I. From Zhijiang to Taoyuan
In the winter of 1967, the initial upheaval of the Cultural Revolution—the rebellions, factional struggles, and armed clashes—had passed, and the situation was beginning to move from chaos toward stability. With Mao Zedong’s intervention, military-control groups were stationed in various institutions and began restoring the order that had been lost. Revolutionary committees were also established at different levels, composed of military cadres, veteran cadres, and leaders of mass organizations, including rebel groups.
At the time, the Zhijiang Revolutionary Committee decided to resume education at Zhijiang Middle School, which had been closed for a year and a half. Zhijiang No. 1 Middle School and Zhijiang No. 2 Middle School were merged to form Zhijiang Middle School. My father, who had previously been principal of Zhijiang Teachers’ School, was brought back into service as deputy head of the preparatory group for Zhijiang Middle School and took part in rebuilding the school.
Although he and I were still living at Muyepo in Qiliqiao, he went into town to work every day and returned home at night.
In January 1968, in the depths of winter, my parents made a bold decision: my mother would take me to my father’s hometown in Taoyuan to bring my younger brother Sanmao back, and then continue on to Changde, my mother’s hometown, to visit her family.
My father could not go with us because he was busy preparing for the reopening of the school.
Sanmao, who was then a little over three, and my youngest brother, Simao, who was just over one, had been hurriedly sent to their grandmother in the countryside of Taoyuan when the Cultural Revolution began in the summer of 1966, in order to protect them from unpredictable dangers.
The whole family on the eve of the Cultural Revolution, photographed in the summer of 1966 at Muyepo, Zhijiang.
The year 1967 had been the worst year of armed conflict during the Cultural Revolution. In Qianyang Prefecture—today’s Huaihua City—the fighting was most severe in Chenxi, where there was an ordnance factory. Neighboring Yuanling County was little better.
Unfortunately, both places lay along our route to Taoyuan and Changde. Because of the Cultural Revolution and the armed clashes, long-distance buses had already stopped running in the autumn of 1966.
We had recently heard that long-distance bus service would resume before the Spring Festival, but we did not know exactly when. So this trip home was fraught with uncertainty and carried a certain degree of danger.
Why did my parents decide to make the journey under such circumstances? I do not know.
When the Cultural Revolution began in 1966, society had descended into chaos, so my younger brothers Sanmao and Simao were sent to their grandmother’s rural home in Taoyuan to avoid the Red Guards’ upheavals. Now that the armed clashes had stopped, Mao had called for stability, most workplaces were beginning to resume production, and schools were preparing to reopen.
Sanmao was already over five years old. The educational conditions in the countryside were extremely poor, while those in Zhijiang town were much better. Although the middle schools had been closed, primary schools had continued to hold classes. It was true that during the Cultural Revolution they did not teach the cultural knowledge regarded as belonging to the “feudal, capitalist, and revisionist” traditions, but the teachers were generally well qualified. There was always the possibility that academic subjects would eventually be restored.
For my mother, this was a trip home to visit her family. For me, it was my first trip to my parents’ hometowns. I had been born in Hongjiang and raised in Zhijiang, and I had never before visited either of their old homes.
The distance from Zhijiang to Taoyuan—and Changde was a little farther—was 341 kilometers. There were no expressways in those days. Under normal circumstances, taking a long-distance bus would have required three days: one day to Chenxi, the second to Yuanling, and the third to Taoyuan.
But we were traveling at a time when public transportation had collapsed and there were no regular buses.
My parents first contacted a grain-hauling truck belonging to Hunan Xiangyun Transport Company through acquaintances. From Zhijiang to Chenxi, we rode in a Jiefang-brand truck operated by Xiangyun.
The driver was a man in his early thirties, gentle and refined, with an efficient manner. The cab had only one passenger seat. I was ten years old and somewhat taller than other children my age, but I was still a child, so I had to sit on my mother’s lap. No one checked such things in those days; even the Public Security Bureau had effectively shut down.
The sky was gloomy throughout the journey. There was still snow on the ground, and it was bitterly cold.
As we traveled, my mother chatted with the driver. She told him that it had been nineteen years since she had left home to work, and that her two children were still being looked after by their grandmother back home and needed to be brought back.
The driver was understanding and sympathetic.
About four hours later, we arrived in Chenxi. We thanked the driver and got off.
