing the “ox demons and snake spirits”—the people labeled as class enemies.

During the rally, Red Guards repeatedly went into the crowd to seize people, then dragged them onto the stage. A large placard was hung around each person’s neck, and the accused were pushed to the front of the stage to kneel while their sentences were announced.

Suddenly, I heard someone shout from the stage:

“Bring up the escaped rich peasant Yang Guoxing!”

Soon I saw Teacher Yang being pulled out of the crowd by several Red Guards. Amid the chants of “Down with the escaped rich peasant Yang Guoxing!” he was dragged onto the stage. A placard reading “Escaped Rich Peasant Yang Guoxing” was hung around his neck, and he was pushed to the front to kneel in a row with the other “ox demons and snake spirits.”

Through the loudspeakers, the Red Guards announced:

“Send the escaped rich peasant Yang Guoxing back to his native place!”

Then they raised their fists and shouted:

“Down with the escaped rich peasant Yang Guoxing!”

The crowd below repeated the chant:

“Down with the escaped rich peasant Yang Guoxing!”

I had seen many people seized and sent away on the spot like this, but seeing Teacher Yang treated in that manner still shocked me deeply.

How could such a good man be a bad person? He had always been kind to Xianzhi and to me. He gave me ciba every time I visited. Why should he be sent back to the countryside?

There were so many people at the rally that I did not know whether Xianzhi was there. If he was, how could he have endured seeing his father treated that way?

Xianzhi’s parents had never been well suited to each other. His mother was young, beautiful, outgoing, and lively; his father was honest, kind, quiet, and reserved. They divorced during the Cultural Revolution.

I never learned exactly when they divorced—whether it was before or after Teacher Yang was sent back to his native village. By then, the family had already moved away, and Xianzhi never mentioned the matter.

I knew that he and his younger sister went with their mother to attend the middle school at Longping Commune on the western side of the river, but I never saw them again.

Later, I heard that his mother had remarried. Her new husband was a young and handsome deputy secretary of the commune. After that, I heard nothing more about them.

From the third grade until I graduated from high school, I never saw Xianzhi again.

In the spring of 1975, after graduating from high school, I was sent down to Shui Kuan Commune, more than thirty miles from town. To travel from town to the educated-youth settlement at the commune tea plantation, we had to pass through Qili Bridge, where the monument commemorating Japan’s surrender had once stood.

By then, the monument had been smashed. No one talked about it, so we had no idea that an event of worldwide significance had once taken place there.

We had to cross the Wushui River by ferry at Qili Bridge, then go through Sifangyuan on the opposite bank and cross Yanqiao Commune before reaching our settlement at the Shui Kuan Commune tea plantation.

Once, after returning from home to the settlement, I took the ferry at Qili Bridge and was astonished to find the ferryman familiar. I looked more closely.

Wasn’t that Xianzhi?

We had not seen each other for seven or eight years. We had both grown from children into young men. We were delighted and surprised to meet again. Since the ferry was crowded, however, I did not feel comfortable asking him too many questions.

 

 

When we parted, he insisted on refusing my fare.

On another occasion, I happened to cross the river while he was on duty. He told me that the dining hall was serving braised pork for dinner and asked me to wait until he finished work so we could eat together.

It was already after four o’clock. I sat on the grass beside the river, watching the slow-moving water as I waited for him to finish his shift.

In those days, we could not afford to eat meat even once every two weeks. Having braised pork for dinner was like celebrating the New Year.

After work, he went to the kitchen and bought his portion of braised pork, along with a small vegetable dish. The two of us shared the meat in his room, just as we had once shared ciba. For a moment, I felt that I had returned to childhood.

During dinner, he told me that he had come to work there after graduating from middle school. I had heard that his stepfather was the secretary of the commune.

Being a ferryman was not considered a particularly desirable job, but at that time there were almost no opportunities for formal employment. Ferry workers were paid by the state, with a guaranteed livelihood. The work was also easier than being an educated youth.

His father had already been reinstated and was teaching at Zhijiang No. 2 Middle School. Xianzhi said that he occasionally went to visit him.

Before the Spring Festival in January 1976, I received eighty pounds of glutinous rice from the production team. After milling it into more than sixty pounds of glutinous rice, I went to Granny Luo’s house at the tea plantation and had it made into ciba.

On my way back to town, I passed the Qili Bridge ferry crossing and planned to give some ciba to Xianzhi. Unfortunately, he was not there that day, so I could not deliver it.

In 1977, the national college entrance examination was restored. Because we were working as substitute teachers, the production brigade refused to let us return to town to prepare for the examination.

Finally, after school one Saturday in late October, the three of us educated-youth teachers decided to resign. We left a note and set off for town.

It was already after five o’clock, and the county seat was more than fifty miles away. Soon after we started, darkness fell.

When we reached the Qili Bridge ferry crossing, it was already after nine. The ferry service stopped at nine.

Facing the pitch-black river and the empty ferry, we were at a loss about what to do.

Then I remembered Xianzhi.

I walked to the little house where the ferrymen rested and shouted:

“Xianzhi! Xianzhi! Are you there?”

As luck would have it, he was on duty that night. When he heard my voice, he immediately got up. After learning about our situation, he said nothing more. He took us to the ferry, untied the rope, helped us onto the boat, and ferried us across the river in the darkness.

After Xianzhi’s father was reinstated, he remarried. His wife’s surname was Liu, and she was a doctor. The two of them were very compatible and deeply devoted to each other. Xianzhi sometimes went to visit them.

After I graduated from university in 1982, I was assigned to work in Changsha.

In 1990, the work unit where Xianzhi was employed in Huaihua sent him to a university in Changsha for a year of further study. At the time, I was working for the Hunan Commodity Inspection Bureau and had been married only a short while.

During the holidays, I invited him to dinner, and I also visited him at his school. He was always smiling, speaking softly, and never hurried or agitated.

Yet I sensed that his father’s misfortune during the Cultural Revolution, along with his parents’ divorce when he was very young, had affected him deeply and left him with emotional wounds. Perhaps years of depression caused him to lose his hair while he was only in his early thirties. His classmates at the school where he studied called him “Old Yang.”

We once introduced him to a young woman. Their relationship seemed promising for a while, but in the end it did not work out. Perhaps the woman was concerned about living in different places, or perhaps she met someone whose circumstances were more favorable.

