Chinese Literature

Chun-mei suddenly pulled back her hands which she had been toasting over the stove.

“Ma, let’s let them hold that damn meeting!”

Her mother jumped with panic and grasped Aunt Li by the arm. “That'll be terrible!”

Aunt Li thrust the tongs into the ashes. She glared at Chun-mei. “Beginning from the end—is that the way to tell her?” To the widow, she explained, “There’s nothing to worry about.” She reported all that had transpired in the district government office: The authorities felt that to prohibit the meeting would solve nothing. You can’t cure an old ailment without getting at the basic cause. The best way was to use the meeting as a forum at which the problem could be put before the people clearly. Make everyone understand. Lay a foundation for the educational campaign that was about to start concerning the new marriage law.

Chun-mei’s mother frowned. “What if they get wild?”

“Wild? They’d better not think they're still living in the old days!” Chun-mei straightened up sharply. Her eyes gleamed at the dark earthen wall. “Just let Yang the Elder try to get tough. I'll pull his whiskers or my name’s not Yang Chun-mei!”’

Aunt Li immediately corrected her. “That’s the wrong attitude! Didn’t you hear what the district political officer said today? You have to teach them. Feudalism has been a bag over their heads, blinding them for hundreds of years. You can’t remove it like taking off a hat! That dead-brained uncle of yours, for instance. What a nuisance that man is! Every night he’s been arguing with me about women’s rights. Finally, I took his own sister’s case and put it up to him. Didn’t she kill herself because of the way the clan persecuted her? That stopped him cold!” Aunt Li sighed. “But he’s far from being won over one hundred per cent. The root of a way of looking at things isn’t like the root of a tree —all the force in the world won't yank it out. People have to be reasoned with and convinced.”

Chun-mei laughed. “I said—‘if he gets tough.’ Like that day at the market. If he really hit me, I’d have gone for him, no matter what generation he is!”

To tell the truth, it was for this very trait of never yielding no matter how heavy the pressure that Aunt Li loved the girl so well. Of

course, Chun-mei was on the impetuous side, but then, she was young,

there was nothing Surprising about it. Hadn’t Aunt Li been that w ay herself not so many years ago? The head of the district women’s federation had teased her, “Chun-mei ought to be your daughter.” Recalling this, Aunt Li smiled proudly. She accepted the bowl of tea Chun-mei handed to her. It was very hot. She sipped it slowly.

Pouring the second bowl, Chun-mei looked at her mother. The firelight cast a reddish glow on the widow’s thin face. Though her expres-

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