Monday, February 26, 2007

Heritage Paper

Five Bushels of Rice


憫農 Pitying the Farmer
李紳 Li Shen (Tang Dynasty)

鋤禾日當午, Hoeing underneath the midday sun,
汗滴禾下土。 Sweat dripping down into the soil.
誰知盤中飧, Who realizes that this dish of rice,
粒粒皆辛苦。 Grain by grain, is all from bitter toil?

Rice was so precious in those days that few families could eat rice every meal like we do nowadays. Most often, people ate cheaper, bland yams for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Rice was eaten only a few times each year. No one would leave a single grain of rice uneaten when the opportunity came; all bowls were scraped clean. These were the times that my grandmother, or “ah-ma” in Taiwanese, grew up in.
My ah-zhou (great-grandmother) carried rice for a living. Each morning she went to the rice store where she worked as a delivery woman and loaded each 50-pound sacks of rice, bag by bag, onto the wooden cart. Every day, the handles of the cart bit into her hands as she pulled it around town. Blisters formed, popped, and calloused over to form again. It was not an easy job, but there was nothing better. Her three daughters and herself depended on the meager amounts she received for the bags of rice she had to shoulder into each household. One day of carrying rice earned four copper coins. One week of carrying rice got rice for a family of four. Two months of backbreaking labor earned five bushels of rice.
My ah-ma and her family lived in a small, dank storeroom behind the kitchen of a large manor in Tainan. They had a few pots for cooking, a futon on the floor for sleeping, and a cardboard box of clothes—two sets of clothes for each person. The kitchen they lived right behind of was not for them. It was used by the cooks of the other three families that lived in the large manor. They were my ah-ma’s family members too, her uncles and aunts, but she did not see them that often.
Actually, my ah-ma hadn’t always lived in the cockroach-ridden storeroom all her life. Her family once lived in a separate wing of the vast Chen family manor. Their troubles had started twelve years ago, in the summer when the sea grew calm and ushered the trading ships across the Taiwan Strait to Fukien, where they would fill the wooden bellies of the junks with valuable wares. Her father was the youngest son of eight in the Chen household. Scholarly, handsome, and wealthy, he was well respected in the household and by the whole community. Still today, I hear stories of how any musical instrument that his hands held always sang with the most beautiful of sounds, be it the driving rhythms of the pipa (Chinese lute), the haunting notes of the xiao (bamboo flute), or the plaintive, heartrending melodies of the erhu (the two-stringed fiddle). He owned and sailed a grand, giant ship, 300 ft. long with four towering masts. Each year, he set sail for the bustling, thriving ports of Fukien to trade— Quanzhou, Fuzhou, and Xiamen, the largest ports of the Eastern Hemisphere in their time. From each trading expedition he brought back an ample profit, enough to buy the luxuries of life so few could afford.
Then one voyage, her father’s ship never returned. No one knows why. It could have been wokou, sea pirates who sail from Japan to ambush the fat trading ships. They must have surrounded her father’s ship, taken the cargo, and held the crew captive. Sometimes they demanded ransoms from the captives’ families. Most often they just killed everyone and dumped their bodies overboard for fishermen to find days later. Day after day, month after month, my ah-ma’s family waited, until after a year, the household finally gave him up for dead. My ah-ma was four years old.
The other families of the household banished my ah-zhou and her daughters out of the household. My ah-zhou had only daughters. Her daughters would inherit absolutely nothing so neither would my ah-zhou. After all, she was a daughter-in-law who had married into their family, and was not worth the trouble to help. My ah-ma’s family kept only their personal articles: their clothes. Everything else stayed in the manor, with my ah-ma’s uncles and aunts. My ah-zhou could do nothing but cry.
Maybe her crying touched the grief of her brother-in-laws over their own lost brother. Maybe it didn’t. Either way, the other families allowed my ah-ma’s family to stay in the manor and off the streets. Since then, my ah-ma knew the grungy storeroom as her home. Because she was four when her father died and five when she moved to the storeroom, she did not remember her earliest years that clearly. She still occasionally dared to venture into the buildings across the central courtyard. When she walked by her relatives’ quarters, she moved as silently and unobtrusively as she could. She snuck into her old home as well. Sometimes, when the halls were empty and the curtains around the ornate windows blew into billowy, changing shapes, she thought she could hear faintly the high, warbling, and sorrowful sound of the erhu on the wind.

