Grandad’s Farming Proverbs
I. The Kitchen: The fire must be hollow, the person must be solid
At the time, the old family house could still be called new; it was a two-storey house built for my father’s wedding. The second floor was the bridal suite, though it remained vacant for most of the year, so my grandparents and I lived on the ground floor. The kitchen was a separate building in the courtyard, nestled in the south-east corner of the front yard—a tiny structure of blue tiles and a wooden door, not even ten square metres in size.
Stepping through the kitchen door, one first saw a curved low wall, about half a person’s height, leaning against the southern wall. Its opening faced east toward the stove, and the space within was used exclusively for storing firewood. Though called ‘firewood’, actual logs were rare; it was mostly crop stalks—rice straw, rapeseed stalks, soybean stalks, cotton stalks, sesame stalks… all patiently bundled into small oval pillows and stacked neatly. In my village, what we ate differed by season, and so did the fuel we burned. The wood ash from the stove would eventually be returned to the fields; the cycle of the four seasons resided within this stove. Only later, as I grew older, did I come to understand that much of the joy and sorrow of a farming family revolved around this tiny stove.
Grandfather’s day began with lighting the fire. A lean, stooped little old man, he would perch on a small stool before the stove and strike a match—sometimes two. First, he would light a small handful of fluffy rice straw to kindle the flame, before formally stuffing the stove with stalks; two bundles of straw were usually enough to boil a large pot of water. Then, using a ladle, he would scoop water, one dip at a time, filling four water bottles one by one. I loved to press my head and ears against the side of the stove to listen to the sound of the bottles filling; even the sound felt warm, shifting from a crisp splash to a deep hum, the most satisfying moment being when they were nearly full. Above the stove, a patch of bright tiles let in the light, and the billowing white steam would signal the start of the three daily meals.
I tried to learn how to light the fire from my grandfather. While he went to the well to wash vegetables, I would try to help by stuffing the stove completely full—which, predictably, extinguished the fire and filled the kitchen with acrid smoke. Grandfather would laugh and scold me, saying I was ‘burning the kitchen stove’—a grave offence in the old days. He would then clear the stove and kindle the fire anew, murmuring, “The fire must be hollow, the person must be solid”, and explained it to me: only a ‘hollow’ fire—with room for air—can burn brightly, and only a ‘solid’ person—sincere and honest—is loved by others. I was young and confused, but I watched the act of lighting the fire closely, pondering that phrase, “the fire must be hollow”.
From then on, I often crouched by the stove, first watching the fire, then feeding it, until one day I could kindle it myself. When I first learned to read as a child, I often only knew how to read half of a difficult character; of the phrase “the fire must be hollow, the person must be solid”, I only truly mastered the first half. Lighting the fire came easily; being a “solid” person proved far more difficult.
As an adult, I heard my eldest aunt recall the past. When she was young, the family struggled financially, and the children craved snacks; Grandfather would mix this “Immortal Water” to soothe them. Back then, they didn’t even have sesame oil, so the recipe he gave me was an upgraded version. Yet, the MSG was indispensable; whether it was Immortal Water or an earthly dish, a few grains always had to be pinched in. His devotion to MSG recorded the craving for meat and umami that defined the era of his upbringing. After I grew up, I once tried to throw away the household MSG jar; Grandfather felt terribly wronged, shouting, “Even when I’m dead, I’ll still want my MSG!”
The tiny kitchen was simple, quiet, and serene. Grandfather mostly worked in silence, treating every ingredient and utensil as a precious treasure, as if they were kin. Having experienced prolonged hunger, he knew the blessing of having regular meals. His affection for me was generous, though not expressed in lavish feasts; rather, as soon as the small greens showed their first sprouts, he would readily pick them and blanch them into my noodles. Those sprouts were barely the size of a fingernail, like tiny green hearts, tender and lovely.
