1
My hometown is located on the Yuan River in the western plain of Ganxi, and I have been growing rice and cotton for generations. In that village, where the houses are new and the villagers are old, my parents and their peers still live a life of working at sunrise and resting at sunset. The villagers who lived next to each other all year round made the whole village a daily breeding ground for countless words.
Li Zhenmei’s house is behind my house, with the front door facing the back door of my kitchen. In the past few years, every time I came home, I could tell how her recent relationship with my parents was from the way she greeted me.
In the summer of 2017 I returned home, a brightly dressed Li Zhenmei standing at the door, see me approaching, without saying a word a turn of the head into the house – this is a rare thing, Li Zhenmei is watching me grow up, I am also her youngest son Jianping childhood best partner. Even now I have long been a family outside, but every time I come back, she will still come to chat a few words.
Soon, Li Zhenmei came out again, with a basket of grain in her hand, standing at the door, greeting her large flock of roosters and hens and wire chickens (castrated chickens), ready to be fed.
Seeing her chickens, I exclaimed, “You’re really good at raising them, Zhenmei (in our village, except for the ‘three relatives’, no matter old or young, we call them by their first names), raising so many chickens this year, are you going to eat them yourself or sell them?”
“Sell? No.” Li Zhenmei looked up at me, and after a pause, added, “I’ll eat them myself.”
At dinner time, I advised my parents, “You’ve worked hard all your life, and when you’re old, don’t be reluctant to eat. Look at Li Zhenmei’s family at the back door, raising so many chickens, people are willing to eat.”
“This dead woman!” As soon as my mother heard me mention her, she scolded, “Which year does she not raise so many chickens? Except for the New Year holidays, when have you ever seen her kill chickens to eat? Her chickens are all given to the officials and their lovers!”
“Hey, why are you scolding people when you can say it properly?” I was unhappy with my mother’s way of speaking, but I asked, “Why did she give the chickens to the officials?”
“To eat low income ah. Their family, the dead woman, the old turtle (Li Zhenmei’s husband Liao Youfa), and Jianping – a serious young man – a family with hands and feet, children, and three people are all on low income!” The mother was indignant.
“Originally, so many years neighbors, although many people gossip about her, but I have never said. But this dead woman, these years, like a psychotic, when she sees someone whispering, she will be suspicious. A few days ago, Xiao Yan and I were doing laundry by the gutter, and we were talking about a chicken that wasn’t eating, and we wondered if it was the chicken plague, when she came up to us with a lot of energy and said, ‘You’re jealous of the chickens I have at home, aren’t you? Your chickens are the chicken plague ……’Xiao Yan and I were baffled, I said about my family’s chickens, she simply did not believe it, and cried and cursed, saying that there is no one good in the village, everyone would like her family to go begging for food to be good …… “The mother then explained to me the reason for her and Li Zhenmei’s odd attitude.
“The company’s main business is to provide a wide range of products and services to the public. I don’t know what the reason is for Li Zhenmei to be on low income.” I redirected the conversation back to low income.
My mother didn’t answer, but my father laughed: “You don’t know anything about the countryside. In rural areas, those who are widows and orphans (no children), female households (no sons), those who are not well enough to work, and those who are 60 years old or older have priority – his family is not enough. Youfa’s leg is lame, but now it no longer affects the work, as usual, planting so many fields in the past; Li Zhenmei said she has High blood pressure, but which person does not have some disease at this age; Jianping, not to mention, is only 40 years old this year ……”
The rural low income is not much, only two or three hundred yuan per person per month, but if a family of three receive the same, a year will be nearly 10,000 yuan, basically can also cover the family’s annual scattered expenses. Add to that the fact that electricity, cable, broadband, and communication fees are all waived, and that a large percentage of medical care is reimbursed, and the low income is very tempting.
Later, I looked up the “2017-2018 New Provisions of Jiangxi Province Low Security Standards” on the Internet, and as my father said, her family does not have all of them, no matter which one.