At the wharf on the Yuan River, we bought two tickets for a boat to Yuanling the following day. This was another consequence of the lack of bus service. The tickets were relatively easy to get because Chenxi and Yuanling were not far apart and water transportation was well developed. There were plenty of boats.
After buying our tickets, we found a small inn near the wharf and settled in for the night.
The next morning, we went to the wharf and boarded a motorboat. It was small, carrying only about twenty passengers, slightly larger than an ordinary ferry. At the rear was an underwater propeller powered by a motor that burned diesel fuel. The engine was located in the middle of the boat, and its noise was deafening. The entire boat smelled of diesel.
There were no seats. We could only sit on the narrow wooden beams that ran along the hull.
The boat had probably not originally been intended for passengers. It was likely a cargo boat. After the bus service stopped, people had no choice but to travel by river, and the operators began carrying passengers as well. Conditions were poor, so there were few passengers—which was why we had been able to buy tickets for the very next day.
The boat moved very slowly. The weather remained gloomy, and it was difficult to see across the river. Wind came through from every direction, making the boat bitterly cold.
Chenxi and Yuanling are only 68 kilometers apart, and we were traveling downstream, yet the journey took seven or eight hours—an entire day.
When we reached Yuanling, we happened to find that the bus station was not far from the river wharf. My mother and I found an inn, put down our things, and immediately went to the bus station to buy tickets to Taoyuan.
By then, the date for resuming bus service had already been set—about three days later.
Outside the station were enormous red banners proclaiming:
“Congratulations on the Resumption of Service at Yuanling Bus Station!”
Colored streamers fluttered everywhere, creating a festive atmosphere.
Yuanling lies east of Taoyuan and Changde, northwest toward Jishou, the capital of Xiangxi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture, and southwest toward Anjiang, the former seat of Qianyang Prefecture.
In the past, western Hunan and the Qianyang region—today’s Huaihua—had no railway, making Yuanling an important transportation hub. Once Yuanling’s long-distance bus system collapsed, all the major routes—to Changde, Jishou, and Anjiang—stopped running.
This directly affected transportation and daily life across the three regions of Xiangxi, Qianyang, and Changde, and indirectly affected places as far away as Changsha, Shaoyang, and Guizhou.
The resumption of service therefore involved more than just the Yuanling-Taoyuan and Yuanling-Changde routes. Service to Jishou and Anjiang was also being restored. In short, the reopening of Yuanling’s long-distance bus network was a major event for western Hunan, Qianyang, Changde, and the surrounding areas.
We entered the ticket hall and asked at the ticket window.
We were told that all the tickets for the first day had long since sold out. In fact, the entire first week’s tickets—the tickets for all departures before the Spring Festival—were gone. The earliest tickets available were for the following week, after the Spring Festival.
There was no way we could wait until after the New Year.
But there were no tickets.
In those days there were no scalpers. Even if we had wanted to pay a premium for a scalped ticket, there was no one to buy one from.
There was nothing we could do but leave.
Before we had departed from Zhijiang, my father had anticipated the difficulty of buying tickets. He had told my mother:
“If you can’t get tickets, keep going back to the station to check whether anyone has returned theirs. You can buy a returned ticket directly from that person. People return tickets all the time.”
So after dinner, my mother took me back to the bus station.
We stood there for a while but saw no one returning tickets. Before long, the ticket clerk finished work and closed the window.
My mother thought no one was likely to return a ticket that day and was preparing to take me back to the inn.
Just as we were about to leave, a middle-aged man came hurrying toward the ticket window. When he discovered that it was already closed, he turned around in disappointment. He walked slowly toward the exit, looking around from time to time.
My mother noticed him, and he noticed my mother.
She asked, “Are you here to buy a ticket, or to return one?”
He replied, “I’m here to return a ticket. Something came up and I can’t make the trip.”
My mother was delighted.
“We need tickets. If you’re willing, could you sell them to me?”
He was overjoyed and said yes. Then he asked, “They’re for Taoyuan. How many do you need? I have two.”
At the time I was standing some distance away from my mother. I was only a child, so he assumed she was traveling alone.
“We’re going to Taoyuan too,” my mother said. “We happen to need two tickets.” She pointed at me. “My son and I.”
The man was very happy. He would not have to make another trip to the station the next day.
So my mother bought his two tickets—and they were tickets for the very first departure on the first day of resumed service.
My father had indeed been experienced. Without his advice, we probably would not have thought of waiting around for returned tickets.