In those days, as he bustled about the kitchen and I followed behind, looking this way and that with wide-eyed curiosity, I silently learned the flow and the keys to cooking. Long after, when I first held a knife and took charge of the wok, it was Grandfather’s manner of cooking that I pictured in my mind and mimicked with my hands. For several home-style dishes, the taste turned out to be nearly eighty per cent the same. Whenever I miss my home and my kin, I can find solace in the kitchen.
II. The Main Hall: Compete with others in the fields, but not in the festivities
I have a visceral memory of the word “up” in “coming up to the table”; the Eight Immortals table was so high and hard that a child truly had to climb onto it. The table had its north, south, east, and west, with distinct positions for men, women, old and young—strictly governed by rules and seniority. It was the adults’ table; we children were not encouraged to speak much and had to learn respect, careful not to be hit by a stray chopstick. Yet that “respect” consisted of the loud laughter and chatter of the male guests and the attentive arrangements of the female visitors. I only remember sitting on the very edge of a long bench, swinging my legs in utter boredom. Fortunately, I was tucked beside my grandfather; he would turn his chopsticks around to dip the tip in a bit of white spirit and let me have a sip, always finding it amusing to see my face scrunch up from the spice.
Grandfather’s memory differed from mine. In his later years, his mind and speech became clouded; he had no new stories to tell me, yet he would suddenly seem to remember something and begin rambling about taking me to banquets in the past. At those weddings and funerals, each family usually hosted one feast; typically, the men sat at the table, the women helped with the work, and the children were expected to take their bowls of rice and play on the sidelines. “You were never dutiful from a young age, no sense of propriety or seniority,” he would say. I had been a tiny little girl who insisted on squeezing and climbing her way onto the table. “The child is the father of the man,” he would mutter, his face a mix of irritation and amusement, finally pointing at me with a trembling finger and sighing, “Oh, you…” Then, silence would return.
I remained steadfast in my dislike for the Eight Immortals table, preferring our small square table and its matching “Number Two Stool”. The Number Two Stool was a miniature version of the long bench, yet slightly higher than a small stool; in short, our family called it the Number Two Stool. Sitting on it felt perfectly comfortable; my feet could touch the ground, and my elbows could rest on the table. Grandfather and Grandmother would also take the Number Two Stool to the well to pick vegetables or wash dishes, or even carry it to the back door to gossip with the villagers. And when we all sat on our Number Two Stools around the small dining table, we were suddenly the same height. The Number Two Stool was our family’s stool of equality.
When I was a child, if a grain of rice fell on my lap or the table, Grandfather would not scold me, but would reach out and pinch it up with his fingertips to put into his own mouth. Gradually, I developed a sense of shame and disliked this gesture; I learned to be mindful and cherish my food, quickly picking up any fallen rice myself. As an adult, there have been times when I had a small amount of rice left in my bowl that I simply could not finish, and when a single grain fell by the rim, I habitually pinched it up and put it in my mouth. If someone saw me, I would first blush, and then my eyes would well up. In Grandfather’s stories, a single grain of rice in a farming household could be as heavy as Mount Sumeru.
Grandmother was born the daughter of a landlord in a neighbouring town, with an elder sister, two elder brothers, and a younger brother. During the War of Resistance, the family fled as refugees, and Grandmother was left with a wet nurse; she went from being a young lady to a child bride. But she was such a fierce and spirited woman that, upon growing up, she resolved to break off her engagement to her foster brother and eventually set her sights on my grandfather. When they married, they had saved ten catties of rice, a bag of white sugar, and a table of wine—they began their marriage with almost nothing. That year, they only had white rice for thin congee.
Grandfather would point to the black-and-white photograph of my great-grandfather hanging high on the wall. He looked like a refined scholar, having once worked as a bookkeeper; Grandfather looked very much like him. “Your grandmother taught me: compete with others in the fields, but not in the festivities.” He truly believed in this principle, diligently serving the land and humbly tending the crops, until finally, peace returned to the world, the farmers had their own land, labour bore fruit, and they reached an era where the festivals brought surplus.