2
In retrospect, these years, Li Zhenmei’s family has been really eye-catching.
Liao Youfa was a tailor, small in stature and not good at talking. Because he had learned to make clothes since he was a child, his back was already slightly hunched when he got married. When Li Zhenmei was young, she was considered a “flower” in the village, and the reason why she “condescended to marry” was that she was interested in the tailoring skills of the Liao family. In the 1970s, any trade was better than earning work in the fields.
Within a few days of their marriage, Youfa went off to the army. When he returned from demobilization a few years later, Li Zhenmei gave him a two-year-old son, Jianbing, who was thick-eyed and stout.
Everyone in the village knew who the boy’s father was – every day when it was time to eat, Li Zhenmei would always leave a seat at home for a man named Qinggen in the village, who came at the end of the day with a bowl, and after eating, went back with an empty bowl.
Once after dinner, looking at Qinggen’s tall back, you hair dare not speak, fell a bowl to express the anger in his heart. But this fall, Li Zhenmei but a slap on the table, pointing to the head of the hair, cursing up: “You a short-lived fighter, and drop the bowl? If you have the ability, go to fight with Qinggen, have the ability to win the fight, he will not come himself. What I despise most is you who can’t hit two farts with three sticks and just drop the bowl.
Since then, Youfa never said anything again.
A few years later, Li Zhenmei gave birth to her second son Jianping and her youngest daughter Xiaohui, the two siblings, who inherited the genes from Youfa, were small, quick-tempered, and weak.
The family grew, and Afa became busier and busier, sewing clothes for people all day long, and spending less time at home. Most of the time when he was not at home, the position in the house was filled by Qinggen, Jianbing, Jianping and Xiaohui had long regarded him as family, but Afa, who was out earning money all day long, became a dispensable person.
Because of the enviable two sons and one daughter, and her husband was a tailor in the village, Li Zhenmei often taught other young mothers in the village about her parenting experience in the tone of a successful mother.
Her family lived next door to the Fusheng family, with two daughters and one son, and the family was extremely strict, whether son or daughter, as long as lazy, trouble by the Fusheng know, will invariably be punished: lightly, kneeling pestle and mortar stick, heavy, then spanking or hand.
Every time I heard the children next door crying and screaming along with the scolding of adults, Li Jingmei would immediately run over: “What are you doing? What does a child know about this? Are you afraid that he will not recognize you as his father?”
“Let him learn to remember.” Fusheng replied.
Li Zhenmei could not persuade Fusheng, so she quietly said to Fusheng’s wife Liu Ying: “Boys are better off with less beating, beating too honest, in the future outside will be bullied.”
Liu Ying just smiled and did not listen to her.
Li Zhenmei is not discouraged, still propagating her view of child rearing: “Boys should be spoiled, do not care, so that they will be successful.”
In fact, as a child, Li Zhenmei, who likes to spoil children, left me with a not bad impression. Except for being a little mean to her husband, she was a quick and cheerful person, and her house was always a playground for a group of us kids. A group of us kids used to gather at her house to play cards and make a lot of noise, but she never got angry and often served melons and peanuts to us.
The three siblings of the Liao family grew up together with us, and only the eldest, Jianbing, often wandered away from our group of children. Jianbing grew up tall and big, and often beat up his classmates at school when he was in elementary and junior high school. Li Zhenmei was also often called to school by her teachers to apologize to the parents of other students or to be lectured by the teachers. Most of the time, Li did not take this seriously: “Boys, it’s normal to fight, isn’t it?”
Jianbing’s misfits stemmed from his irascible temper – he didn’t get along with anyone, and after graduating from junior high school at age 17, he often stayed home all day without saying a word, and the few words he occasionally had to say were mostly informative or commanding: “I won’t be back tonight! ” or “give me 50 yuan, I want to use”, if there is hair or Li Zhenmei more than one question, he will immediately grumpy: “you care so much for what?”