Later, when I returned to Zhijiang and saw Teacher Yang, we talked about Xianzhi. Teacher Yang said with some guilt:

“It was our divorce that cast a shadow over him and made him lose confidence in marriage.”

But I felt that Xianzhi was still making an effort to find a partner. He did not seem opposed to love or marriage, and I believed there was still hope.

Sure enough, two years later he found a suitable woman, married her, and started a family.

In 2015, when I returned to China to visit my parents, I went to see Teacher Yang. He was living in the teachers’ residential building at Zhijiang No. 2 Middle School. He was already in his eighties, but he and Doctor Liu were still living together.

Their home was simple and clean, with a quiet atmosphere of books and learning. He was in good health, looked well, and remained mentally sharp. He was very happy to see me, and we talked for a long time.

Two days later, Xianzhi made a special trip from Huaihua to Zhijiang to visit me and my parents. His father must have told him that I had come to see his father and stepmother.

Xianzhi still had the same smiling face. He looked healthy and cheerful. I learned that his own child had grown up and gone to university. I was genuinely happy for him.

I also found time to visit my elementary-school teacher at Lotus Pond Elementary School, but the teacher was not there. As I was leaving, I ran into Xianzhi’s mother, Teacher Tang, beside the building. She was in her seventies.

We had not seen each other for many years, and I could hardly recognize her. She thought I looked familiar, too, but she did not recognize me. Just then, Xianzhi’s younger sister, Xianying, returned from outside. She recognized me immediately and invited me to their home.

I heard that Teacher Tang and her husband had been separated for many years. She was now living with Xianying in the teachers’ dormitory at Lotus Pond Elementary School.

The room was somewhat untidy. Teacher Tang had gained weight, did not look very well, and seemed rather unkempt. Her thoughts were not as clear as they once had been.

When I used to visit Xianzhi’s home, Teacher Yang was almost always the only one there, so I had never been very close to her. She had not expected this unannounced visitor and had made no preparations to receive me. After chatting for a while, I left.

Xianzhi still visited both of his parents. He was a deeply filial son.

 

Written in 2017

 

Traveling the World in My Imagination

In early 1978, I was admitted to university. After arriving on campus, I moved into the dormitory assigned to me. A clean-cut student wearing glasses was sitting on his bed reading. After we exchanged greetings, I asked him where he was from.

“Xining,” he replied indifferently.

“Oh, you’re from Qinghai,” I said.

He looked surprised. “You know Xining?”

“Of course I do. It’s the capital of a province. How could I not know it?”

He became quite emotional. He said that when he had taken the train from Xining all the way to Beijing, very few people knew that Xining was in Qinghai. Some would ask, “Where is Xining?” Others would say, “Oh, you’re from Guangxi.”

It infuriated him. “So many people don’t even know one of China’s provincial capitals!”

That was the era when people took pride in not reading books. Although everyone shouted, “Embrace the motherland and look out upon the world,” there was no geography class at school. What did the motherland contain? How large was the world? No one taught us, and no one seemed to care. Not many people even knew that Nanning was in Guangxi. How many could possibly have known about Xining, far away in the west?

I spent almost all of my elementary and middle-school years during the Cultural Revolution. Apart from studying quotations from Chairman Mao, we read editorials from the People’s Daily. The books at home had either been burned or confiscated. Other than the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin, there was Mao’s Selected Works.

My father, however, liked geography. He had bought a copy of the Atlas of China and kept it at home. Because the atlas contained no political opinions, it escaped confiscation and burning.

Whenever I had nothing to do, I would leaf through it. At first, I was simply curious to find out where our hometown, Zhijiang, was. I turned to the page showing Hunan Province and searched for a long time. At last, there it was.

Oh—Zhijiang was in western Hunan, very close to Guizhou. Hunan looked like the side profile of a human head facing west, and Zhijiang lay near the base of its nose. It was marked by only a small circle, indicating a town with a population of less than ten thousand.

A thin green line wound its way past Zhijiang. That was the Wushui River. Farther downstream, it joined the Hongjiang and Qingshui Rivers to form the Yuan River. The green line grew thicker as more small green lines flowed into it, eventually leading toward a broad green area in the upper right corner of the map. That was Dongting Lake.

The lake’s winding shape looked like the brain inside the human head.

Near the eastern edge of Hunan was a city marked by two circles: Changde, my mother’s hometown.

Southeast of Changde was Changsha, near the ear of the imaginary head. Changsha was marked by two large circles, indicating a city with a population of several hundred thousand. A railway line passed through it as well.

I had once seen pictures of Changsha in the Hunan Daily: buildings dozens of stories high, broad streets filled with cars, and even small private automobiles. Large steamships with smokestacks traveled along the Xiang River.

Zhijiang’s streets were narrow, with no private cars. Its tallest buildings were only three stories high, and the largest boats were sailboats pulled by teams of shouting boatmen.

Children from a mountain town naturally dreamed of going out into the wider world. Changsha was the big city I most wanted to visit, especially because my father had long promised to take me there. But by the time I entered university, he still had not had the chance to fulfill that promise.

I kept looking at the atlas every day, and every day I made new discoveries. Whenever I found a place I had heard about long before, I became as excited as Columbus discovering the New World.

Leaving Hunan behind, I began to explore China. There were so many cities marked by three circles: Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Guangzhou, Wuhan, Nanjing…

There were also cities marked by two circles: Shantou, Xiamen, Xuzhou, Jiujiang, Ma’anshan… And, of course, Nanning and Xining, both medium-sized cities marked by two circles.

The Yangtze, the Yellow River, the Pearl River, and the Heilong River stretched across China like green ribbons. The vast Dongting Lake, Poyang Lake, and Taihu Lake looked like emeralds set into the land.

The world beyond the sky was still larger; beyond every mountain stood another mountain.

Besides the atlas, our home had a wall map of China and another of the world. From them I learned about Washington in the United States, Moscow in the Soviet Union, London in Britain, and Paris in France. The newspapers called those countries our enemies.

I also learned about Tirana in Albania, Hanoi in Vietnam, Pyongyang in North Korea, and Phnom Penh in Cambodia. The newspapers called those countries our friends.

Beijing and Shanghai often appeared in photographs in the newspapers. For other places, I had to rely on my imagination.