But the peaceful world progressed so rapidly, and the era shifted once more—he had already witnessed so many different ages. The fertility of the land was finite, and human desires shifted with the times. The fields had been his world, yet he had to leave them to carve out a living in the wider world. Thus, carrying cotton packs, he headed south to Nanjing, and with a mining shovel, he went north to Inner Mongolia. He and Grandmother had to make a living for the family and forge a future for their children. Eventually, the daughter married and the son started a family. Those crops, cotton, and ores bent his spine, but they built this house, and I was born here.
Past the age of sixty, he returned to the soil; he remained a man of the crops until the end. Years of overwork had taken their toll, leaving his gastrointestinal system chronically ill. He was most frugal with his medicine, condensing three meals into one, and snapping a single pill into two halves. The eras he lived through had shaped his body and his gut.
Grandmother was fond of cleanliness and could be quite fastidious; she would even correct the angle at which Grandfather held the broom to the floor. Once, truly losing his patience and spotting me giggling beside them, Grandfather threw down the broom and pointed at us both: “What a lifetime of misery, still having to wait on you two little misses, the old and the young.” Despite his words, he always peeled dried longans and steamed longan water for Grandmother before bed, forever mindful of the hardships they faced during the New Year in their youth.
Every evening, Grandfather would help me wash my feet in the main hall; I sat on the second stool, and he on a small one. Sometimes he told me stories—from the Japanese invaders coming up the mountain to the Eighth Route Army crossing the river. He spoke of the Communist tide, when he had to surrender the family tree and hide foreign yarn; how our ancestors were farmers the day before yesterday, only to become fishermen by the next. On the table sat a large Sanwu-brand mantel clock that ticked forward one step at a time: tick, tick. Grandfather began to teach me how to tell the time: fifteen minutes was a quarter, the bell rang once for half an hour, once for one o’clock, twice for two… From the moment Grandfather taught me to read the clock, I understood ‘time’, and I had a past and a future.
It was the eleventh lunar month, and I had already started primary school; only Grandfather and I remained at home. In the evenings, he would bring back sweet rice wine from the street, pouring it into a large white porcelain bowl for me. While he was busy in the kitchen, I would lean over the table, sipping the sweet wine in small mouthfuls. I had just learned an idiom: ‘snow like goose feathers’. Suddenly, a gust of cold wind swept in, and looking back, I saw snow drifting into the courtyard—it truly was snow like goose feathers. I was almost spellbound; it was a moment where the written word met the scenery, and the scenery gave life to the word. I watched in silence for a while before shouting excitedly, “It’s snowing, it’s snowing!”, and running to the kitchen to find Grandfather.
It is often said that ‘the worries of life begin with literacy’. Before the age of ten, the main hall was my ‘eternal heaven’, and outside were the ‘bright mountains and clear waters’; there was nothing in life to fret over.
III. Village: If you don’t work when the chinaberry blooms, you’ll stamp your feet when the smartweed blooms
Visiting relatives truly meant walking; he used his footsteps to lead me in measuring the village and township where we lived. When I grew tired, he would carry me on his back. He was a hunchback, and his back felt like a rounded little hill; I felt completely secure resting there, often falling asleep as we swayed, only to wake up once we had returned home.
Grandfather told me: “People die; when they die, they vanish, and then they turn into a big rooster, keeping watch by the windows of the loved ones they cannot bear to leave.” That night brought perhaps the first bout of insomnia in my life; I actually heard the mantel clock strike ten. Grandfather slept at the head of the bed and I at the foot, my arms and legs clinging to his calves, staring out the window, half-expecting to see the silhouette of a big rooster. I had only just learned to tell the time, yet I had already encountered death so abruptly: death was a big rooster. In my sorrow, I wiped my tears onto the bridge of his foot.