Just like that, the major problem of getting tickets was solved. We would take the first bus to Taoyuan on the very day service resumed.
Three days later, the day finally came.
Early that morning, red flags were flying all over the bus station and drums were beating loudly. A large crowd had gathered, presumably organized according to official instructions. There were speeches by officials, giving the occasion the feel of an inaugural ceremony.
We boarded our bus, the Yuanling-to-Changde route. There were also buses for Yuanling-to-Jishou and Yuanling-to-Anjiang. Altogether, perhaps five or six buses departed at the same time, all decorated with large red flowers and colorful streamers.
Ours was the first departure. More buses would leave later, though I do not know how many trips were scheduled each day. I estimate there must have been at least three, because after a year and a half without service, there were enormous numbers of stranded passengers who needed to be moved.
At around nine in the morning, after the officials cut the ribbon in front of the station, the buses filed out one after another and slowly pulled away amid the cheers of the crowd.
I was somewhat excited. It was the first time I had ever been sent off by a cheering crowd. It felt pretty good.
The distance from Yuanling to Taoyuan was about 300 li, through nothing but mountains.
Three hours later, the bus reached Guanzhuang. We were still in Yuanling County, but we were about halfway there. The bus stopped for quite a while so everyone could use the restroom, and then we continued.
Another three hours or so later, we reached Taoyuan County. We got off. The bus’s final destination was Changde, so some passengers remained aboard to continue their journey.
My grandmother lived in Yanggongqiao Brigade, Ligonggang Commune, Taoyuan County, about 100 li from the county town.
Although there was a road, there was no regular bus service. We spent one night in the county town. The next day, we took a bus to Qijiahe—today’s Qihe Town—and then transferred to Ligonggang. Finally, we walked three or four kilometers to Yanggongqiao.
I think it was probably my uncle, Shang Zhonglun, who came to meet us, though I no longer remember whether he met us in Qihe or Ligonggang.
By the time we arrived at my grandmother’s home, it was already the twenty-eighth or twenty-ninth day of the twelfth lunar month. The New Year was only a day or two away.
We finally saw my younger brothers Sanmao and Simao, whom we had been separated from for two and a half years.
Sanmao was six at the time, and Simao was three.
II. Grandpa Shang and Grandma Yang
My paternal grandfather, Shang Botian, was still alive then. He was about seventy.
My grandfather Shang’s mother had first married my grandfather’s father and given birth to my grandfather. The Shang family had been extremely poor. Later, whether because his father died young or for some other reason, my grandfather’s mother took him and remarried into the Yang family. She later gave birth to Yang Grandpa.
Thus, my grandfather Shang and Yang Grandpa were half-brothers, sharing the same mother.
The Yang family was considerably better off than the Shang family. They owned some farmland, which they normally worked themselves and supplemented with temporary laborers during the busy farming seasons.
Although my grandfather Shang had gone to live with the Yang family, he retained the surname Shang.
Yang Great-Grandpa died young, and Yang Grandpa inherited the family property. My grandfather Shang initially helped Yang Grandpa manage the farm, but the property still belonged to the Yang family.
Because my grandfather Shang was poor, he could not afford to marry. He reached the age of forty without a wife and had already resigned himself to remaining a bachelor for life.
But then the Shang family would have no descendants.
So he discussed the matter with the still-young Yang Grandpa. They decided that Yang Grandpa’s eldest son—my father—would be given to him as an adopted son and take the surname Shang.
The thinking was that Grandma Yang could still have more sons. That way, the Shang family would have someone to carry on the family line, while the Yang family would also have descendants.
And so my father, who had originally been surnamed Yang, became Shang, and he began calling Grandpa Shang “Dad.”
Because Grandpa Shang already lived with the Yang family, my father in effect continued to live in his own family home. Apart from the change of surname and form of address, little else changed.
After all, they were brothers. Later, Yang Grandpa gave Grandpa Shang several mu of farmland so that he could live independently.
With land of his own, Grandpa Shang’s financial situation improved. He married and eventually had a son of his own, Shang Zhonglun.
Although the Shang family now had a male heir, Yang Grandpa did not change my father’s surname back to Yang. First, he could not go back on his promise. Second, he was still young and could have more sons.
But fate had other plans. Grandma Yang never had another son.
The Yang family therefore faced the prospect of having no male heir.