And so, as a child, I traveled around the world without spending a penny. I crossed the Yangtze and the Yellow River. One moment I admired the beauty of Taihu Lake; the next I watched the waves of Dongting Lake. I said farewell to the blazing sun of the Congo and welcomed the ice and snow of the Arctic.

I turned the pages of the atlas so often that, little by little, it began to fall apart.

In 1969, my family bought a new edition. It was much like the old one, except that the cover now included Chairman Mao’s handwritten words, “Long live the revolutionary committees!” and another large slogan: “The entire country is red.”

The atlas had been published specially to celebrate the establishment of revolutionary committees in every province, city, and autonomous region throughout the country.

When I entered middle school, there were maps of China and the world hanging in the classroom. In those years, when the idea that “studying is useless” filled the schools, we spent our time reading the Little Red Book and taking part in industrial and agricultural labor.

Later, we had a little elementary mathematics, physics, and chemistry, but no history and no geography.

Once, by chance, a classmate named Qi Jianhua discovered that I knew many Chinese and foreign cities. Curious, he decided to test me. He stood in front of the map and named a city, asking me to identify its province or country without looking at the map. Or he would name a province or country, and I would give him its capital.

Seeing his astonished expression made me feel how deeply people longed for and respected knowledge. It made me even more tireless in studying the atlas.

When I had nothing to do at night, I would hold it in my hands and think:

“Close my ears to the affairs outside, and let my mind travel through Asia, Africa, and Latin America.”

In the end, I never made it to Asia, Africa, or Latin America. Instead, I was sent to the countryside fifty miles away as an educated youth.

The things I took with me, apart from Mao’s Selected Works and the Xinhua Dictionary, included that well-worn atlas, its pages wrinkled from years of use. Under the light of a kerosene lamp, it allowed me to continue traveling in my imagination. I often forgot my exhaustion and hunger, and hope for the future would once again begin to burn in my heart.

When I went to university, I brought many things with me—but somehow I forgot to bring the atlas.

Later, my family moved several times, and the atlas disappeared. Although I bought several other atlases over the years, I could never forget that old, tattered Atlas of China whose worn edges had accompanied me for so many years.

Today, China is vastly different from the country it was more than twenty years ago. Friends returning from China often say that they can hardly recognize their own neighborhoods, sometimes not even finding the entrances to their old homes.

The atlas has long since been replaced by newer editions, too. China is changing, and so is the world.

After living outside the mountains for so many years, I have come to feel that the world beyond them is far less beautiful than the world I once traveled through in my imagination.

Now, instead, I often find myself traveling in my mind through the mountains and rivers of my hometown, and through the days when I played with my childhood friends.

 

Written in 2007

 

The Days of Watching Clouds

During the Cultural Revolution, we lived at Zhijiang Teachers’ College, in Muyoupo, about six or seven miles from Zhijiang town. There was no television and nowhere to go to see a movie. Every month or two, the county film unit would come to show a film. It was always either a revolutionary model opera or something like Reconnaissance Across the Yangtze, Tunnel Warfare, or the like. There were only a few films, and after watching them over and over, we could recite the dialogue by heart.

Whenever I thought of Reconnaissance Across the Yangtze, I immediately remembered the line: “It’s not that we’re incompetent—the Communist troops are just too crafty!” And whenever someone mentioned Tunnel Warfare, I could deliver, with perfect seriousness: “All units, attention! Fight independently. After firing one shot, change positions. No firing blanks! Open fire!”

Our favorite children’s magazine, Little Friends, had also ceased publication. At school, the only thing we were taught was to memorize Mao’s “Three Old Articles.” There was no homework, and after school in the afternoon we had nothing to do.

This should have been the wonderful opportunity we children longed for most—a chance to play freely. Tragically, however, many of our friends’ parents had been denounced and struggled against. Some had been sent to prison; others had been sent to “study classes” for reform. Most of our playmates had either left or no longer dared to come outside. There was hardly anyone to play with, and we were not in much of a mood to play anyway. Big-character posters covered the school, and we often saw the names of our friends’ fathers—or our own fathers—marked with red crosses.

With no one outside to play with, we had no choice but to read books and newspapers at home. But apart from Chairman Mao’s writings, almost everything had been banned. Our family had an atlas and a household guidebook that had escaped destruction because they contained no political content. One of the books also included basic agricultural knowledge. I remember reading several weather proverbs that were pleasing to the ear:

“Clouds moving east, no rain in sight.
Clouds moving west, rain in earnest.”

“Morning glow means water for tea;
Evening glow will leave the toad dry.”

“Dark clouds meet the setting sun—
If not today, then tomorrow, rain will come.”

“If the horizon is bright, rain is on its way;
If the sky above is clear, no rain will fall.”

“When the sky looks like fish scales,
Even without rain, the wind will rage.”

After reading them, I went outside to observe the sky. Was it true that “clouds moving east” meant no rain? Did “clouds moving west” really bring heavy rain? Most of the proverbs proved remarkably accurate. They were also so rhythmic and memorable that I learned them by heart.

Zhijiang Teachers’ College had no walls around it. Fields surrounded the school, and there were even plots cultivated by production teams in the middle of the campus. What the farmers talked about most was the weather, because weather was so important to planting and farming. Apart from recalling events from long ago, the elderly teachers at the school also talked mostly about the weather. Discussing the weather was safe. Talking about anything else might get someone into trouble.

On summer evenings, we lay on the grass, on the ping-pong tables where clothes were washed, or beside the piles of grain on the school grounds, gazing up at the sky scattered with stars. The adults told me that this was the Milky Way; on one side was the Cowherd, and on the other was the Weaver Girl. They could meet only once a year, on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month, and even then they had to remain separated by the Milky Way.

Whenever a shooting star streaked across the sky, the adults would say, “One star falls in heaven, and one person dies on earth.” The two were believed to correspond to each other.

From them I also learned what a lunar eclipse and a solar eclipse were. But the local farmers said that a lunar eclipse happened because “the Heavenly Dog was eating the moon.” Everyone had to come outside and bang gongs to drive the dog away, or the moon would be eaten up. Once, when I saw a lunar eclipse, the farmers all came out banging gongs and basins. I watched as the washbasin from our own home was brought outside and beaten wildly until the eclipse ended.

“We sat beside the high stacks of grain, listening to Mother tell stories of the past.”