Jianping and Xiaohui have always been afraid of this big brother and have never dared to make a sound. The only one left in the family who could communicate directly with Jianbing was Li Zhenmei, who was the mother. The boss, who was a strange character in the eyes of everyone, had always been the pride of her heart: “Boys should be like this, not motherly, say what to do.”
3
After graduating from junior high school, Jianbing left home to work in Guangdong as soon as he turned 18, and lost contact with him completely in the following years.
In those years, Jianbing’s whereabouts remained a mystery, no one knew where he was or what he was doing. He did not return home during that time, let alone remit a penny to the family, the only letter, or just arrived in Guangdong when the letter of peace, just less than a hundred words.
That was the hardest day for Li Zhenmei, who normally wanted to save face, although she tried to pretend that it did not matter, but every time she saw other children working outside the home every now and then to send letters, remittances back, or a face of envy. When someone asked, “How much money did your family send you back?”, Li scolded, “That short-lived, once he died and went out, he forgot all about his family, so there is no money to send me!
After the words, her eyes turned red and she hurriedly turned away.
After that, no one in the village ever asked about this.
Five years later, Jianbing, who had not been heard from, suddenly returned home, with a flat haircut that was rarely seen at the time, and dragging a large suitcase, like a gentry.
Li Zhenmei suddenly raised her eyebrows, and in the following days, she said to everyone that her eldest son’s experience in the past few years: “I said that the short-lived, why a few years without a letter, without a penny, the original is into a closed factory, said to engage in what the military management, all the food, drink, shit, all in the factory, can not come out. He is also lazy, do not come out, do not come out, a stay is 5 years ……”
“In a factory for 5 years, has not gone out, that saved a lot of money, right? Your family Jianbing dragged a large box back this time, not a box of money, right?” Someone took over and asked.
“Money? I don’t know. The more you earn, it’s all his anyway, we won’t want it – I’m glad he’s back!” Li Zhenmei did not admit or deny.
So, some people congratulated her to her face, saying that Jianbing married his wife so she did not have to worry about it.
But behind the scenes, people in the village were saying something else: What kind of work did Jianbing do in these years? He must have eaten prison food – the flat head with the tanned scalp is a hairstyle that only people who came out of prison have. As for Li Zhenmei’s argument, no one in the village believed it – he couldn’t come out during normal times, not even during New Year? Guangdong closed management of the factory, many children in the village have entered, the same can write letters, play money.
After Jianbing came back, he never went out to work again, but soon got married under the arrangement of Li Zhenmei. The bride is a girl from a nearby village, on the looks, but is a natural pair with the good-looking Jianbing; on the temper, is not small, Jianbing married a month, Li Zhenmei learned the daughter-in-law’s power – Liao family was divided by the young couple.
The new house was given to Jianbing, and Li Zhenmei’s family returned to live in the old house again. Faced with the jokes of the crowd, Li Zhenmei rounded up and said, “It’s good, I’ve been in charge of Jianbing for more than 20 years, I’m also tired, now I have someone to help me manage, I’m saving my mind.”
But Jianbing’s wife, ultimately failed to control her husband: the first year after the marriage, the two home farming, the entire farming season, she could only watch her husband lazy, not doing any work; the second year, she forced her husband to rent a cabin in the city center, their own dry goods business such as bamboo, dried bamboo shoots, fungus, hands-on teaching her husband how to pick and choose goods, negotiate prices, and then take back by her retail.
The couple stayed in the city for a few years, standing still, and did not earn any money. Later listened to Jianbing wife cried, they almost every day in the quarrel – Jianbing often take the money to buy goods disappeared for a few days, and so back in the always unkempt, penniless. In the face of his wife’s anger, Jianbing either did not say a word, or a slap to her – in short, the days were a mess.
