Yu Hua - Chronicle of a Blood Merchant

Xu Sanguan took exception to this entire procedure. “This makes about as much sense as taking off your pants to fart. It’s all completely unnecessary.”

Xu Yulan said, “I really can’t agree with you. No one can get through life without ever getting sick or having some kind of disaster happen to them. Everyone has their ups and downs. And when hard times come, it’s better to be prepared than not. Smart folks always prepare some way out of a jam before it happens. And anyway, this is how I save a little money for all of us.”

Xu Yulan would often say, “Hard times are going to come. No one can go through their life without running into hard times once or twice. You just can’t escape.”

When Sanle was eight, Erle was ten, and Yile was eleven, the whole town was flooded. The floodwaters reached one meter at their deepest, and even the shallows came up to the knees. That June Xu Sanguan’s house lay in a pool of water for seven days. The water lapped back and forth across the floor, and when they slept at night, they could hear the sound of the rippling waves.

After the flood came famine. At first Xu Sanguan and Xu Yulan did not realize what was happening. They heard that most of the rice in the countryside was rotting in the paddies. Xu Sanguan thought of his grandpa and his fourth uncle and reassured himself that it was a good thing they were already gone — otherwise, how could they make it through the year? His other three uncles were still alive, but they almost never occurred to him, because they had never been good to him or paid him any mind.

It wasn’t until a constant stream of destitute people begging for food began to arrive in town that Xu Sanguan and Xu Yulan truly understood that famine was at hand. Every morning when they opened the front door, they would see beggars sleeping in the lane in front of their house. There were new faces every day, but they all grew more and more wasted and sallow as time went by.

The rice shop was open on occasion and sometimes closed. Every time it reopened, the price of rice would double or even triple. After a short while the money that used to buy ten pounds of rice would get you only two pounds of sweet potatoes. The silk factory stopped work, because there were no more silkworms. Xu Yulan no longer needed to go fry dough in the morning because there was no flour and no cooking oil. The schools shut down, and most of the shops in town closed their doors. Of the twenty or so restaurants that used to be in operation, only one— the Victory Restaurant — remained open.

Xu Sanguan said to Xu Yulan, “This famine has come at the worst possible time. If it had been a few years back, we would have been able to squeak through just fine. But we were already running low on supplies.

“Think about it. First they took away our wok and bowls, and then the rice, oil, soy, and vinegar. Then they dismantled the stove. I thought we’d be eating at those big canteens for the rest of our lives. I never thought that after only a year we’d be responsible for ourselves again. And it costs money to build another stove. It costs money to buy a new wok, new bowls, new spoons, and new plates again. It costs money to replace the oil, salt, soy, and vinegar. And all of a sudden we’ve had to spend most of that money you had saved, one fen at a time, over the years.

“It’s not that I mind spending the money — if we had had a couple of peaceful years, we would have been able to get back to speed after a while. But have we had any peace of mind the last couple years? First it was Yile. Yile’s not even my own son, and that in itself was a real shock. But what was worse was that he got us into so much trouble and I had to give Blacksmith Fang thirty-five yuan. It’s already been a tough couple of years, and now we’ve got a famine on our hands. Lucky we’ve still got two crocks of rice under the bed.”

Xu Yulan said, “We can’t eat the rice under the bed yet. There’s still some left in the kitchen crock. And we can’t eat plain rice anymore either. I’ve already figured everything out. The famine will last another six months, at least until the new crops start to come up next spring. We only have enough rice for another month, and even if we eat rice gruel instead, we still only have enough for a little more than four months. That leaves more than a month and a half without anything to eat. You can’t go without food for a month and a half. We’re going to have to eat even less in the first four months just to save some food for that last month and a half. And before winter comes, we’d better go out into the fields and gather all the wild vegetables we can find. Once the rice in the kitchen is done, we can fill the crock with wild vegetables, then cover them with salt so that they don’t go bad. They should last at least four or five months. We still have some extra money. I sewed it into the quilt. I never told you before, but I save the money from marketing as well. All told, there’s still nineteen yuan, sixty-seven fen left. We should take thirteen of that and buy corn. I think we can still get about a hundred pounds for the money. Then we can strip the kernels and grind them into corn flour. That should make about thirty pounds of corn flour. If we add the corn flour to the rice gruel, it’ll get nice and thick, and our stomachs won’t feel quite so empty.”

XU SANGUAN said to his sons, “All we’ve been eating for a month now is corn flour gruel. We’ve had so much of the stuff that you kids have lost your color, and you’re getting skinnier and skinnier, and you don’t have any energy at all. All you know how to say these days is ‘I’m hungry, I’m hungry, I’m hungry.’ It’s a good thing that all you little ones are still alive and well. But everyone in town is in the same boat. Go over to the neighbors’ places or your classmates’ houses, and you’ll see that we’re doing better than most. At least you get a bowl of corn flour gruel every day. You say you’re sick of eating wild vegetables and corn flour gruel? Well, that’s all you’re going to get, because these hard times won’t be over for a long time yet. I know you want to eat some plain rice or some rice gruel without the corn flour, and I’ve talked it over with your mom. We’re going to make you some, but we can’t do it yet.

“For now you’re going to have to keep eating the wild vegetables and the corn flour gruel. You complain that even the corn flour gruel is getting thinner and thinner, and that’s true, because we’re not out of the woods yet, and it might be a long, long time before it’s all over. So all your mom and I can do is protect you little ones and make sure you get through this alive. What they say is true: ‘You have to have a mountain before you can gather some wood.’ That means we have to get through these tough times now, so we’ll live to see better days. So you have to keep on eating corn flour gruel, even if it gets thinner and thinner, even if you say that the gruel’s all gone as soon as you take a piss.

“Which one of you said that? Must have been Yile. I know it was you. Little brat. You’re going on all day long about how hungry you are, but you kids are still small, and you get to eat as much corn flour gruel as I do every day. You go on all day long about how hungry you are, but you know why you’re so hungry? Because you’re out running around all day. As soon as you eat your gruel, you’re running out to play, and when I tell you to come back inside, you never listen. Sanle was even screaming and hollering out in the street today. Little brat. How can you carry on like that in times like these? In times like these you’ve got to speak softly and conserve your energy. Your stomach’s grumbling, you’re running on empty, and you still manage to run and shout and carry on? It’s no goddamn wonder you’re so hungry! You’re digesting all the gruel as soon as you’ve eaten it.