I am a farmer

Author: Jia Pingwa
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-06-01
Features: In the book, Jia Pingwa shares his past life experiences in the countryside and reveals his two romantic relationships for the first time. Especially when recalling his first love—more accurately, a one-sided crush—he expresses a profound and heartfelt emotion. This book is the first to disclose his personal emotional experiences and is a must-read! It emphasizes literature's role in carrying humanistic care. There is no better moment to demonstrate its inherent mission—using truthful descriptions to record and reflect the true face of society. With calm and profound words, it reveals the state and essence of people and society, analyzes the depth and complexity of human nature, and uses truth, goodness, and beauty to inspire people's hearts. It fuses emotions through calm reflection and embodies the power of life in narrative and description. Our attitude toward literature is, in fact, an attitude toward the development of our human cognitive and critical thinking abilities. Without a doubt, this book provides a window into understanding Chinese farmers. The author faces hardship with a near-sense of self-reproach, interrogates his soul, and reflects on history, filling the work with a strong sense of humanistic care. His simple and unadorned narration presents the broad-mindedness of a conscientious, principled, and dignified writer.
In the first few months after returning to the village, we were like birds freed from a cage, living happily every day. We usually woke up very late in the morning, and it was always our mother who lifted the blanket and tapped our buttocks with the broom used for sweeping the floor: "Still sleeping? You're already grown up and still sleeping like this? Are you going to sleep to death?!" Even when we did get up, we were still groggy, with messy hair and faces, sitting on the threshold or steps of the main room for half an hour. Sometimes we also woke up very early—when a few classmates had agreed the night before to go to the home of another classmate, perhaps the wife's family for some funeral or celebration. Many family members would go, and we could eat their persimmons and walnuts.
In the middle of the day, we would go to the Danjiang River to play. We would dive headfirst from the high stone embankments into the river or reach into the gaps in the stones to catch fish. There was a kind of colorful fish in the Danjiang River, extremely vibrant in color, but we never ate the fish we caught. People in our hometown never ate fish, shrimp, eels, or turtles, even during the famine of 1960 when they had eaten all the leaves and bark in the village, nor did they eat fish or turtles. Occasionally, we would boil the fish in a pot and eat it, but the adults would scrub the pots and utensils with wood ash several times to remove the fishy smell.
When catching fish in the stone gaps, we often found snakes, but these snakes wouldn't bite. We would casually throw them away, and they would swim away gracefully across the water's surface. The adults forbade us from going to the riverbank at noon because, like midnight, it was believed to be when ghosts appeared. There was a case in the village where a man went to the reeds by the river at noon to cut grass and suddenly burrowed his head into the sand. By the time he was found, he was already dead, with sand in his nostrils, ears, mouth, and eyes. We weren't afraid of ghosts. We would wrap the fish in lotus leaves and then in green mud, gather firewood on the riverbank, and roast the mud until it dried. Then we would break it open and eat the fish. Of course, we only ate half and threw the rest away—it was just for fun.
When we returned home, we would sneak in quietly. Our mother would ask where we had been playing, and we would say we had been sleeping and playing chess at the Kuixing Tower. She would grab my shoulder and leave five pale fingerprints, immediately angry: "You were at the Kuixing Tower? How many people die in the river every year? Do you go there properly, or are you going to be a substitute for the dead?!" After playing in the water, the sun would dry our skin, leaving white marks when we scratched it. Later, whenever we came out of the river, we had to wash ourselves in the spring before going home.