However, by the next day, my worries had vanished, replaced by the excitement of the funeral. The music and singing, the red firecrackers, the yellow joss paper, the white clothes, and the sobbing of the relatives—which sounded to me like a melodic song—all seemed like a festive curiosity to a child. As for that red-brick house, its wooden doors were locked from then on, and no one was ever seen entering or leaving again.
Later, my aunt teased me, saying Grandfather used to frighten me by claiming that after he died, he would become a ghost and crawl into my pencil case to follow me to school, hiding in my desk during lessons to watch over me for the rest of my life. I remember crying and throwing my pencil case away, screaming that I didn’t want him.
My home was at the village entrance; the village primary school was just two or three hundred metres further. From the fourth grade, we had to travel to the central primary school in the township, which was only three or four kilometres by bike. Grandfather’s approach to encouraging my studies was much like his approach to farming. Whenever I procrastinated with my holiday homework, spending the final few days wailing and crying as I rushed to finish, Grandfather would scold me with a laugh: “If you don’t work when the chinaberry blooms, you’ll be stomping your feet in regret when the smartweed blossoms.” Though I didn’t yet know what chinaberries or smartweed were, I recognised the sarcasm, which only made me stomp my feet in further frustration.
In the third and fourth grades, I began learning to write essays; the topic was ‘Spring’. It truly was springtime, with a gentle, lingering drizzle. I begged Grandfather to take me mountain climbing; he set aside a day’s farm work specifically for my trip. We walked so far and climbed so high that the Yangtze River lay below us, and looking back, the view was a tapestry of paddy fields and homes. Grandfather spoke of the great flood of ’98, how vast stretches of paddy fields had turned into lakes, and how they had spent days and nights, regardless of age or gender, hauling sandbags to save the embankments. He pointed out our village to me, but I couldn’t find it for the life of me; it seemed like nothing more than a tiny speck. I told him I’d be able to see it once I grew taller.
I recited Li Bai’s poetry to him—poems that every child in our region knew by heart, as Li Bai had written them on that very mountain. He laughed, saying he was illiterate and couldn’t understand ancient poetry. There was a line: “The clear blue waters flow east and turn back here”; I loved that word “turn back”. Holding his hand, I told him I wanted to go home.
In the summer I turned ten, I went to stay with my parents in another province. Looking back, it felt as if I had fallen from the Peach Blossom Spring into the world of the Qin dynasty. In my youth, I experienced many moments of instability and discord. Although I grew tall, I felt that growing up was an exhausting ordeal. At the time, I thought that since the Liuyang River flows into the Xiang, and the Xiang into Dongting, and Dongting connects to the Yangtze, I could simply follow the Yangtze back home. When choosing a university, I eventually picked Nanjing, finally returning to the banks of the Yangtze, closer to my grandparents. They had come to Nanjing in their youth to survive; I came to Nanjing in my youth to study. From then on, I could go home frequently during weekends and holidays.
Despite the high-speed rail, I usually still crossed the Yangtze from Nanjing, taking a bus from the north bank to the county town, and then a minibus from the town to the village. After getting off on the provincial road, I would transfer to a small tricycle to reach the village street, after which I could walk home. Swaying along the way, crossing rivers and passing through many villages, it was only after I grew up that I began to seriously memorise the names of those rivers and places, re-experiencing the routes they once walked. On these journeys home, I reviewed history again and again: my history, Grandfather’s history, the history of my family, and the history of the land. Trip after trip, administrative boundaries shifted, and some place names and river names gradually faded away.
The village primary school where I studied as a child was converted into a nursing home. Where it once welcomed school-aged children from various village groups, it now welcomed the widowed and solitary elderly. The nursing home became a new social hub; it was quite lively in the early years, with mahjong tables out every day. Grandfather often went there to play, and he gradually developed a critical eye, deciding the atmosphere was vibrant and the fees reasonable, not to mention the communal canteen. He lamented that because he had children and a partner, he wasn’t eligible to enter; for a moment, he seemed to suffer a late-life crisis, thinking it would be better to have no children, no spouse, and no attachments. Whenever something went wrong, he would say, “Fine, I’ll just move into the nursing home!”