The scene described in that song was exactly what my childhood had been like. The difference was that my mother had been sent down to the countryside and could not tell me those stories. Instead, it was my uncles and older relatives who told me about the stars and the myths in the sky.

I often wondered: What was really up there? What was on those stars? Which star belonged to me?

Besides reading weather proverbs and listening to stories, I loved going outside to watch the clouds. I observed the direction in which they moved and then predicted the weather to see whether I was right.

The books also explained how to predict weather by observing changes in animal behavior. Ants moving house, swallows flying low, and fish coming to the surface were all signs that rain was approaching.

Before rain, ants would form long lines and carry their eggs and belongings from low ground to higher ground. Low-lying places would collect water, while the higher ground would remain above the flood. Swallows flew low because, before rain, small insects could not fly very high; if swallows wanted to eat them, they too had to fly low. Before rain, air pressure fell and the amount of oxygen dissolved in the water decreased, so fish came to the surface to breathe.

Before rain, the little animals became busy—and so did I.

About two miles from us was an airfield built during the War of Resistance against Japan. The Flying Tigers, led by the American General Claire Lee Chennault, had once taken off from there to fight Japanese aircraft. At that time, they had been stationed in Muyoupo. The house in which we lived had once been occupied by American pilots.

After the war, however, the airfield was abandoned. Only occasionally did small planes arrive to spray pesticides or conduct surveys. Once their work was finished, they would leave again.

Beside the airfield stood a small three-story building. It had originally served as the airport control tower, but later became the county weather station. Every afternoon at seven o’clock, a large balloon was released there, with an instrument suspended beneath it. The instrument collected atmospheric data and transmitted it back to the weather station.

Even during the Cultural Revolution, the balloon was released every day. Perhaps this was required by the slogan “Seize the revolution and promote production.”

In the summer, I sometimes went with my friends to the weather station to watch the balloon launch. First, the workers filled the balloon with helium. Slowly, it swelled into a great sphere four or five meters high. Then they attached a large instrument beneath it.

At exactly seven o’clock, the balloon rose into the sky.

Against the evening glow, it climbed rapidly, while the instrument emitted a blinking red light. After a few minutes, all we could see was the balloon, now no bigger than an ant, and the faint red light on the instrument. Before long, the balloon blended into the richly colored sunset. Only then would we turn and slowly make our way home, still looking back at it.

Zhijiang town was three or four miles from the weather station. At that time, the Red Guards in town went into the streets to put up big-character posters, denounce people who had taken the capitalist road, and even fight armed battles. Every day we heard the sounds of gongs and drums, gunfire, and slogans. People were killed from time to time.

The weather station, however, stood alone beside the broad and quiet airfield. It released its balloons without concern for the world and quietly issued its weather forecasts.

In town, we saw the cruelty of people toward one another. The changes in the human heart were more unpredictable than the shifting winds and clouds of nature. On that peaceful airfield, by contrast, we saw communication and harmony between human beings and nature. It gave me a rare happiness in those years.

Sometimes I thought how wonderful it would be to become a meteorologist—to release balloons every day and watch the clouds every day. That was, by any measure, my “lofty ideal” at the time.

Every evening before ten o’clock, the county radio station broadcast the weather forecast from the weather station as the final program of the day. I always listened intently to see whether its forecast agreed with mine. Whenever my own prediction proved correct, I would remain happy for a long time.

By watching clouds and observing unusual changes in animal behavior, I often managed to make fairly accurate twenty-four-hour weather forecasts. Later, I developed the habit of looking up at the sky whenever I went out, to decide whether I needed to bring an umbrella.

My favorite moments were after a rainstorm, when the sky cleared and I walked across the airfield. The green mountains looked freshly washed, a rainbow arched overhead, dewdrops sparkled, and the air was wonderfully clean.

The memories of my childhood include not only the great sheets of big-character posters, the denounced “capitalist roaders,” and the gunfire of armed struggles. They also include the three-story weather station, the balloons drifting upward, the ever-changing clouds, the starry sky crossed by shooting stars, the little animals bustling about before rain, and the children’s rhyme:

“The sun comes out, and then the rain falls—
The emperor’s old father is marrying off all his daughters.”

Later, I went to university. Gradually, I became busier and busier. I read more and more books, and watched the clouds less and less. Reading earned me a degree, a green card, nearsightedness, and a perpetually foggy head. Yet I still felt that something was missing.

What was missing were those days of watching clouds.

Today, when we are always rushing about and exhausted in both body and mind, I want to say:

My friend, how few chances life gives us to be idle.

Come—let’s go watch the clouds.

Written in 2008

Zhijiang Duck

No duck no Mid-fall festival

Since I left Zhijiang in 1978 to go to college, although I haven’t eaten all the famous Chinese and foreign dishes, I have tasted many famous and unknown dishes, and I have also eaten in many Western-style restaurants in the United States. But what I miss most in the past twenty years is the Zhijiang duck on August 15th in my hometown. Every August 15th, it is the traditional Midfall Festival in China, the squeaking sound of the duck being fried in every house comes to my mind countless times, the tangy duck fragrance, the soft duck meat, the green onions full of duck juice, and the toothless little brother. The naive attitude of chewing on a big duck leg...

In my hometown of Zhijiang, Hunan, where I spent my childhood and youth, besides eating mooncakes on the Mid-Autumn Festival on the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month, we also eat duck. For the people of Zhijiang, the duck feast on the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month is second only to the reunion dinner on Chinese New Year. Family members living far away will rush back home to Zhijiang to eat the Zhijiang duck for Mid-Autumn Festival and reunite with their families. In Zhijiang, every household will prepare Zhijiang duck. If a family doesn't know how to make Zhijiang duck, they must be newcomers who just moved from elsewhere. But within two years, they will surely become skilled in making Zhijiang duck. For someone from Zhijiang not to eat Zhijiang duck on the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month must be because they cannot return home. Even if they are away, the thing they most want to eat for Mid-Autumn Festival is Zhijiang duck. For the people of Zhijiang, whether or not they eat mooncakes on the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month doesn't matter, but not eating duck would be a huge regret. Not eating duck means they haven't really celebrated Mid-Autumn Festival. Young men must bring a few ducks to their future mother-in-law's house before Mid-Autumn Festival, or else their engagement might be called off.