Throughout her childhood, my ah-ma wore the same tattered and old school uniform everyday to school. She possessed the required books, a pen, and nothing else. The other children would bring crayons and brushes for art class, but my ah-ma and her two sisters could only sit silently behind their desks and do nothing but watch the other kids, including her own cousins, draw their pictures.
Being a girl, no praise for studying ever fell on her. Actually, her achievements were never mentioned, but that did not deter her from striving to excel in school. No matter how much her relatives ignored her family, they all knew tacitly that she was competent. She knew it too, and that made her proud inside.
My ah-ma knew her family’s status was low. She knew she would not get most of what she wanted or needed. One of the few things she did receive in her childhood was a Chinese dictionary. How she got it is a story of hardship and determination.
Of all things my ah-ma dreamed of having when she was young, a dictionary was what she wanted the most. If she could speed up her schoolwork, she would be able to fit studying in between the housework she did everyday. But a dictionary was a far-fetched idea for a family as poor as hers. Nonetheless, she decided that this was one thing she had to try for. So one night after supper, my ah-ma gathered up her courage and approached her mother. My ah-zhou was resting on a wooden crate.
“Mom, I have something to ask.”
"What?"
"I need a dictionary."
“A dictionary? Get a dictionary for what?” My ah-zhou stood up and wiped off her hands.
“For schoolwork. It would really help.”
“You don't need a dictionary.”
“I do. I never know the words in class because I can't look them up. "
"Dictionaries cost money, you know. You don't need a dictionary to look up words. Just ask your sisters."
"But they don't know them either. We're the only ones without dictionaries. How am I supposed to do well in school without a dictionary?”
My ah-zhou looked down for a while then replied, “We don’t have money for those kinds of things. That doesn't matter now anyways. We can talk later. Don't forget to take these plates to the faucet and wash them.”
My ah-ma didn't give up. Succeeding in school was her only hope of improving her life for the future. So she kept asking.
After weeks, my ah-zhou began to get tired by my ah-ma's pleading her to get her a dictionary. She figured the only way to appease her daughter was to somehow gather enough money to buy a dictionary. The 200 dollars (Old Taiwan Dollars) needed meant six or seven weeks of extra labor. 200 dollars was a lot of money—one dictionary could buy five bushels of delicious rice for the whole family, enough for three months of meals.
In my ah-zhou’s generation, girls rarely got any education, so she didn’t place school in a high priority. But my ah-zhou saw that my ah-ma was thinking day and night about that dictionary, so she carried more rice and didn’t come home until suppertime each day to earn extra money. My ah-zhou, buried underneath the giant sack of rice she carried, must have wondered countless times what in the world she was doing. But she still set aside a coin for my ah-ma's dictionary each time she was paid.
After two months of hard work she had saved enough money to buy one dictionary. When she came home that day, my ah-ma was putting bowls on the small table in the storeroom for supper. My ah-zhou fished out the rest of the 200 dollars from the family moneybox.
“Here it is, five whole bushels of rice! Take it and go buy your dictionary!”, she shouted gruffly. Her hand flew downwards and coins skittered across the table. They landed in front of my stunned ah-ma, still holding a plate in her hand.
My ah-zhou broke the silence. “Well, what do you say?” My ah-ma didn’t answer. She broke down crying, not because of the harshness of my ah-zhou's anger nor the difficulties she faced in getting an education, but because of the sacrifices her family would take so that she could realize her dream.
The next day, as my ah-ma cradled her new dictionary home from the bookstore, she envisioned herself armed with education and forging a new path toward a better life.

When I am visiting my grandparents in Taiwan, they often recount such stories from my family’s past about the tough times they have been through. Sometimes I feel ashamed at how I take blessings I have received for granted and humbled knowing there are bigger things in life to strive for than simple pleasures. At the same time though, I am inspired by my family’s stories to become better myself, to strive to do well in school, and to achieve the goals that I aspire to achieve. My life is too good; it is nothing compared to what my predecessors went through, and I should be grateful. My grandparents have worked hard and overcome great obstacles. If I were in their place, would I be where I am today?

9 comments:

AIM* said...

This was a good story. Your word choices were very good and made the story come alive. I like the moral at the end.

Katherine said...

Eric
I loved your story! I really liked your amazing writing techniques, great word usage, thoughtful moral, and creative use of characters from other languages. Great job!
-Katherine Clifton

Yulia said...

I really liked your story Eric.
I like the moral and your vocabulary makes the story interesting, but not too complex.
-Yulia

KHashemi said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
KHashemi said...

Eric -
I liked your story. It really liked how you used adjectives to describe the incidents in your story. The dialogue was my favorite part because it helped show persistence and strength in a character.
-Kathrin Hashemi

Kam said...

This was an excellent story. You used excellent desciptives to get your point across. Very good ending.

jerrold said...

Eric your story could relate indirectly relate to the struggle my family went through as well. I feel the emotion and actually liked how you presented it through your writing.

Lei said...

Eric-
Your story came to life! your so creative with all the extra components you added. It was an amazing story.

fagaaluboi4_lyfe said...

this was a great story! it was the bomb diddy...
your vocabulary made your story a lot more interesting.