Later, however, the number of people in the nursing home dwindled, and he stopped going. He would carry his usual stool and sit by the back door, occasionally greeting a passing figure before falling silent again.
Our home was renovated once more, and the courtyard walls were refurbished; this refurbishment was also a way of reinforcing the structures of the past. Amidst this continuous reinforcement, Grandfather was aging, and my father was becoming the dominant presence. This house and the people living in it began to be identified by my father’s name. A kitchen and toilet were built over the small vegetable plot in the yard, and the old kitchen gradually fell into disuse. The farmland had been leased out, leaving only two small plots for vegetables. As I wandered through the village, I saw many gates tightly shut; the grandeur of the traditional main halls was gone.
I walked to the old house of the neighbour to the south; a corner of the red wall had collapsed. Only then did I realise that the great tree before their door was actually a Chinaberry tree. And the smartweed was something common everywhere, along the pond banks and field ridges. The chinaberry blooms as the tidings of spring fade, and the smartweed blossoms as the autumn wind rises on the banks; hence the proverb of spring laziness and autumn urgency—the matter of the farmer stomping his feet in regret.
I always assumed he understood nothing, and that the sorrows and passions I later experienced were things I could never share with him. Finally, one day, he truly stopped understanding. The loss of his hearing was a process of noisy shouting, and then a result of silent stillness. Only then did I understand what was meant by “stomping your feet when the smartweed blossoms”. It turned out that not only is farming like schooling; every moment of being human involves seasons missed and the karma of what one has consumed.
IV. The Burial Ground: Wheat ears at Qingming, rice ears at the Summer Solstice
Grandfather used to say: “Wheat ears in Qingming, rice ears in the Summer Solstice”. However, in my home village, rapeseed is mostly grown in winter. There is an oil mill in town, so the family can send their seeds to be pressed in advance. Thus, what we see during Qingming is rapeseed—a vast expanse of yellow, occasionally punctuated by streaks of green. The village graveyard is enveloped by these rapeseed fields, with the tiled roofs of the ancestral shrines appearing and disappearing in the distance; it is a scene where loneliness persists even amidst the vibrancy. Occasionally, from within the yellow blooms, one can hear an old woman’s funeral dirge, singing in a cadence so poignant it is almost unbearable to listen to. In my village, folk songs are rare, yet during the Qingming season, amidst the yellow flowers of the graves, the ancient spirit of the land still lingers.
Grandfather never minded bringing me, his little granddaughter, to the graves during the festivals—after all, visiting the graveyard is a form of kinship, though the relatives visited are the deceased. As he burned the paper, he would call out the names: his parents, his parents-in-law, his grandparents, many aunts and uncles, his brothers, and his two elder sisters. He was the fourth child, with three brothers above him and originally two sisters; the family had been so poor that the daughters were given away to other families as soon as they were born. He carried a long list in his heart, reciting the names slowly, while I stood beside him poking the fire with a stick, mindful of the rule that “the fire must be hollow”. Grandfather would always remind me not to scatter the spirit money, lest those below be unable to receive it. Finally, he would light a small handful of paper and scatter it across the open plains, saying, “Lonely ghosts and wandering spirits, come and take your share.” He had lived through war and famine; he had seen human lives turn into lonely ghosts and wandering spirits.
Grandmother used to warn me: after noon, never take the shortcut through the path to the Hall of Repose. She would then shake her head and wave her hand, remaining mysteriously tight-lipped. But I was bold; not only did I take the path, but I also tried to decipher the names and dates on the headstones. It was only when I reached adulthood that I realised some of those wandering spirits were of my own generation—girls who were never born, who never had names. For a moment, I felt a sense of vacancy, and within that vast, sweeping sorrow, there grew a shameful sense of luck. Suddenly, Grandmother’s warning resonated with me, and I stopped taking the shortcut.