 

Duck Farming

"April 8, freeze the ducks." Every year after the eighth day of the fourth lunar month, in every street and alley of Zhijiang, duck vendors carry bamboo baskets about four feet in diameter that resemble steamer baskets, inside which are newly hatched fluffy ducklings covered with black gauze. Each basket can hold dozens of ducklings, with two baskets per load, and vendors can carry up to a hundred ducklings. You can hear the ducklings chirping from tens of meters away. Farmers buy hundreds or even thousands of ducklings. During the day, farmers wear bamboo hats and straw raincoats, tie a chicken feather duster to the front end of a two or three-meter-long bamboo pole, and drive the ducks to paddy fields, reservoirs, or small rivers to feed on insects, grass, and microorganisms. If any duckling falls behind or doesn't follow commands and runs around, the farmer will extend the bamboo pole and gently stroke the little one back with the feather duster. In the evening, farmers gather the ducklings on the grass and feed them grains or bran. They build a simple stove with stones and cook their meals. Then they set up tents and sleep by the duck enclosure. Some share a tent, while others sleep alone. They endure wind, rain, and sun exposure, living alongside the ducks day and night. With plenty of insects to eat in spring, along with sufficient grain and bran feed, the ducks grow rapidly each day. Their fluffy yellow feathers gradually fade, and curly feathers start to grow out. By the end of July, after harvesting early rice, farmers drive the semi-grown ducks into the fields to pick up scattered grains. This is when the ducks grow the fastest.

 

 

Ducks eat insects, and small fish in the rice field

 

Approaching Mid-Autumn Festival, the ducks weigh over a kilogram, the female ducks haven't started quacking yet, and the male ducks' wing feathers haven't fully grown. Farmers tie straw around the ducks' legs, put them in baskets, and transport them to towns or markets to sell to prospective buyers preparing for the festival. Almost every household buys ducks, with each buying at least one and most buying two or three.

 

Roasting Duck

To make Zhijiang duck, besides raising ducklings from that year, you also need Zhijiang-produced field sauce, freshly harvested ginger, and green onions. On the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month after breakfast, the housewives get busy. First, boil a large pot of water. Then take a bowl, put some cold water in it, add salt, and use it to kill the duck, collecting the blood in the bowl. Put the duck in a basin, scald it with boiling water to remove the feathers, and pluck the down when it cools slightly. Open the belly, remove the internal organs, and keep the duck liver. Use scissors to cut open the duck's gizzard, remove the dirty stuff inside, peel off the yellow membrane, sprinkle some salt, rub it, and rinse it with water. Cut the duck intestines into two-inch pieces. Cut off the duck's head and legs, and cut the rest into pieces. Slice the freshly harvested ginger, slice the chili peppers, wash two or three Jin (1.1 lbs.) of green onions, and tie them into knots. Pick a dozen or so fresh Sichuan peppercorn leaves and wash them. Zhijiang people like to use Sichuan peppercorn leaves for cooking. For example, when stewing dog meat, frying lamb, or cooking duck, they will use Sichuan peppercorn leaves. Although Sichuan peppercorns are an essential spice for many dishes, they are not sold in the market. Because many households have Sichuan peppercorn trees, if you need them, just ask the owner, and they will surely let you pick some. If the owner is not around, and some Sichuan peppercorn trees extend beyond the fence, feel free to pick some leaves; no one will object.

Set up the stove, heat the oil, add the field sauce when the oil is hot. Sauté the duck head and legs, add the sliced ginger and chili peppers, stir-fry briefly, add the duck pieces, and stir-fry over high heat. Add the coagulated duck blood to thicken the sauce. Add salt and soy sauce. After the duck is fragrant, add water and Sichuan peppercorn leaves, and simmer over low heat. If you have chestnuts, add one or two jin of peeled chestnuts, which would be even better. Simmer for several hours until the duck meat is tender. Ten minutes before removing from the heat, add the green onions. Once the green onions are cooked, the dish is ready. If you walk down the street in the afternoon on Mid-Autumn Festival, you'll catch a whiff of duck fragrance escaping from the cracks in every household's door. Some even set up small charcoal stoves at the door and cook duck openly on the street. It's hard not to drool. If you meet friends, you'll definitely be warmly invited to taste their duck. Children often can't wait and run to the neighbors who have already cooked duck to ask for a big duck leg to gnaw on.

 

 

Once the duck is stewed, it's served in a large bowl with the soup, placed on the table. Stir-fry one or two side dishes, open a bottle of white wine, and gather around the table with the family for this traditional annual duck feast. Some set up the table outside and enjoy the moon after eating the duck. The big duck leg is for the youngest children who couldn't wait any longer. Duck heads and bottoms used to be specifically given to the elderly as a sign of respect. It implies eating from head to tail. However, most people no longer adhere to this custom because there's not much meat on the duck head, and the elderly can't gnaw on it. But in some rural areas, this etiquette is still observed. Everyone's favorite is the thick gravy-soaked green onion knot, bursting with flavor in every bite. If chestnuts are added, they absorb the duck gravy and become tender and fragrant, very delicious. The tender and spicy stewed duck meat is delicious. Enjoying a few cups of good wine with family and chatting is true reunion, true Mid-Autumn Festival for the people of Zhijiang.

 

From Ancient Legend to Modern Legend

Why do the people of Zhijiang eat duck on the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month? Since when did it start? No one can say for sure. But the old men with long beards will tell you an ancient legend they heard from their ancestors' ancestors. It is said that during the end of the Yuan Dynasty, the people were discontent with the rule of the Mongols and rose up in rebellion. The people of Zhijiang also prepared to rebel on the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month. Some people put a small piece of paper in the mooncakes, on which was written: "Kill the Tartars on the fifteenth day of the eighth month." At that time, people referred to the Mongol soldiers as Tartars. Killing the Tartars meant killing the Mongol soldiers. People bought mooncakes, broke them open on the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month, saw the paper, and rebelled, killing the local Mongol soldiers and joining the anti-Yuan Dynasty forces. After the Yuan Dynasty fell, there were no more "Tartars" to kill. To commemorate "killing the Tartars on the fifteenth day of the eighth month," the people of Zhijiang have been "killing ducks on the fifteenth day of the eighth month" every year. Because "duck" sounds similar to "Tartar." The people of Zhijiang have passed down this tradition from generation to generation.

