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8

When Famine Hit

The large-scale famine that set in around 1959 brought the Great Leap Forward to an end. Actually today many people say it was the Great Leap Forward that brought about the famine. Either way, toward the end of 1959 suddenly food became very scarce. Pork, chicken, fish, cookies, candies, nuts, canned goods, fruit, vegetables—in short, all edible things—vanished from the store shelves. Afterwards ration coupons were invented, all kinds of them: grain coupons, cooking oil coupons, meat coupons, fish coupons, egg coupons, tofu coupons, pastry coupons, sugar coupons, cigarette coupons, cotton coupons, cloth coupons, and many more. All of them were of vital importance for people living in cities.

These coupons caused changes. Suddenly money lost its magic power. My great-grandfather would have been heartbroken, if he was indeed like what his grandchildren had described. Without ration coupons, one could hardly buy anything with money. And where did ration coupons come from? Each month, the coupons were distributed by city governments to their legal residents according to their hukou. Consequently those small white cards, which in the past were merely registration of people's legal residency, became of vital importance. One had to have a city hukou to get ration coupons. Peasants were supposed to grow their own food and, beyond that, to deliver tax grain and sell surplus grain to the government. They got no ration coupons.

The coupons, moreover, differed from one place to another. Those who got coupons in Hebei province, for instance, could not use them in Beijing even though Beijing was right in the middle of Hebei province. After this system was established, it became increasingly difficult for people to move. Actually moving from a big city to a small town or to the countryside was still rather easy; but to go the other way, especially to get into Beijing and Shanghai, was harder than walking up into the blue sky. Thus the coupons took away much freedom from ordinary people and put power into the hands of some officials.

However, during the “Three-Year Natural Calamity” (1959-1962), as it was officially called in China, freedom was not the issue on people's minds. Food was the concern. Food became an obsession. When famine hit, everybody's stomach suddenly became a bottomless cave. The more food you put in it, the emptier it seemed to be. With such a rumbling stomach, the dream of communism was forgotten.

With ration coupons, an adult in Beijing was allowed to buy around thirty pounds of grain each month at a subsidized price. Children's rations varied according to their age. In addition, each person got up to a half-pound of meat, half a dozen eggs, four ounces of cooking oil, and some tofu. In fact, the rations varied depending on the supply.

Once in a while fish or animal offal came to the local store and was sold without coupons, on a first come first served basis. The news spread like wildfire in the big yard. Neighbors told neighbors. Friends called friends. People raced one another to the store. Long lines formed within minutes, winding round and round and creeping slowly like a huge serpent. Aunty and I used to take turns standing in the lines. Sometimes it would take two or three hours, sometimes even longer for us to reach the counter. When we were within a hundred feet, both of us were in the line so that we could buy twice the amount a person was allowed to buy.

I did not mind waiting in the line, under the hot sun, or in the chilly northwest wind. What I hated most was to see the food sold out to the person right in front of Aunty and me. At that moment, everybody cried, “Aiya! Meila!” in great disappointment and came to the front to see with their own eyes that all the boxes were indeed empty. But at least such disappointment never came as a surprise. The shop clerks usually warned people when the supply was running low. After that, Aunty and I would take turns going up to the counter to investigate the supply and count how many heads were ahead of us. As long as there was still a trace of hope, we would persist. Holding our breath and watching out for those who might attempt to jump the queue, we yelled, “Be conscientious! Stop squeezing in!” When I did this, no one blamed me for being impolite, and I felt it was exactly the right thing to do.

By this time, our family had stopped going to the dining common. When food was in such short supply, it was far better to keep it at home, in Aunty's careful hands. Others were probably thinking along the same lines. So the once crowded dining common was deserted. When friends and neighbors met in the big yard, they exchanged information about restaurants in Beijing: which one put more meat and oil in its stir-fry dishes, in which the rice was cooked with less water so that it would last longer.

“Go to Moscow Restaurant! They sell high-price pastry you can buy without grain coupons!”

“Go to Purple Bamboo! They have live fish these days!”

“Moslem restaurants are better! They have beef and mutton. They put more meat in their dishes!”

“The snack bar outside the Summer Palace serves imitation coffee. It tastes sort of like the real thing. Go and try it!”

So the next weekend we would be at one of these places. The party usually included only Father, Lian, and me. Mother and Aunty always insisted that they needed to stay home to take care of the baby. In those years, everywhere we went the prices were sky high and the quality of the food had never been so poor. A stir-fry dish with a few pieces of meat used to cost less than one yuan. Now it would sell for more than ten yuan and people were still buying it like crazy. To Father, money was not important. It came easily. It went easily. If a meal cost a hundred yuan, it was worth it. Some food in our stomachs was always better than a few cold bank notes. Under this guiding principle, the money my parents saved in Switzerland, four or five thousand yuan, which was a considerable sum in China at the time, was quickly used up. In a couple of years they closed their savings account.