4
During the time Jianbing and his wife were in town, their son Liao Long was born. For the sake of her son, Jianbing’s wife kept the marriage together for some days until 2000, when Jianbing was sentenced for theft, and finally divorced him, leaving her son directly to her mother-in-law, Li Zhenmei.
It was also in this year that Xiao Hui, who had just turned 20, married a driver in the city; Jianping, who had been working outside for a few years, also returned home. Soon after, people noticed that Jianping was not normal – his back was so stiff that he had trouble bending over, and with his rounded body and sluggish pace, at only 22 years old, he looked like an old man.
After going to many doctors, Jianping remained unchanged, and the Li Zhenmei family gave up. Since then, Jianping has stayed at home, doing the work he specialized in as a child: looking after a large yellow cow, until today.
Li began to pin all her hopes on her grandson Liao Long.
But what Liao brought to Li’s family was not happiness and hope.
The child seems to be born to be a bad boy: before he learns to talk and walk, he learns to reach out to anyone in front of him for food and play, and if he doesn’t give it, he spits at them; at the age of two, when he can just talk, he can curse like the most powerful shrew in the village; when he is three and can walk and run, all the neighboring families around him suffer. All of them were smashed by him with a brick; walking on the road, and he met face to face, you look at him more, he will suddenly pop out a “look at your mother X”, if you curse back, he will immediately run away, and then pick up a stone, viciously thrown over.
No one would really take it personally with a kid that big, and often times, it’s just a curse of “this uneducated” and that’s it. But a few children near the village, about the same age as Liao Long, were repeatedly bullied by Liao Long after they quit, and every now and then, their grandparents would come to the door to seek justice from Li Zhenmei: “Your Liao Long should be properly controlled.
“Your Liao Long needs to be properly controlled!”
“If you beat our children like this again, don’t blame me for being unkind!”
After a few complaints, everyone left in a huff – they knew that it was useless to “complain”.
Every time someone came to complain, Li Zhenmei would ask her grandson loudly, “So-and-so, and so-and-so, the marks on his face and neck (scratches), did you do that?”
Faced with his grandmother’s loud rebuke, four- and five-year-old Liao Long also answered everyone in the same size voice, shrilly: “Not me, I didn’t do it! They caught it themselves! It’s none of my business!”
After the claimants left, Li Zhenmei said to the onlookers, “I told you, it can’t be my Liao Long, he hit it, it’s also children playing together, accidentally made, children will not tell lies!”
The evil woman who cheated the low income insurance
Sometimes at the end of the day, Li Zhenmei would get angry with herself: “These people, don’t they just want me to beat my grandson? The more you want me to beat them, the less I will do it!”
One day, when I passed by the door of a house with children, I heard my grandfather teaching his grandson: “In the future, if Liao Long hits you again, pick up a brick and hit him! If you don’t have a brick, pick up a stone, if you don’t have a stone, you can grab a handful of sand on the ground and sprinkle it into his eyes, remember?”
5
Because of this grandson, Li Jingmei began to have bad relations with the villagers around her. By the time Liao Long was a teenager, almost no one spoke to her in the surrounding neighborhood.
The neighbors, who were usually quiet, were watching her family’s jokes every day.
At the age of 13 or 14, Liao Long already had the appearance of an adult, his reticent and neurotic personality, mischievous behavior, even more so than his father Jianbing.
At that time, Liao Long has basically not fallen home. The town has a bunch of small groups of gangsters who specialize in Internet cafes, concert halls and theft, all underage children, Liao Long as one of them, day and night, wandering in every corner of town.
Every few days, Liao Long will go home for a trip. He came back for the sole purpose of asking for money.
I met Liao Long once when he came home to ask for money: it was about 8 o’clock at night, and the door of Li Zhenmei’s house was thrown open with a “ping”, followed by a “bang”, and a stainless steel basin was thrown out, followed by a hysterical shout: “Give it to me! “Give it to me… you’re not going to take it!” Then another “bam”, a bucket was heavily thrown out and hit the back wall of my house.