The last time I went to the graveyard with Grandfather was to visit his own grave. It was after Qingming, a time when the wheat fields in the countryside were at their peak and the rapeseed was mere punctuation. Truly, there were fewer and fewer farmers; wheat is less labour-intensive, as it can be sown and harvested by machine. The neighbouring village had long since been demolished for redevelopment, its name surviving only on GPS maps and in oral history, its houses and gardens merged into wide, uniform stretches of wheat. The wind no longer blew through doors and alleys, but instead rolled in waves of wheat all the way to the river’s edge. My village seemed to float upon these waves. The homes of the living had scattered; the homes of the dead remained in silence.
Grandfather walked slowly ahead of me, leaning on his cane. In old age, one’s strength fails; his soles remained flat against the ground, each step making a sound—shuff-shuff—interspersed with the short, crisp “tap” of the cane hitting the earth. We moved forward in silence, to this rhythm of two longs and a short. In the late spring, the vegetation grew wild, and the path into the graveyard had been swallowed once more. He cleared the way with his cane, looking back to warn me where to step. Bindweed tugged at my ankles, wheat ears brushed against my knees, and rapeseed pods popped beside my ears. The graves rose and fell like rolling hills; here, the boundary between the present world and the past was drawn.
My father, now over fifty, had gradually taken over the village affairs from Grandfather, renovating the old house and exhuming bones to relocate graves. He was full of hope, wanting both the world of the living and the dead to be harmonious and orderly. Great-grandfather and great-grandmother’s graves had originally been in the fields of the lower village, but they were moved to the communal ground with new headstones. On the stone, the family names were listed in clear rows. I found my own name, but it felt foreign, as if it no longer belonged to me. Beside them was another small plot of concrete, smaller in scale, containing two dark, square pits side by side, like a pair of eyes staring into the void. This was the place where Grandfather and Grandmother would eventually pass; they waited there in silence. Grandfather asked me to pay my respects to the ancestors, while he described himself as one merely waiting for death, a midnight wandering soul. He told me that when we met again, it would be here that I would come to see him.
That was nearly the last conversation we had while he was still lucid—a final moment of solitude and walking together. In the years that followed, he and Grandmother became increasingly unable to care for themselves, and eventually moved to live with their children in another city. He left the land and the village he knew, drifting between the homes of his son and daughter. In the city, his way of measuring life through his footsteps had become obsolete. Coupled with his hearing loss and cognitive decline, he tried to leave the house alone several times, crossing provinces and rivers, attempting to walk his way home.
By day he walked in body; by night he walked in spirit. He always wanted to go home.
When my grandfather suffered a stroke, I was by his side. He could no longer hear or speak. In his brief moments of lucidity, he would struggle to open his eyes, gazing at me with a look of helpless longing. I touched his hand, touched his face, and found myself suddenly speechless too, my heart overflowing with repentance and silent prayers. Then, he let out a long, mournful cry; his breath surged and blood rushed upward. All the suffering and endurance of his long life seemed to pour out in that moment, and my hands were filled with his congested blood. It was the early spring of 2022. An older friend had once told me that patience is a virtue. In that moment, I felt the physical texture of this virtue: fishy, hot, heavy, and viscous. It overflowed my palms; it could endure no more.
Eventually, an ambulance took him from my father’s house to the city hospital, then he was transferred to the county town, and finally, he was sent back to the village. At the end of his journey, he returned home in a coma. That home was undergoing another round of renovation; the interior was a shambles, and the scaffolding on the exterior had yet to be removed. The villagers helped overnight to clear out a clean room—the very room where I had lived with him as a child. It was here that I first experienced insomnia, imagining the great rooster outside the window. Here, I realised that death is a present continuous process: from the moment he was born, from the moment I imagined that rooster, to the moment he returned to this room in a coma.
