Chinese Literature

Mother Wang had to rely on her son-in-law to plough for her in the spring and to harvest for her in the autumn. For the one he had to bring his plough and animal, for the other push his wheelbarrow all the way from Gingko-tree Village to Big Stone Bay. While Mother Wang’s husband was still alive, he used to go out of their hilly area to sell dates. When he died, all he left her from that trade were two pairs of big baskets. For the fodder for her son-in-law’s mule, she had to rely on her neighbours to help her out.

Year after year, her son-in-law could come to help her only after he had finished working on his own land; so, by the time Mother Wang began to sow, other people’s fields had already put out shoots half an inch tall. Other families did their work in the fields according to wind and weather. Mother Wang had to do her work when man and animal power was available to her. Although Mother Wang was by no means lazy or extravagant, yet what she reaped from her plot of land every year was less than the persimmons one could get to dry and preserve from two trees, and she usually had to live in her daughter’s family four months out of the year.

Kuei-chieh, Mother Wang’s daughter, was intelligent; she had capable hands and a strong mind of her own. She did embroidery and all her other work so promptly: and well that, in her father-in-law’s sight, she was far above the other young women among his family relations. But he was very stingy. Every time Mother Wang came to stay with her daughter, there was oil neither for cooking nor for the lamp in the house, because the old man would not buy any when he went to market. Kuei-chieh had to embroider pillow cases and slippers at night to earn some extra money to buy these things; besides, she was afraid all the time that her mother might slip up on something and people would talk. So she kept watching the old man for every change of mood and went out of her way to curry his favour.

Mother Wang, being also of a strong mind, could not help noticing her daughter’s worries. Therefore, as long as she could find at least some wild vegetables for food, she would not go to stay with her daughter; and when she did go, she worked hard all day long. In the daytime, she went out to gather firewood, carrying her small granddaughter on her back; in the evening, she washed clothes, cut hay and fed the horse. When she was so tired that she felt her back was breaking, she would say that she must have caught a chill but that it was really nothing of any importance. Still her daughter’s father-in-law never turned to her, never listened to what she said. He seemed to be both blind and deaf to her existence.

“What do you think, Kuei-chieh?” Mother Wang sometimes asked her daughter secretly. “Shouldn’t I better go back to Big Stone Bay?”

“What are you going to live on when you get back there?”