Later, Grandpa Shang and Yang Grandpa discussed the matter and, without telling my father—who was then studying at Taoyuan Teachers’ School—arranged a marriage for him. They tricked him into returning home and then pressured and persuaded the not-yet-twenty-year-old young man to marry a girl he had never even met.
They soon had a son, whom they immediately gave the Yang surname. This solved the family’s urgent problem.
But for my father, the marriage was a form of torment.
They divorced in the early 1950s, and the Yang family naturally kept the elder brother. That had been the purpose of the marriage in the first place. There was also an older sister, who remained with her mother.
Yang Grandpa also died young.
At the time, Grandma Yang was about sixty-three or sixty-four and lived in her own house next door to the Shang family.
My father had three younger sisters, two of whom were already married. The only one still living with Grandma was the youngest, Yang Shuyuan. She was twenty-three or twenty-four and worked as a teacher at a local school.
The youngest aunt was the prettiest of my father’s sisters and was still unmarried.
Yanggongqiao was deep in the mountains, isolated from the outside world, with poor communications and a backward economy.
Two examples give a sense of what it was like.
After the 1911 Revolution, the entire country had prohibited men from wearing long queues and women from binding their feet. But the people of Yanggongqiao, including those in Ligonggang, knew nothing about these changes.
So men continued to wear queues, and women continued to bind their feet.
My grandmother was about four or five years old at the time and had only just begun having her feet bound. If information had reached the village more quickly and she had been allowed to stop, she would have had normal feet.
It seems that it took at least another three years for people there to learn that foot binding was no longer necessary. Only then did my grandmother stop.
By then, however, her feet had already become larger than bound feet but smaller than normal feet, with pointed toes. She could not buy shoes anywhere and spent the rest of her life wearing cloth shoes that she made herself.
Another example was bicycles.
When we arrived, we discovered that very few people there had ever seen one. They regarded bicycles almost as strange creatures and called them “foreign horses”—yang mama.
Whenever someone rode a bicycle through the village, crowds gathered to watch.
Perhaps bicycles were simply too expensive and difficult to obtain. And in such mountainous rural areas, they were of little practical use anyway. But the name “foreign horse” inevitably reminded me of the late Qing period, when Chinese people commonly referred to imported goods as yanghuo, “foreign goods.”
Grandpa Shang was still not well-off.
Before the New Year, he bought a pig’s head, cut it apart, and put it into a large cooking pot. Then he cut several dozen pounds of radishes into chunks about an inch square and added them to the pot with the pig’s head.
Every day, they would ladle out a large bowl, reheat it, and eat it.
The pot of pig’s head and radishes had to last more than ten days, sometimes even a month.
This was the finest delicacy they could afford, and they could enjoy it only around the New Year. Most local families ate much the same thing during the holiday: pig’s head meat stewed with radishes.
Even though we lived in town, meat was rationed. Each person received one jin—half a kilogram—of pork per month. Eating meat was itself a rare luxury.
Pig’s head stewed with radishes was hardly a sophisticated meat dish, but I had never eaten it because the government supply stores did not sell pig’s heads. Even if I had wanted to buy one, I could never have obtained the necessary meat coupons.
My father occasionally sent money to Grandpa Shang and Grandma Yang, but never very much.
Grandma Yang’s situation was somewhat better because her daughters helped support her, and the youngest aunt had a salary. Around New Year, they could afford to buy some pork, fish, chicken, and other food for the family.
There was a small stream in front of their house. A wooden bridge crossed it, with a roof over the bridge, somewhat like the covered wind-and-rain bridges in Zhijiang, except that this one was tiny.
The bridge was called Yanggongqiao. It was probably built with funds donated by an elderly man surnamed Yang.
Yanggongqiao, photographed in April 2017, during my second visit.
There were no shops or places of entertainment anywhere nearby, so I went to the bridge every day.
The north wind was fierce, the sky gray and overcast, and the water beneath the bridge had frozen.
One day I met a little boy on the bridge. We looked at each other curiously but awkwardly. After a while, we began talking.
He asked where I was from and how old I was.
It turned out that he was the same age as me—ten—but he was a head shorter.
He was a child from a neighboring household. We did not know each other and had little to talk about. I did not see him again over the next several days.
When the land reform was carried out, Yang Grandpa was classified as a middle peasant. In fact, he owned more than ten mu of farmland, which was quite a lot. Later, he gave several mu to Grandpa Shang.
He did not employ permanent laborers. When there was little farm work, he did it himself; during the busy seasons, he hired temporary workers.