I was about to go out to see, my father stopped me: “His family’s business is best left alone, do not even look at!”
Accompanied by Liao Long “Take it or not? Give it to me!” I saw from my kitchen window that the household goods of Li Zhenmei’s house were thrown out one by one, chairs, quilts, rice cookers, thrown all over the floor.
Finally, Liao Long’s grandfather, who had been mute all his life, got anxious and shouted hoarsely, “Throw it, throw it, throw it again – see if I don’t beat you!”
“Heh! Old coffin, hit me? Come on ……” Liao Long became more aggressive and threw things outside.
Li Zhenmei has been watching coldly, see to fight, then a hand to tug Youfa’s hand, furiously said, “Go, let’s go, let him throw himself here!” As an uncle Jianping also silently along with his parents out of the house, standing outside, leaving his nephew alone at home screaming and smashing things.
The village people live very compact, usually throwing a chicken can gather a large group of people, but Li Zhenmei’s family made so much noise, but there is no one to watch the fun, really strange. Father explained: “Every time it is like this, at most two or three months, Liao Long will come back once. If you don’t pay, or if the money is given a little late, you will smash things.”
“Give money when you want it? This look does not care?”
“Who cares? Li Zhenmei is in charge, she does not care, who dares to care? Of course, if you want to control it, you can definitely control it, but it is because she grew up unable to beat? Like today, should be hung up and beaten, you see whether it works or not – then again, now is completely hopeless, his grandson has been completely ruined in the hands of Li Zhenmei.”
The father said that Liao Long has been in detention at least twice, but because of the younger age, are less severe punishment, “If you commit another crime in the future, it is estimated to go straight to jail.”
“What about Jianbing, who also does not care about his son?” I suddenly remembered Liao Long’s father, which I had not seen for years.
“Jianbing? Eat, drink, prostitute and gamble all kinds of things, it is good to be able to control yourself. When he has no money to spend, he still does not ask the two old guys for …… all owed in a previous life.”
I was speechless for a moment.
6
Before this, many people in the village Li Zhenmei so bottomlessly spoiled the untalented grandson is very puzzled. But as Li Zhenmei and Wang Xiaoying get closer, watching them quickly develop into a sister-like relationship, everyone seems to understand a little.
Wang Xiaoying’s family lives at the other end of the village, and we usually don’t have much contact with them. Wang Xiaoying has an only son, called Hsiu Bao. In my memory, the small treasure has always been a vague image of a small boy, silent, solitary. Until one year, I heard that Hosho was sentenced to three years in prison for robbery and intentional injury in the city, only a little surprised.
After his release from prison, Hosho completed this “qualitative” leap in his life: less than a year, he bought a house in the city, but also bought a small car. Every time he came home, he took two girls with him, and the two girls were pregnant at the same time. This makes Wang Xiaoying every time he appears in front of the village people, is a look of god.
Li Zhenmei every time she saw Hsiu Bao, always praise: “or Hsiu Bao have a good fortune!”
When she turned her head, Li Zhenmei’s words became: “A child who has been in prison has a future!” Every time she finished, she would look at her grandson Liao Long with an expectant face.
Although this sounds awkward, but there is a factual basis. In our area, in these years, the dignified, mixed with some famous people, almost all are in prison or mob origin. Jail for the village has long been not a matter of shame, on the contrary, after the people out of jail, but a kind of bragging capital, so that the side can gather a “little brother” countless, before and after the crowd, eat and drink. This comes from the worship of the “successful” people in our village – as long as you have money, can get a lot of women, know a lot of jerks, can fix a lot of things, then, you are “successful”. But no matter how much Li Zhenmei expected, she was not able to get a job.
But no matter how Li Zhenmei expects, Jianbing and Liao Long father and son are not “successful” up, but their appetite is getting bigger and bigger, and they want more money with the family, and their temper is getting worse.