Zhijiang duck has been on the table of the people of Zhijiang for hundreds of years, but the outside world was long unaware of this highly distinctive local custom and delicious cuisine. Until about ten years ago, it is said that two young men and women from different villages in Zhijiang met while working outside and fell in love. They returned home together with great joy to tell their families the good news and get married. However, their hometown parents and relatives vehemently opposed their marriage. The reason was that they both had the surname Yang. In the countryside of Zhijiang, many people still believe that those with the same surname are relatives and cannot marry each other. But they were from different villages and had no blood relationship. The government also approved their marriage application. But their stubborn relatives refused to yield. So the young couple had no choice but to leave home. They drifted outside to work. Because working was unstable, they thought of opening a restaurant. Whether it was due to the difficulty of running a restaurant or out of habit, they made Zhijiang duck when Mid-Autumn Festival arrived. Their Zhijiang duck quickly gained fame in Changsha. Customers who came to taste it came in a continuous stream. Their business grew bigger and bigger. They eventually opened chain stores. This spring, when I visited a Hunanese friend in Boston, I even had packaged Zhijiang duck she brought from China. This indicates that their Zhijiang duck has entered large-scale production. Zhijiang duck, hidden for hundreds of years "in the depths of the boudoir," has finally stepped out of Zhijiang and is increasingly loved by more and more people.

 

True Zhijiang Duck is gone 

However, packaged Zhijiang duck is far from being true Zhijiang duck, neither in taste nor in significance. Although the people of Zhijiang love Zhijiang duck very much, they only eat Zhijiang duck on the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month. No restaurant sells Zhijiang duck. For the people of Zhijiang, only Zhijiang duck made with ducklings raised that year, local Ma Zi duck, young ginger, field sauce, and green onions harvested that year is true Zhijiang duck. Zhijiang duck is a special dish for Mid-Autumn Festival, just like turkey for Thanksgiving, and it is also a symbol of reunion. Zhijiang was originally the land of the Dong ethnic group, with Han, Miao, and other ethnic groups living there. But the various ethnic groups lived in harmony, intermarried, used Chinese characters, and spoke Chinese. Most of the descendants of the Dong ethnic group do not know that they are Dong ethnic people. All the people of Zhijiang, whether Han, Dong, or other ethnic groups, must eat Zhijiang duck on the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month. Zhijiang duck, like a cultural melting pot, has blended the customs and cultures of various ethnic groups for hundreds of years. This makes the people of Zhijiang appear generous, tolerant, and peaceful. To ease my homesickness, I once bought frozen duck, old ginger, and sweet bean sauce and tried to make Zhijiang duck, but the taste was far from that of Zhijiang duck from my hometown. It lacked the atmosphere of duck fragrance filling the streets and alleys. Recently, when I called my former neighbor Tang Jie, she asked if I had gotten used to life in America. I said the hardest thing was not being able to eat Zhijiang duck. She said, "Come back, and I will definitely make lots of Zhijiang duck for you, guaranteed to satisfy you." Only in Zhijiang, during Mid-Autumn Festival, among relatives and friends, eating Zhijiang duck cooked by family members can truly dispel the endless homesickness in my heart.

 

Written on August 2004

 

Postscript

Xiping Jing, my classmate and roommate in Peking University. He became professor at Peking University. He still remembers that my hometown is Zhijiang. He told me in a phone call, a few years ago, two restaurants selling Zhijiang duck opened in front of Peking University. He thought if Zhijiang Duck is from Lewei's hometown? He went to eat it sometimes and felt it delicious. He said that Zhijiang duck is now sold in many Hunan restaurants in Beijing and has become a signature dish. But he didn’t know the story of Zhijiang Duck. I told him the story on phone, he found it very interesting. Thinking that more and more people like to eat Zhijiang duck, I have written this article. After eating Zhijiang duck and savoring the duck aroma in your mouth, it will be interesting to taste its culture and history.

 

Master Gan’s secret of rice cooking

Mr. Gan may didn’t have good education, probably only a few years of elementary school, but he has experienced a lot and is very good at conversation. However, what impresses people most about him is his cooking skills, particularly in cooking rice. He is considered to be unmatched and unbeatable in this regard.

Most people in the world can cook rice, and almost everyone who eats rice can cook it. In the eyes of ordinary people, cooking rice is the least technical job in the kitchen, and cooking schools may not even teach how to cook rice. With the popularity of electric rice cookers, cooking rice has become no technical. However, in the past, when there were no electric rice cookers, especially when cooking with a wood stove, some skill and experience were required. But this was not the area where Mr. Gan displayed his skills. Mr. Gan cooked large pots of rice, enough to feed over a hundred or even several hundred people, using a wood stove, and sometimes even digging a hole in the wilderness to cook with a military pot. This is an experience that most people have never had.

A military pot is a pot used by troops to cook in the wilderness. It is round and tapered, with a flat bottom and a slightly smaller diameter, and an open top with a slightly larger diameter, about three to four feet high. Dig a hole about one meter deep in the wild, and dig a hole on the edge of the pit. Place the pot on top, burn local firewood underneath, and cook outside. One company has one cooking class, responsible for the food of over a hundred people. The rice used for cooking is fifty or sixty catties, thirty times that of a typical household. Inexperienced people either cook it into mush or leave it half-cooked.

 

Similar to the above but it was black iron pot

Before the Cultural Revolution, there was a cooking skills competition for cooks in the Qianyang District (formerly Huai Hua District). It is said that Mr. Gan won first place in the military pot rice cooking competition.

Mr. Gan's large pot of rice is fast and good, not too soft or too hard, each grain is fully cooked, and the texture is just right, not sticking to the spoon or bowl (which is important for serving rice). It is said that he had a record of success for over two decades of cooking, at least in Zhijiang, which was unprecedented.

There were about three to four hundred Zhijiang Normal School students, plus faculty and family members, making a total of about four to five hundred people eating. Assuming each person eats 200 grams of rice, it would require more than 80 kg – 100 kg (176 - 220 lbs) of rice. Most canteens would put the rice in tens of bowls, use steaming to cook for such a large number of people, but Mr. Gan insisted on cooking rice with pot.