After that, my parents often had to borrow ten or fifteen yuan from Aunty at the end of each month. This amount was paid back in a few days but before the month was over, they borrowed it back again. Aunty, on the other hand, had kept her savings of some fifteen hundred yuan that she brought back from Switzerland. When the famine was over, its purchasing power increased dramatically. But looking back on it, Father was not sorry for having bought so little with so much money. “You and Lian were both growing. I could not let you go hungry. And your mother was nursing a baby. She should not go hungry either.”

But Mother went hungry anyway, voluntarily. Born in the year of the ox, she liked to say, “I am an ox. I am strong. I can eat grass and work in the fields from morning till night. Don't you worry about me.” Thus saying, she took food out of her own bowl and put it into mine and Lian's. Thinking of this, now I am sure that she loved us very much. Yet when she was alive I did not understand this.

Sometimes I wonder why my mother never held me in her arms or called me by those funny “little names,” as Aunty and other people's mothers did. And she never kissed me or Lian or said, “I love you.” Maybe she was ashamed of doing so because she was a professional woman and a cadre? Or were there other reasons that dated back to her childhood? Could it be that my memory deceived me? For lately I have realized how unreliable one's memory can be. Anyway, in i960, when Mother gave birth to a third child, her ration grew to include some extra eggs, fish, and meat. Most of these she quietly and resolutely pushed out of her bowl into ours. In the meantime, she was breast-feeding the baby. (She did not breast-feed Lian and me, for fear that breastfeeding might ruin the figure of which she was very proud.)

A few months later, however, her body began to show signs of “water swelling,” a symptom of serious malnutrition, and her blood pressure shot up to over two hundred. Her face lost its rosy color. It looked as if it were made of yellow wax. Press a finger on her forehead, a hole would appear and stay there for quite a while. Everybody who saw her like that was alarmed, especially Father and Aunty. After that, Mother was taken better care of. But her blood pressure never returned to normal despite remedies such as Sea Treasure Soup and Chicken Blood Shots. Her health was ruined once and for all.

The baby, my little brother, Mother and Father named Yue, which means Leap, to commemorate the Great Leap Forward. This name seems really ironic today. But back in i960, most people who lived in cities were unaware of the link between the Great Leap Forward and the famine. Those who knew what happened in the countryside during the campaign—local cadres lied about the yield; at many places crops rotted in the fields, because peasants were too busy building reservoirs and making iron and steel in their backyards; unscientific methods such as deep plowing damaged the soil—did not dare tell the truth to others. A few people who had the courage to speak up, like General Peng Dehuai, met the wrath of Chairman Mao and lost their positions.

As a result, in the sixties people in Beijing believed what the official newspapers told them: the famine was caused by natural calamities made worse later by the perfidy of the Russian Revisionists. However, our difficulties were only temporary. With a combined effort of the leaders and the common people, they would soon be overcome. And what else? Despite the severe natural calamities, not even one person in China had starved to death. If the situation had unfolded in the past, millions would have perished. This fact itself was another great victory! . . .

It was easy to convince people who lived in Beijing of the above, because their rations were higher than elsewhere. As for the big yard, it had stations out in the northwest. The soldiers there, I heard, were given orders to hunt deer in late fall. Subsequently the meat was brought to Beijing in trucks and divided up among the cadres. Nevertheless, when I looked at the albums, I was surprised to see how thin I suddenly became in 1961.1 said “surprised” because I don't remember being hungry. Aside from Mother's sacrifice, Father had “tightened his belt” for us too. As a high-ranking cadre, he was taken special care of by the government. His privilege at the time was two pounds of meat each month, while Mother got only two pounds of soybeans as a low-ranking cadre. Nearly all of these, like the nutritious food Mother got, ended up taking care of Lian and me.

If the utmost my parents could do in a famine was to spend money, Aunty, who had been a poverty-stricken widow in the old society, was a lot more resourceful. With her, I had quite a few exciting adventures. I remember Aunty and I used to sneak out of the big yard at dusk with cotton sacks hidden in a handbag. We were going to buy illegal rice from the local peasants.

When we arrived at the village, it was already dark. Aunty knocked on a door. Somebody opened it from the inside. Quickly we slid into the yard. No greetings were exchanged at the door. No questions asked either. Once inside, the peasant would take out a sack of rice for Aunty to look at. Aunty reached her hand way down into the sack, took out some rice, spread it on her palm, and tried hard to find fault with it. Then they started bargaining in a low voice. After a while a price was agreed on and money changed hands; the peasant filled our sacks with rice. Finally the peasant would throw some green beans or other vegetables from his garden into the bargain to show goodwill and tell us to come back again.

I watched this process in the dark. Nobody paid any attention to me. This way of buying things was utterly unfamiliar to me. Unlike the state-owned shops where the price of everything was fixed and written on a tag, here everything was negotiable and they expected people to bargain. “Ask a sky-high price. Give an earth-low one in return.” The more Aunty found fault with the peasant's rice, the happier he seemed to look. Sometimes when she said, “Forget it! The price you ask is ridiculous! I'm leaving,” the deal was made. No ill feelings on either side. No real friendship either. It was strictly business.

