Fostered by the Feng Family

I. Fostered by the Feng Family

At the end of 1968, Father was appointed principal of Zhijiang Middle School. We moved from Muyoupo into town, to the former Zhijiang Teachers’ College campus, and lived in one of a row of wooden houses near the school gate.

At that time, both the school and the normal school had come to a standstill. Father had been ordered to prepare the establishment of Zhijiang School. There were no students, no teachers, and the school buildings had been damaged. He was a commander without an army. On top of that, he had to attend political study sessions in the countryside. Mother spent long periods at these sessions and rarely came home.

After discussing the matter, my parents decided to place me with Teacher Feng Wei’s family. I had just turned eleven.

The Feng family lived just outside the school gate, on the right. Leaving the teachers’ college gate, one walked about twenty yards diagonally to the right, crossed a small wooden bridge over a ditch, passed through a vegetable plot in front of the courtyard, and reached the courtyard after another ten yards or so. The courtyard had two entrances, and the Feng family’s door was on the southern side.

The courtyard wall was made of brick and stood more than two meters high—much more imposing than the earthen walls around most ordinary homes.

Inside was a row of one-story houses set a little over two meters away from the wall. There were six rooms in all, with a kitchen at each end. At that time, the Feng family occupied the three rooms and kitchen on the southern side. The middle room belonged to Peng Minfang, the second daughter of Teacher Peng Dagui. She was three years older than I was, about fourteen at the time. Teacher Peng had already retired and returned to his ancestral home in the autonomous prefecture to live with his elder daughter, Peng Minshu. Peng Minfang had stayed behind alone and had moved into the courtyard not long before.

The two rooms and kitchen on the northern side were occupied by the families of Teachers Zou Shangchun and Lin Mengru. In the middle of the courtyard stood a low stone wall, a little over a meter high, although the walkway in front of the houses was shared. Before Peng Minfang moved in, the wall may have completely separated the Feng and Zou families.

In the corner on the Feng family’s side, where the low wall met the outer courtyard wall, grew a wild grapevine - Zhijiang Mountain grape, a variety common around Zhijiang. Its long tendrils climbed high up the wall and spread toward both sides. Although the vine had been planted by the Feng family, the two households had long agreed that any grapes growing over the Zou family’s side belonged to the Zous. Every autumn, both families enjoyed the sweet, juicy grapes. It was also a sign of the good relationship between them.

 

 

Zhijiang Mountain Grape

 

Teacher Feng Wei had been an art teacher at the former Zhijiang Normal School. He came from Hebei. He had arrived in Zhijiang when he was young and married Mrs. Feng there. He was tall and broad-shouldered, about 173 or 174 centimeters. Mrs. Feng was probably a migrant from the Shaoyang area, perhaps of the second or third generation, because she had little trace of a Shaoyang accent in her speech. She was very short, at most 150 centimeters tall.

Teacher Feng was an intellectual; Mrs. Feng had received little formal education. They did not share much in the way of intellectual interests, but they looked after one another and treated each other with mutual respect. Their relationship was harmonious, almost ceremonially courteous.

They had six children. The eldest daughter had already graduated from high school and was working in Jishou, hundreds of Li away. She did not necessarily return home even once a year. The second daughter resembled her mother—small and delicate—and worked for the Zhijiang theatrical troupe. She lived elsewhere and came home about once a month. The third daughter resembled her father and was relatively tall. She had just graduated from middle school, found a temporary job, and also lived outside the home, returning every week or two.

The fourth child, Si-Mao, was more than four years older than I was. The fifth daughter was three years older than me, and the sixth child, Liu-Mao, was one year older. The three of them still lived at home.

Liu Mao’s full name was Feng Liuzheng. Teacher Feng explained that the name meant this was the last child: the character liu is six, the character zheng carried the sense of “the whole” or “complete,” implying that they would have no more children.

Liu Mao was one year older than I was and resembled his mother. He was not tall. Because our ages were closest, he was the one I played with most.

 

II. Learning to Grow Vegetables, Raise Pigs, and Cut Firewood

There were many children in the family, while Teacher Feng was the only breadwinner, earning just over sixty yuan a month. Their finances had never been comfortable. Mrs. Feng had therefore begun growing vegetables in the open space in front of the house long before I arrived. She had also built a pigpen beside the side wall and raised pigs.

By the time I came to live with them, the eldest three daughters were already independent, and the family’s circumstances had improved considerably. But there were still five people at home, so Mrs. Feng continued to grow vegetables and raise pigs. After I arrived, I joined Mao, the fifth daughter, and Liu Mao in digging the soil, planting vegetables, and gathering pig feed.