He was such a good man—virtuous, affectionate, and well-regarded. Word spread through the neighbourhood, and everyone came to pay their respects or call out to him. They sighed, counting on their fingers how many of the elderly were departing, wondering why such a good man had to go. Lay Buddhist women from his village and neighbouring ones arrived, forming a makeshift end-of-life care team. They brought their own bedding, flour, and vegetables, staying day and night, surrounding the bed and chanting ‘Amitabha’.
The family had been utterly distraught, but the chant of ‘Amitabha’ became a command, a takeover, a protective wall. The Buddhist women kept relatives at a distance and forbade tears by the bedside, fearing that such grief would tether the dying soul. They sang and coaxed: ‘Children and grandchildren are but an illusion; old Bodhisattva, you may go now, to the Western Pure Land’. In his final days, my grandfather could take neither food nor water, leaving him only to gasp upon his pillow. He had endured hunger for so long in his life, yet in the end, he had to set out for the ‘Western Pure Land’ on an empty stomach. My father went to collect the land rent and placed the money under my grandfather’s pillow. My two aunts spent the night in devout prayer, stifling their grief. I found it unbearable; I paced outside and walked into the fields, watering the crops with my tears.
My eldest aunt lamented, ‘The old man was virtuous all his life, and his children love him dearly.’ Yet I remember that only last month, as my grandfather looked at a photo of my great-grandfather on a phone, he suddenly sobbed like a small child. He cried that his own mother had passed away when he was young, leaving not even a single photograph behind, wondering, ‘How could she be so heartless?’ He had lived a life devoid of a mother’s love, yet he showed boundless tenderness and affection to every younger generation. We all sat on his ‘number two’ stool; he made every child feel as though they were the favourite. My ‘virtuous’ grandfather had raised a ‘willful’ me, yet he always made me feel cherished.
At 3:52 am, my grandfather passed away. Tears were permitted, but the sobbing did not cease; immediately, the wake had to be set, the banquet prepared, the household registration cancelled, and the body cremated. There were few elderly left in the village, so the funeral rites were a patchwork, pieced together , a mixture of bewildered solemnity and frantic bustle. In my memory, this was the first time the main hall and courtyard of our home were filled with Eight Immortals tables. Everyone was busy; grief was untimely at a funeral, swallowed by the endless stream of banquet dishes, the clack of mahjong tiles, and the burst of firecrackers. As an adult daughter who was not yet married, I was neither host nor guest, belonging neither to the tables nor the kitchen, scrutinized by every eye and commented upon in every sentence. Only when I looked up at my grandfather’s black-and-white portrait in the mourning hall did I realise he was truly gone.
Once the funeral procession ended, it was said that filial descendants must not look back; they had to circle the village and the fields to scatter rice and wheat seeds. An elder in the village remarked, ‘The granddaughter doesn’t need to come along.’ Upon hearing this, my brother looked at me, a flicker of pity in his eyes. But I finally endured it, having neither the will nor the strength left. He turned and left, following my father’s pace, circling the village to inherit the status of a ‘filial descendant’. Between us lay the farmland and the village, and the newly cast concrete walls of the courtyard.
In the past, the elders lectured me for my habit of obsessing over the smallest injustices, telling me that nothing in life is ever completely fair. But I felt that the unfairness itself was the error, and I didn’t just want to dwell on it—I wanted to break through it. I used to be so full of determination.
And now I stand among the graves, desolate and distracted, like a wandering ghost. One’s hometown becomes a foreign land; daughters have no hometown of their own. Yet I feel only a numbness, no more heart-wrenching turmoil or restlessness. But within that numbness, tufts of cotton wool began to bloom, filling my chest and lungs, lingering and soft. I crouched on the ground, wanting to pick up a pencil case I had once thrown away.
More villages have disappeared; small plots have been merged into large fields, and many streams have been cut off and filled in to make way for roads. The transition of land is a merging; the transition of people is a scattering. It was via this road that I left, carrying a sack of lost cotton wool and an un-fluffed quilt.
All illustrations in this article were taken by the author
Editor: Wang Hao