On our way back, the sacks were heavy. Aunty carried the big one. I carried the small one. It was quite a walk. After a while I was sweaty. Yet I walked as fast as I could. Seeing this, Aunty would say that she was truly glad that I had grown up and was now such a big help. Meanwhile she also warned me not to tell anybody what we had done. Her words made me feel that I was trusted. “Of course I won't tell on her and get her into trouble! I know it is for our sake that she takes the risk. I am ten years old now. I understand such things!”

My parents understood this too, I think, in their hearts and bellies. But to save face or for whatever reason, they had to tell her that in their opinion buying illegal rice was wrong; as Party members and cadres, they could not endorse such activities.

“But I'm not a Party member and I'm not a cadre,” Aunty protested. “I am not afraid of making mistakes. I cannot let Rae and Lian go hungry anyway! Besides, these days many families in the big yard are buying rice from the peasants. The leaders have not said anything about it.”

That was true. So afterwards my parents dropped the subject once and for all. Aunty and I continued to visit the peasants at dusk, when our rations were about to run out. My parents gave Aunty more money for groceries and asked no questions. Neither did the latter report how she spent the money. She was completely trusted.

On other days Aunty got up at sunrise and went out with a bamboo basket. I knew she was going to the big stony bridge to buy frog legs, which people in Beijing called “field chicken” legs. In the sixties, the big yard was surrounded by large stretches of rice fields and lotus ponds, home for numerous frogs. In early spring I liked to watch tadpoles swim in the sparkling stream. For days they would remain the same. Then one morning, suddenly, little legs spread out from the sides of their bodies. Their color changed from black to grass green. They had become frogs, jumping, diving, swimming, and singing.

On starlit summer nights, they turned the rice paddies into an enormous open-air opera house. The fragrant breeze of rice and lotus flowers wafted their songs. The whole world seemed to be listening. By and by the moon came out from behind the willow trees. The grass was moved to tears. Night after night, I fell asleep to such noisy and peaceful lullabies.

If after 1958 there were hardly any birds twittering among trees in Beijing, during the famine the frogs were nearly wiped out. The peasant boys were out catching them every night with fishing rods. Before sunrise, the little singers were taken out of their bamboo prisons. First they were skinned alive. After that, their organs were torn out. Their bodies were washed in the stream and pieced together on sharp bamboo sticks. Soon the customers would arrive. Most of them were old women like Aunty. A string of five frogs would sell for around two yuan, a day's salary for a skilled worker in Beijing.

Since the trade was so profitable, the opera house was quickly emptied out. At night, a few scattered croaks reminded people of a big void. But I must confess that in those years when I saw Aunty come back with a bloody lotus leaf package, I was more glad than sad. For I knew that we would have a delicious dish at dinner, a meat dish! In fact, I not only ate the meat, I even chewed and devoured the smaller bones.

During the famine, Aunty not only bought food from various places, she produced food as well. That made her very busy once again. So busy that she no longer had time to study. With the help of Father and me, she reclaimed two pieces of land in the big yard. Each was a little over a hundred square feet large. Next she set up fences to separate our land from the sacred territories of our neighbors. Then we debated about what to plant. Eventually Aunty put in corn because it was high-yielding and sturdy. When the corn sprouted, she sowed beans among them to utilize the land to the utmost. After the beans grew up, she was hardly home. The crops had to be watered and taken care of. But most of the time she was simply keeping an eye on them.

Not far from our garden plots were chicken coops made of broken bricks and asphalt felt. One of them belonged to us. Watching over those feathered creatures with wings and legs was even more difficult than guarding the crops. One day a hen named Phoenix Head was missing. Aunty and I went all over the big yard to look for it. “Gu-gu-daa! Gu-gu-daa—!” Aunty kept calling until her voice grew hoarse. But there was no answer. The hen seemed to have vanished into thin air.

This made Aunty very upset. After three hours, we came back home utterly exhausted. But in less than ten minutes, she jumped up and went out again. This time by herself she searched all the garden plots and peeped into other people's chicken coops as well. After dark she had to give the hen up for lost. When she returned home, she looked as if she had lost a child.

Perhaps the hen was like a child to her. She bought the chicks from a peasant when they were tiny, too small for anyone to tell if they would grow up to be hens or roosters. Raising them in a famine was no easy job. Aunty and I went all over the big yard to gather edible herbs. After we carried them back, she would wash the greens, chop them into fine pieces, cook them, and carefully mix in some tiny bits of corn flour. In addition, she tried to catch worms for the brood. Only four of the chicks turned out to be hens, and Aunty gave each one a pretty name. All were laying eggs for her faithfully. Now suddenly one of them was missing. Most likely it was cooking in someone else's wok, almost ready to be served as a delicious dish. This thought made Aunty so indignant that she lost her appetite and cursed the thief under her breath for a whole evening.