At the Zhijiang Normal School cafeteria on Wood Oil Hill, there are two large firewood stoves built with a round, tapered wooden barrel on top, with a diameter of about four feet, two feet high above the stove counter, and one foot below the stove counter, and larger at the bottom than at the top. When there are many people, Master Gan uses both stoves to cook rice at the same time, but when there are fewer people, he uses only one stove.

 

Similar to this traditional stove, but at least more than double the size

To cook rice, Master Gan first puts enough water in the pot and starts the fire. When the water boils, he pours baskets of rice into the pot, then stands on the stove and uses a long shovel to stir the rice in the pot. It takes a lot of strength to stir the hundred or so pounds of rice, but Master Gan has big biceps, a round waist, and strong tendons all over his body. In the steamy water vapor, he concentrates on his work, skillfully flipping the rice in the pot non-stop. Even in the coldest winter without heating system in kitchen, Master Gan cooks rice in just a single layer of clothes and still sweats profusely.

After stirring for about thirty minutes, he checks the color of the rice and determines that it's almost done, then throws a large sieve into the pot to strain out the excess rice soup and pours it into a large wooden barrel. When he's finished scooping out most of the excess water, he stirs the semi-cooked wet rice evenly, covers the pot, and removes the fire below, leaving only the glowing charcoal. Even after the rice is steamed, the steam continues to escape from the gap between the lid and the pot.

After twenty minutes, the kitchen is filled with the aroma of rice. Master Gan lifts the lid, and a white, steamy aroma wafts into the air, with the fragrant scent of fully cooked rice. He hangs a large scale on a rope from the ceiling and attaches a large bamboo sieve to the hook. He uses a large ladle to scoop out the hot, plump, non-sticky rice into the sieve, pouring ten pounds of rice into a small wooden bucket. He knows from experience that 200 grams of uncooked rice should yield 500 grams of cooked rice, and one table of ten people requires 5 kg of rice. He weighs it accurately, usually just right, with the occasional last bucket being a little more or less. If he has too much rice, he puts it in a small bowl and adds a little to each bucket. If he has too little, he takes out a little from each bucket and adds it to the last bucket.

After the rice is distributed, he scoops out the crispy, fragrant, yellow-brown crust from the bottom of the pot, divides it evenly, and covers each bucket of rice with it. Every time, Master Gan calculates the time and prepares the rice a few minutes before mealtime so that the students can still enjoy the crispy crust on top of their rice.

Everything is clean, neat, and done in one go.

 

The Aerial Survey Team

The fever of the Cultural Revolution, which had erupted in 1967, showed no sign of abating.

In Zhijiang County, officials at every level had been branded “capitalist roaders” and brought down. But once the rebel factions had run out of officials to overthrow, they were left with a new problem: whom, exactly, could they rebel against?

The answer, inevitably, was each other.

Soon, the rebel groups turned on one another, each claiming to be the true Red Guards, the true followers of Chairman Mao. Each side was convinced that it represented the revolution and that the other side was made up of impostors.

At first, their confrontations were mostly symbolic—big-character posters pasted everywhere, competing slogans shouted from the streets. But in some places, the conflicts escalated into armed battles.

The situation was especially dangerous in towns with military factories.

In Chenxi County, more than a hundred kilometers from Zhijiang, there was an arms factory. One faction of the rebels broke into the factory, took out weapons, and distributed them to its own supporters. Before long, the two sides were fighting with real guns.

Zhijiang itself never descended into armed combat. But the rebels there were hardly idle. They sent people to Chenxi to join the fighting.

On January 13, 1968, some of those rebels were returning to Zhijiang after taking part in the battles in Chenxi.

They were riding in an open-bed Liberation truck, singing revolutionary songs as they traveled. Near Zhijiang, they came to Qili Bridge—the place where the Japanese surrender had been formally accepted at the end of World War II.

There was a sharp, almost ninety-degree turn just before a small bridge.

The truck was going too fast.

The driver became distracted and failed to make the turn.

The truck smashed through the wooden railing, flipped over, and plunged into the little river below.

Some of the passengers were thrown into the mud at the bottom. Then the overturned truck came down on top of them.

The survivors struggled for a long time to rescue them, but there was nothing they could do. Eventually they went back into town, brought the leaders of the county Armed Forces Department to the scene, and forced them to search for the bodies in the nearly freezing water.

Six bodies were eventually recovered.

They were laid out in a row in front of the county auditorium.

This became known throughout Zhijiang as the “1-13 Incident,” named after the date on which it occurred.

At the time, I was living with my mother in her dormitory at the county government compound. The county auditorium was directly across the street.

Like everyone else, I went to see the dead.

The six bodies lay side by side, their faces uncovered. They were all so young—around twenty years old.

From loudspeakers nearby came the songs and slogans of the Cultural Revolution. One quotation from Chairman Mao was repeated again and again:

“If we are going to struggle, there will be sacrifices. Death is something that happens frequently…”

A few days later, the rebels held a grand funeral for the young men, now honored as “martyrs.”

They drove through town in a long procession, firing guns into the air and singing the same revolutionary slogan:

“If we are going to struggle, there will be sacrifices.”

And yet, on the eastern edge of town, only a little over a kilometer from the memorial marking the Japanese surrender, another world seemed to exist.

There, at Muyoupo, stood the former American air base built during World War II—the site that would later become Zhijiang Normal School.

It was remarkably peaceful.

The Red Guard students had already left. A handful of teachers who had been denounced during the Cultural Revolution remained behind, watched over by a few people. Every day they were made to perform manual labor.

Before long, even those teachers were dispersed, and the students were gone as well.

By spring, the school had become almost deserted.

And with fewer people came an even deeper quiet.

That was when an aerial survey team arrived.

There were more than twenty people in the group, and they moved into the school.

At that time, the Zhijiang airport was unusually important.

Across virtually all of western Hunan—including western Hunan's Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture and Qianyang Prefecture, which is now Huaihua City, as well as parts of the neighboring Changde and Shaoyang regions—there were almost no other airports. Large areas of eastern Guizhou had no airports either.

Although the Zhijiang airport had officially been abandoned, its location still made it strategically valuable.

The aerial survey team came back every year or two, sometimes every year, even during the Cultural Revolution.

Most of the time they used airplanes for surveying and exploration. Sometimes they conducted artificial rainmaking. Occasionally they sprayed pesticides.

When they were conducting aerial surveys, the airplane simply circled overhead.

But when they were making artificial rain or spraying pesticides, we could see a long trail of mist streaming from the rear of the plane.