In April, we first dug over the land and then planted green beans, yard-long beans, eggplants, chili peppers, pumpkins, and other vegetables. The yellow flowers in front of the house could be picked once a week and made into soup. We also grew scallions, cilantro, and other herbs for seasoning. In autumn, we planted Chinese cabbage, leafy greens, and radishes.

Because the Feng family grew its own vegetables, they hardly needed to buy any during the summer. The vegetables were fresher, of course, and growing them ourselves also gave us a certain sense of accomplishment.

My favorite plant was a Chinese toon tree in front of the house. Every spring, we picked its tender shoots and stir-fried them with eggs. The fragrance was so wonderful that even thinking about it now makes my mouth water.

Gathering pig feed was our second major responsibility. Every two days or so, we had to go out and collect it. Many wild vegetables and weeds could be used as pig feed, but we had to cover a large area to gather a full basket. Once we returned home, we put the weeds into a large bathtub with a chopping board inside and chopped them finely with a knife. Finally, we put them into a large pot, added some rice bran and water, and boiled everything together. That provided several days’ worth of food for the pigs.

I had helped Father plant cabbages in the past, but this was the first time I had taken part in such extensive farm labor. Fortunately, I was very interested in these activities and did not find them especially hard.

There was one task, however, that I truly dreaded: going up into the mountains to cut firewood on weekends.

In those days, people in Zhijiang mostly burned firewood. Wealthier families bought it. A load of dry wood usually cost between seventy or eighty fen to one yuan. The Feng family had many people and also needed wood to cook pig feed, so they burned several hundred jin (Chinese weight unit, 500 grams) a month. Firewood was therefore a major expense. Like many families of modest means, they went into the mountains and cut it themselves.

The hills near Zhijiang had long since been stripped of usable wood. We had to travel thirty or forty li—fifteen or twenty kilometers—into the mountains to find any.

On weekends, we got up a little after three in the morning. We cooked rice and vegetables, ate breakfast, and then filled a large enamel mug: one layer of rice, one layer of vegetables, each pressed down firmly, followed by another layer of rice and another layer of vegetables, until the mug was full. Finally, we covered it with a clean sheet of white paper, folded the edges down, and tied it securely with string.

In those days, we rarely ate meat, each person had only one jin pork/month. Government distributed the coupons to individual families, people had to buy pork with the coupons. No other meat government provided, and almost no sales on the market.

Our favorite dish was chopped pickled vegetables cooked with a little extra oil. It was tasty and went perfectly with rice.

We sharpened our knives and placed them in the sheaths tied around our waists. We brought the ropes used to bundle and carry the wood, along with our shoulder poles. At about five o’clock, we set out.

In winter, it was still completely dark. We walked for roughly four hours and reached the mountains after nine. We found a relatively level patch of ground, put down the shoulder poles, ropes, and enamel mugs of food, and established a temporary base camp.

Then we went looking for small trees that had died, or cut the side branches from large trees or fallen trunks. Sometimes we climbed into large trees to cut off dead branches. Climbing was the most dangerous and exhausting part of the work. Since I was afraid of heights, I rarely climbed trees.

We carried the branches we had cut back to the base camp and continued working until noon. When we felt we had gathered enough, we cut the branches into pieces about a foot and a half long. We then took a long branch about as thick as a finger, softened both ends by twisting them—a technique that required some skill—and made it into a kind of clasp.

We laid the branch on the ground and piled the shorter pieces of wood on top. Then we pulled both ends of the branch, locking the bundle together into a large load of firewood. Once we had made two such bundles, we tied ropes around them, lifted them onto our shoulder poles, and began the journey down the mountain.

We usually started down at about two in the afternoon. If we were late, it might be after four.

Halfway down, we generally stopped beside a small stream or spring along the road. We took out our food, cut a small stick nearby, and broke it into two pieces to use as chopsticks. Whether it was summer or winter, we always ate the rice cold. After eating, we drank some water and continued down the mountain.

 

We usually arrived home after six. In winter, it was often already dark, and we might not reach home until more than an hour after sunset. From leaving at five in the morning to returning at six or seven in the evening, we spent more than a dozen hours engaged in strenuous physical labor.

Whether in winter or summer, our clothes would be soaked through several times. By the time we got home, every bone in our bodies seemed to have come loose. After bathing and eating, we went straight to bed and slept until after ten the next morning, sometimes even until the afternoon. It took several days to recover our strength.

 

III. A Life of Hardship

Life was austere. We not only rarely had meat, and there was very little cooking oil. Teacher Feng came from northern China, so the family occasionally made dumplings. That was the finest food we had.

On those occasions, Teacher Feng would drink a little liquor, peel several cloves of garlic, bite into a clove, and swallow a dumpling. I imitated him and tried eating raw garlic too, but the taste was so harsh that I screwed up my face and bared my teeth, making Teacher Feng laugh.

