Chapter Eight: 1960 (Part One)

Although Old Qi was somewhat intimidated by my great-grandfather, he was by no means an easy character. He cocked his head, took a swig of liquor, and shouted, "What about six months later?"

My great-grandfather, not wanting to quarrel, tried to reason with him kindly, "It's nothing. There are still a few empty houses at the east end of the village. I suggest you move there sooner rather than later."

Old Qi always thought of himself as someone whose word was law in the village, except when it came to the Xia family, whom he deeply feared. That pent-up feeling erupted as he flushed red and bellowed, "Just say it out loud! Didn’t you claim that if he moved in, he’d be a corpse in three days? And you said I wouldn’t last half a year? Let’s make a bet—do you dare? If I survive, Old Xia, you’ll set up a grand feast with eight meat and eight vegetarian dishes, invite me to your family’s ancestral hall, seat me at the head, and call me Master Qi!"

My great-grandfather rose and laughed, "In six months, I’ll come personally to collect your corpse."

Old Qi was a butcher. In the countryside, butchers were busiest before the New Year, for pigs were precious assets to farming families. About half a month before the New Year, every household would slaughter their pig, saving the meat for festivities and selling some at the market to buy new clothes and supplies.

Butchers held a certain status in the village. In the past, pig slaughtering was an event that called for a feast, known to us as "slaughter wine." Whichever household slaughtered a pig would invite their neighbors to the meal—provided they came to help catch and scald the pig. Afterwards, a large pot of braised pork and offal would be cooked for dinner, and the villagers would eat and drink heartily.

In those days of scarcity, "slaughter wine" was a rare satisfaction—one of the only times in the year, besides the New Year itself, when people could eat their fill. Rural folk worked hard, and when the chance to eat meat came, they seized it without hesitation. The butcher would always be seated at the place of honor—a mark of the respect Chinese society has long shown to skilled craftsmen.

After the meal, Old Qi would tuck his short knife into his belt, his mouth greasy, carrying home the extra pound of pig liver and scraps the host had given him, humming contentedly as he strolled back to his large house, his children eagerly awaiting the treats he brought.

Unfortunately, such scenes only occurred during the festive season. The rest of the year, Old Qi’s family rarely saw meat on their table—poverty was the great equalizer in those times.

After that quarrel with my great-grandfather, the bullies from the Xia family often lingered around the Qi family compound, carrying long sticks and short knives. Old Qi’s arrogance was considerably curbed; at least in Hong Village, in those years, the Xia family's power was unchallenged. Only the Li brothers, newcomers to the village, kept their distance from the Xia family. The elder was robust, the younger shrewd, but they never provoked the Xia family. Eventually, the elder Li brother disappeared—rumor had it he went off to join the army. Later, it was said by Second Li that his brother had died in battle.

March and April were the leanest months of the year. The vegetables in the gardens were still green, and the grains in the fields had only just been sown. Village women, after working the fields and tending to chores, had one more task: gathering pig fodder.

Old Qi kept two pigs—a large one to be slaughtered and sold before autumn, and a smaller one to be raised until the New Year.

After a long day's work, gathering pig fodder was exhausting. For convenience, women would often pick whatever was close at hand. White radishes were grown in the gardens, and their long, leafy tops made excellent pig feed.

However, those radish leaves had a fatal flaw—their high chlorophyll content. Unless thoroughly cooked, they could easily poison and kill a pig, a common cause of death for swine in the countryside.

Old Qi’s piglet, bought that spring and weighing barely thirty pounds, was fed radish greens by his wife at noon. Not long after, it began to foam at the mouth and convulse, and was dead before nightfall.

Losing a pig was losing a precious asset. Furious, Old Qi gave his wife a severe beating. Yet, he couldn’t bear to bury the carcass. The weather in April was neither cold nor hot, and refrigerators were unheard of in rural homes. It was too late in the season to make cured pork. Besides, even if the pig was bled quickly, meat from a sick animal never tasted as good as fresh.

Being a butcher, Old Qi made quick work of the pig, discarding the innards and salvaging nearly a hundred pounds of white meat. That evening, he bought a bottle of liquor from the village store, and his wife fried some pork for him. He ate heartily despite his sorrow.

After a few drinks, he came up with an idea—he’d collect pine branches to smoke the meat in the courtyard.

Smoking meat with pine branches drew out the fat and dried the meat, making it suitable for long-term storage.

The smoking spot was beside the old six-sided well in the center of the compound—a well that had been sealed when Old Qi moved in, using a mass of brown clay similar to that used to seal wine jars.

At that time, the village depended on people carrying water from the river—a laborious task. After moving into the house, Old Qi unsealed the well without hesitation. The water was sweet, but ever since, the family felt their house was always a few degrees colder than others’.

The meat was arranged in strips, strung on racks by the well, with pine resin burning beneath. As the aroma of roasting meat replaced the smoke, the moon had already climbed halfway up the mountainside.

Old Qi gazed at the glowing embers, thinking to himself that by morning, the meat would be ready. He took another swig from his jug and staggered back inside.

But after that night, Old Qi never came out again.

In the second half of the night, flames engulfed the courtyard. The cries of his wife and children could not stop the fire's rampage. By dawn, only half the once-imposing house remained standing.

The best tools for fighting fire then were only buckets. The entire village, young and old, men and women, managed to extinguish the fire at daybreak. A few brave men searched the ruins—Old Qi’s wife and three children were found curled in the corners of a room, their bodies burned black. The villagers, despite their exhaustion, searched every inch of the house, but Old Qi was nowhere to be found.

Some said he had burned to ashes in the fire. But no matter how fierce a fire, there should have been bones left. The house was eventually torn down, and later a school was built on the site. Many strange things happened there, but that is another story.

When my father decided to build a house, the biggest challenge was bricks. The hills around the village yielded yellow earth with strong adhesion. Mixed with rice straw, shaped in wooden molds, dried, and fired in kilns—that was how bricks were made.

It was hard labor: working the fields by day, firing bricks by night. After half a month, my father had made only a cartload. Someone suggested he use the blue bricks from Old Qi’s ruined house. He thought it a good idea. Many coveted those bricks, but superstition kept them away—no one wanted bricks from a house where a fire had claimed so many lives.

My father was not superstitious, particularly because my grandfather was so prone to odd, mystical notions. Out of youthful defiance, he hauled the bricks back and, with a mason’s help, built a few large rooms.

I lived in that house as a child. The blue bricks were blackened in many places, so my father coated the outside with lime. Even in the hottest summer, the house always felt chilly. My grandfather almost never came near. After I was born, he would occasionally visit but never crossed the threshold, always saying the house was unclean.

The rift between my father and grandfather began with that house. After it was built, my grandfather would come by with incense and candles, insisting the house was unfit for living, that bricks from a death house were as yin as grave bricks. My father refused to accept this, and the two quarreled constantly, their relationship growing ever more strained.

When the civil war neared its end, my father joined the army, traveling far and wide, witnessing the birth of New China. Later, his unit was sent to Korea, where he was shot in the thigh. After being hospitalized, he was sent home. By the time he recovered, the Korean War had ended. He was discharged and returned alone to Hong Village.

That year, with my aunt as matchmaker, my father married my mother, and I was born.

I came into the world in 1960, during the infamous Three Years of Natural Disasters. But that year, something even more sensational happened in our village…