There were many people like him in the area, and they were generally decent people.
During land reform, there were no landlords or rich peasants in Yanggongqiao. Most were middle peasants, including Yang Grandpa.
In another place, owning that much land might already have been enough to qualify someone as a rich peasant, making him a target of political repression.
People in the mountains were not necessarily generous—after all, they were very poor—but they were generally kind. If someone had never wronged me, why would I want to label him a rich peasant?
The next day, Grandma took us to see the ancestral graves.
They were only thirty or forty meters from the house. She explained that a feng shui master had examined the site and declared it an excellent location. There were mountains several li away in front of the graves, and she explained what the various peaks symbolized and how they would protect the descendants and ensure them a good future.
I was very young and understood little. I heard what she said but did not make much of it.
While writing this passage, however, a line from the song Father’s Grassland, Mother’s River suddenly came into my mind:
The river sings the blessings of our ancestors,
Blessing the wandering children to find their way home.
The journey from Zhijiang to Taoyuan had been full of difficulties. Yet when we were in the situation described by the old saying, “After mountains and rivers seem to have come to an end, suddenly there is a way forward,” we repeatedly encountered kind people and good fortune, and eventually arrived safely at our ancestral home in Taoyuan.
Could it be that our ancestors, watching over us from beyond this world, had been protecting us all along?
Grandma pointed to a stretch of mountains and said, “This used to belong to the Yang family.”
Then she pointed to a stretch of farmland.
“These fields used to belong to our family too.”
Fortunately, the Yang family had been classified as middle peasants and therefore still counted as part of the laboring people.
If they had been classified as rich peasants or landlords, and someone had reported these remarks, this could easily have been interpreted as keeping a record of property to be reclaimed after the revolution—a sign of wanting to “reverse the verdicts” and restore the old order.
But the people there, though poorly informed, were not malicious. Even if someone had overheard her, no one would have reported her.
With nowhere else to go for entertainment, Uncle Zhonglun heard that many people were taking trucks to Niucheri to have some fun. Wanting to give me at least a little “entertainment,” he took me aboard an open-bed Jiefang truck.
The truck was packed with people. But it was the dead of winter, so at least we could shield one another from the wind.
From Yanggongqiao to Niucheri was about 45 li, all through mountains. The road was primitive and badly uneven. Cliffs rose directly beside the road, and a fall would almost certainly have been fatal.
It was the end of the twelfth lunar month, and the winter wind was bitterly cold. Even with all those people packed around us, standing in the open truck was freezing. The wind blowing against us throughout the journey was miserable.
Niucheri was the seat of a commune, located on the border between Taoyuan and Yuanling. It was extremely remote. There were no regular buses and little to see.
What I remember from the trip back is simply the mountains: bare mountains, a few scattered small trees, tufts of dead thatch growing from cracks in the rocks, patches of unmelted snow, and, occasionally, wooden houses perched on the slopes.
On New Year’s Eve, Grandpa Shang, Shang Zhonglun, Grandma Yang, the youngest aunt, Sanmao, Simao, my mother, and I ate the New Year’s Eve dinner together.
It consisted mainly of several large bowls ladled from the big cooking pot of pig’s head stewed with radishes. There were far more radishes than meat. We simply reheated them and put the bowls on the table.
There seemed also to be a chicken dish, a bowl of cured pork, some tofu, and some vegetables.
By the standards of the time, this was an extremely sumptuous meal. It was also the best meal we had eaten since leaving home.
There was no electricity there.
After dinner, there was nowhere to go, so everyone gathered around a fire pit and talked. The fire made the room reasonably warm. Elsewhere indoors, apart from being sheltered from the wind, the temperature was probably about the same as outside.
We probably went to bed around nine or ten.
At three or four in the morning on New Year’s Day, it was still pitch-black.
Uncle Shang Zhonglun got up, put on his padded jacket, and went outside to set off firecrackers.
It was too cold for the rest of us to get up and watch.
Before long, the sound of firecrackers began coming from distant households, one after another, echoing through the mountains.
The New Year had arrived at Yanggongqiao.
On the third day of the New Year, my mother, Sanmao, and I left my grandparents’ home and set out for Changde.
That was my mother’s hometown. She had left in 1949 and had not been back for nineteen years.
For Sanmao and me, it was our first trip to our maternal grandmother’s home.
Written on September 20, 2026.
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