Even now, when I happen to eat dumplings, I sometimes peel a few cloves of garlic and eat them the way Teacher Feng did.

For the most part, I got along very well with the Feng family. Teacher and Mrs. Feng treated me kindly and fairly. Whatever they had, I had too.

Once, Liu Mao and I went to the county auditorium to watch a performance. Liu Mao went upstairs to the balcony first. As I was about to follow him, he mischievously spat down at me from above. I warned him several times, but he would not stop. I became angry and went upstairs to fight him.

He was shorter than I was. I grabbed his hair, while he scratched my face. It was the first time I had ever gotten into a real fight with someone.

When I returned home, I told Mrs. Feng what had happened.

The next day, Liu Mao had been given a completely shaved head and wore a hat. My face, meanwhile, was covered with red antiseptic medicine, making me look like a painted clown. He seemed to have suffered no injury at all, while I was covered in scratches.

Teacher and Mrs. Feng scolded Liu Mao but did not criticize me. They made him apologize and urged me to forgive him. We were distant for several days, but gradually we made up.

This was during the Cultural Revolution. For more than six months, we were required to practice what was called “morning requests and evening reports.” When we got up in the morning and before going to bed at night, everyone stood before a portrait of Chairman Mao and said together: “May Chairman Mao live for ten thousand years, ten thousand years! May Vice Chairman Lin enjoy good health, eternal good health!”

Then we all performed the “loyalty dance.”

For the most part, it was us children who took part. Teacher and Mrs. Feng rarely joined us. No one supervised us; we participated simply out of habit and fear of government.

The practice eventually faded away, but performances of the loyalty dance on public stages remained popular for many years.

 

IV. Eternal Gratitude

I lived with the Feng family for about a year. Then my parents returned, and I moved back to the school to live with them.

Although I had returned home, I sometimes still went with the Feng family to cut firewood on weekends. In my parents’ words, it was good for me to “get some physical labor training.”

Once, because we were delayed by various matters, it was already dark by the time we began descending the mountain. That day I had cut more than sixty jin of wood—at least ten jin more than usual—and I could barely carry it. I could not walk far without stopping to rest, so I fell behind the others.

When Mom saw that I had not returned by seven, she became worried that something might have happened to me. She had an important meeting that evening, but after eight o’clock, when she learned that I was still missing, she could no longer concentrate. In the end, regardless of whether the leaders agreed, she left the meeting room and came searching for me along the road, crying as she went. She walked seven or eight li before finally meeting me.

Mom told me how she were worried about me, she took my firewood on her shoulders. We took turns to carry the heavy load. We did not get home until after ten that night.

This made me to know how much Mom loved me 

Even after this incident, my parents did not tell me to stop going into the mountains for firewood, and I continued to go.

Not long afterward, Qianyang Normal School opened. Teacher Feng was transferred there to teach, and the entire family moved to Anjiang, where the school was located.

In 1972, I took part in a badminton selection tournament held by the Qianyang Prefecture authorities to choose athletes for the provincial games. The tournament took place at Qianyang Teachers’ College, where I saw Liu Mao again.

A few years later, Teacher Feng was transferred back to Zhijiang Normal School. By then, however, I had already gone to the countryside, and we had little contact.

After that came the university entrance examination, work, and going abroad. I rarely returned home, and when I did, my visits were hurried.

In 2006, I returned to China for the first time. To express my gratitude, I hosted a dinner for all the teachers who had taught me and invited Teacher and Mrs. Feng as well. Although they had not taught me anything from a textbook, I still owed them my thanks.

Teacher Feng had aged considerably. He walked slowly and spoke slowly. Mrs. Feng was old too, but she remained in good spirits, and her movements were still quick and nimble.

When I returned home in 2016, I contacted Mao and told him I wanted to visit his parents. He told me that his father had passed away a year earlier, but his mother was still alive.

I bought some gifts and went especially to their home on Xiaobei Street to see Mrs. Feng. She was nearly ninety, but she still had the same gentle smile. She did not talk much, but her mind was clear and her spirits were good. Mao was looking after her.

When I mentioned the time I had lived with their family, I once again expressed my gratitude for the care they had given me. Mrs. Feng smiled and said, “It was only what we should have done.”

I asked about the other sisters. They had all retired. And Liu Mao? He was living somewhere else.

Later, someone told me that Liu Mao had spent time in prison. I never asked why. After he was released, he went to live elsewhere and had not appeared in Zhijiang for a long time.

I did not live with the Feng family for very long, but I received their affection, learned many practical skills, and developed the ability to endure hardship and work hard. Those experiences laid the foundation for my quick adjustment to life as an educated youth when I was later sent to the countryside. They also benefited me throughout my university years and working life.

 

Written in 2018.