Chinese Literature

on. the plain looked like small mushrooms from where they stood, and-

the river running through it reflected the sunlight dazzlingly. The shadow of the mountain lay across the ground. How free and happy Mother Wang felt! She promised the little boy that, next spring, she would take all the children of the créche to the persimmon grove beyond their village to pick herbs. Then she gave the boy one of the cakes in her basket, told him not to play around but to help his grandfather, and went on her way, without stopping for a rest. The distance of eight li seemed to have shortened to only four. She hadn’t been on this road for three years. Now the small hawthorn shrubs she remembered were fully grown. The stone walls banking up the fields on the hilly land, which had been crumbling for the past twenty years, were newly repaired. This proved to Mother Wang’s satisfaction that the mutual-aid teams of other villages were also working well. Walking along, she soon caught sight of the gingko tree after which her daughter’s village was named midway on the slope of Hu-lung Hill.

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The courtyard was very quiet within its stone wall enclosure; Mother Wang looked in vain to see her daughter around. A cock was perching on the millstone on one leg. Several hens were roosting under the eaves, sunning themselves. Kuei-chieh’s father-in-law was alone in the yard, while Kuei-chieh and the old man’s other daughter-in-law were at a meeting of their unit in the mutual-aid team. The old man was fixing up a harness, crouching on the ground. The stone walls and the mill were exactly the same as they had been three years before. But Mother Wang now felt that the yard seemed to have become smaller.

When the old man recognized Mother Wang, he greeted her with such obvious pleasure and sincerity, as if she were a very special guest. Mother Wang’s first impression of him was that he seemed to have shrunk in size, although he did not appear any older. There were holes in his sleeves and a blue patch showed on his black trousers. Mother Wang gathered that the old man was still as stingy as ever and that her daughter was not taking very good care of him.

“Mother Wang!’ he cailed, as soon as he had taken the nails out of his mouth with which he was repairing the harness. When she offered the basket with wheat-cakes, he said: “Why did you take all this trouble? Isn’t your coming to see us enough? Why bother to bring presents ?”’

But Mother Wang replied: “These few cakes I made myself, they’re nothing to talk about. How have you been getting on these three years?”

“Quite well really,” said the old man. Then he sighed and added:

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