At a time when our school had essentially stopped teaching us anything except quotations from Chairman Mao, the aerial survey team opened a window into another world.

A world of science.

A world of airplanes.

A world of people who seemed to know what they were doing.

It was the first time I had ever seen an airplane up close—a primitive old biplane with propellers.

 

By today's standards, the aircraft must have been hopelessly outdated. But to us children it was magical.

How could something so enormous possibly fly?

We thought the people on the aerial survey team were extraordinary.

They could fly airplanes!

There was only one airplane, and most of the people on the team were ground crew, geologists, or other scientists. We never actually knew which one was the pilot.

But to us, they all seemed remarkably sophisticated.

They were confident and intelligent. They carried themselves with an air of knowledge and competence. And they spoke beautiful, standard Mandarin.

We were children, and we were impressed.

The school had only about twenty teachers left by then. With so few people eating there, the school gave its better-equipped dining hall to the aerial survey team.

The teachers moved into a small kitchen in another building.

Naturally, I became curious about what the people on the team ate.

The cook was a man everyone called Master Liu. He had been transferred from the county government's kitchen and was responsible for baian—the flour-based foods such as noodles and steamed buns.

I knew him from the county government compound. I often ate the noodles and buns he made there.

He was an adult and I was only a child, and we never actually talked. But he knew who I was. He knew I belonged to one of the families connected with the county government.

Sometimes I would creep quietly to the doorway and peek inside.

If he noticed me, he never chased me away.

But neither did he invite me in.

What fascinated me most was the flour.

The flour in the aerial survey team's kitchen was incredibly white.

I had never seen flour so white in my life.

The steamed buns were large, perfectly rounded, and wonderfully fragrant.

In those days, food was rationed and had to be purchased with coupons. We children were almost always hungry—never quite starving, but never quite full either.

So that smell was almost impossible to resist.

I would find myself lingering around the kitchen, again and again, drawn there by the aroma.

And there was another smell.

Something unfamiliar.

A rich, distinctive fragrance that seemed to come from the food the survey team was eating.

I remember thinking:

They must be eating something very nutritious.

Decades later, I bought some coconut oil for cooking.

The moment I opened it, that smell came back to me.

Suddenly I was a child again, standing outside the aerial survey team's kitchen.

So that's what it was.

Coconut oil.

Back in those days, coconut oil wasn't something you could simply buy in a store. Today, of course, it is widely sold and promoted as a cooking oil.

Funny how memory works.

Sometimes it is not a face or a photograph that brings the past back.

Sometimes it is just a smell.

---

There was a young man on the team named Meng.

We called him Uncle Xiao Meng.

He was probably in his twenties, with a round face, a medium build, and a slightly plump figure. He spoke fluent Mandarin and had a cheerful, easygoing personality.

Most of all, he loved children.

Whenever he went swimming in the nearby river, he would pick us up and throw us into the water. Sometimes he would have water fights with us.

We adored him.

He was the youngest member of the aerial survey team, but his colleagues clearly liked him too. They always called him affectionately, simply, “Xiao Meng.”

He was from northern China and couldn't handle spicy food.

That was unfortunate, because in Zhijiang, a cook could hardly prepare a meal without chili peppers.

Poor Xiao Meng would eat something spicy and his whole face would turn bright red. The redness would stay for ages.

His colleagues would tease him:

“Xiao Meng, look at your nose! Even your nose has turned red from the chili!”

---

The team had several trucks and an old-fashioned Beijing Jeep.

To us, the Jeep looked brand-new.

It was just like the green military Jeeps we had seen in movies.

Whenever the team went into town, they traveled in the Jeep.

If we happened to be walking into town or coming home when their Jeep passed by, we would wave.

Most of the time, they stopped and gave us a ride.

And if Uncle Xiao Meng was driving, we knew for sure he would stop.

We would pile into the Jeep, delighted.

In those days, even the smell of gasoline seemed wonderful to us.

---

One day, several of us children found some cigarette butts lying on the grass.

We decided to imitate the adults.

We smoked them.

It was our first experience with cigarettes.

The smoke was hot and bitter and made our throats burn.

But we wanted to look grown-up, so we endured it.

Just then, Uncle Xiao Meng happened to walk by.

He saw us smoking.

He didn't say a word.

He simply walked over.

One by one, he grabbed us under the arms and began spinning us around, like a discus—or a hammer being thrown.

Around and around we went.

Dozens of times.

Then he tossed each of us onto the grass.

When he was finished, he wasn't even out of breath.

He simply walked away.

At the time, I thought:

He must be a pilot.

Otherwise, how could anyone spin around like that dozens of times without getting dizzy?

We certainly couldn't.

Every one of us was completely disoriented. The world was spinning. We couldn't stand up. We lay on the grass for a long time before we could even get our feet underneath us.

And then there was the cigarette smoke.

After being spun around so many times, the smoke we'd just inhaled suddenly seemed to come rushing back up.

We nearly vomited.

We felt absolutely miserable.

But that little episode stayed with me.

In fact, it may have been one of the most effective anti-smoking lessons I ever received.

I never became a smoker.

---

Life in town had become less violent than during the early years of the Cultural Revolution, but it was by no means normal.

From time to time there were still public struggle sessions.

Landlords, rich peasants, “counterrevolutionaries,” “bad elements,” and rightists were paraded through the streets for public humiliation.

Propaganda trucks drove around town with loudspeakers blaring slogans.

But at Muyoupo, everything seemed utterly calm.

We heard frogs calling from the rice fields.

Farmers shouted as they worked their land.

Birds sang from the bamboo groves.

Children laughed as they chased one another across the grass.

And overhead came the deep, throaty roar of the aerial survey team's airplane flying low across the sky.

It was a strange little island of peace in the middle of a turbulent time.

The aerial survey team was like a flock of migratory birds.

They came in spring.

They left in autumn.

The next spring, they returned.

And in autumn, they disappeared again.

The pattern repeated itself.

Then, in the third year, my family moved back into town.

We never saw the members of the aerial survey team again.

But every summer, whenever I looked up and saw one of those old-fashioned biplanes flying across a blue sky filled with white clouds, I knew:

The aerial survey team was back.

And perhaps, just perhaps,

Uncle Xiao Meng was up there flying it.

Written September 15, 2021