2005 - My 100 Favorite Chinese Essays

Author: Wang Zongren
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-09-01
Features: Our village, Baiyangdian, is located ten kilometers west of Jiyang County. A highway runs around its east, north, and west sides, connecting the county to Duzeqiao and then to Dezhou. Frequently, Japanese troops, cars, and armored vehicles passed through. In the autumn after the county was occupied by the Japanese, my mother took me and my younger sister to pick grain ears on the field by the highway. A Japanese soldier riding a big horse came running down the road. He suddenly reined in his horse, gesturing for me to come over. I hid behind my mother and refused to go, but the Japanese soldier insisted on staying. An old man walked over and said, "Go, you're a child. He won't do anything to you." I walked up to the Japanese soldier. He reached into his leather satchel and pulled out two colorful fruit candies, bent down from his horse, and handed them to me. He also spoke broken Chinese, saying, "Your candy, one. Your sister's candy, one." Then he spurred his horse and left. Clutching the candies, I returned to my mother's side. She asked, "What did he give you?" I showed her the candies, and she sharply ordered me, "Throw them away immediately! The Japanese candies are poisoned—they want to poison us Chinese people." I immediately threw the candies on the ground and stepped on them hard until they were completely crushed. My mother sighed in relief, a satisfied, bitter smile appearing on her face. Later, I thought that the Japanese soldier's candies might not have been poisoned. He might have wanted to win over Chinese children's hearts, or perhaps he thought of his own younger siblings back in Japan. But my mother's words and actions at the time were entirely right. She was teaching me to recognize the nature of the invaders and uphold the dignity of the Chinese people! Indeed, the cruelty of the Japanese quickly became apparent. One sunny morning, my sister, along with seven or eight other children, were playing in the fields when suddenly, a Japanese plane dive-bombed us. Terrified, we ran desperately back to the village. "Tap-tap-tap-tap," the plane actually fired a stream of bullets at us. My sister, who was running at the back, fell down, so I turned back, picked her up, and ran with her. Fortunately, none of us were hit. When we got home, my mother praised me for not leaving my sister behind. The villagers all witnessed the incident, their hearts filled with hatred, and they cursed, "How could they shoot at innocent children?" For the following years, I often had nightmares of being bombed and strafed by planes, frequently imagining the face of the Japanese pilot pulling the trigger with a sinister smile. Rural life in the 1930s and 1940s was already very hard under Japanese rule, and it was even more difficult. Farmers lacked both money and supplies. They used flint to strike fire, cottonseed oil for lighting, iron needles for sewing, and ash water for washing clothes. My father, as a traditional man from Shandong and an intellectual, did nothing but teach and sometimes work in the fields. He, my mother, me, my sister, and my younger brother, and later a younger sister, had six mouths to feed. Forget other chores—just managing the clothing, washing, sewing, and mending for six people was enough to keep my mother busy. She, as the daughter of a scholar's family, the daughter of the county magistrate, the wife of a clerk, and a woman who had lived in the city for many years, was suddenly thrust into such a life under the Japanese invasion. How much unprecedented toil had she to endure! Take making shoes, for example—from cutting the pattern, to pounding the leather, to stitching the soles and uppers—all of it relied on my mother's hands.