Li Zhenmei old couple is already aging year by year. The sewing machine rusted into a pile of scrap metal, and in order to make ends meet, he rode his electric bike every day to a construction site ten miles away to do small jobs for people, earning 60 to 70 dollars a day. As a result, on a rainy day, the turnpike was slippery and he fell, breaking his thigh bone directly.
Once the leg of Youfa was broken, the family was basically close to falling apart. Li Zhenmei did not allow her husband to be sent to the doctor, saying that she did not have the money and that “it would be a waste of money to go to the doctor because he was so old and dying.”
The two sons stood silently on their mother’s side until Xiao Hui arrived and her daughter and son-in-law paid the money to send Youfa to the hospital.
After his leg healed, he was able to do most of the farming work, although he was a bit disabled, but no one asked him to work outside anymore.
7
As Liao Long came home more and more frequently for money, Li Zhenmei could not wait for her son and grandson to “get ahead” and started to lose support.
The last straw that broke her back came from the Fusheng family next door.
Fusheng’s son Zhiqiang worked in Guangzhou after graduating from college, and after settling down, he officially took the old couple over to live out their old age at the end of 2015. Before leaving, Fusheng lamented: “This life, a life of work, originally intended not to expect anyone. But when I got old, I found that I still had to rely on my children. When people get old, they don’t have a dependant, like the two of us who are sick now, we really don’t know how to live our lives.”
That day, after listening to Fusheng’s words, Li Zhenmei stood at the door and froze for a long time.
After that, I don’t know when, Li Zhenmei always love to run to the east of the village when there is nothing to do. At that time, some neighbors speculated that there was no one to talk to her in the west of the village, so she had to go to the east of the village to find someone to talk to. But soon, people found that Li Zhenmei to the village east, only to go to the village branch secretary Jin Sheng and the village director Shui Niu home. Every time they go over, they say “secretary” and “director” without leaving their mouths, and their faces are full of smiles.
“My aunt just brought me a few squid from Xinyu, not enough to eat, secretary, I bring only for you to try ……” Li Zhenmei every time you go, always carry something, do not wait for Jin Sheng and Buffalo excuses, put down the things on the go, while walking, said. “It is not bought, it is a gift. The two of us are so close, this little thing, you do not have to be polite ……”
Li Zhenmei know, these are small things, usually we can afford to eat, at most a role in the movement to and from, really want to do things, or have to be more rare and precious things.
In the hilly areas of Jiangxi, many places are growing sassafras trees. The appearance of this tree is very similar to the tea tree, growing extremely slowly, the wild sassafras tree generally takes more than ten years to bear fruit, sassafras seeds squeezed out of the oil, because the production is scarce, and edible and medicinal value, it has become the most sought-after gifts to people. In previous years, because the yield is really low, our village planted nearly 100 acres of sassafras trees all cut, if you want, you can only go a dozen miles away from the mountains to pick, so even locally, sassafras seeds are sold for fifty to sixty dollars a pound, but not necessarily buy. Every year in October sassafras seeds ripe season, Li Zhenmei are just picked sassafras seeds back to extract oil. Once the oil is out, she uses several bottles to fill them up and send them to Jin Sheng and Buffalo’s house at night.
As for the village’s other “parent official”, the production team leader Donggen, it does not need to bother – Donggen is Qinggen’s fifth brother, if there is anything, as long as Qinggen greeted on the line.
At the end of the year, the annual “low income guarantee application” started again.
Her husband had a broken leg and could not do farm work; she had high blood pressure and rheumatism and could not do heavy work; her son was chronically ill and could not support himself.
With the previous punches, the review meeting was a passing event, more like a farce.
The father told me about the review site.
“There was an applicant before – the old six, just messing around, saying that his family’s eldest daughter-in-law ran away, his grandchildren have no mother, and his second son is still in his thirties without a wife …… and this family, last year, actually ate a year by applying The low income guarantee. When his family was rejected this year, the old six wife is still there to spill and roll, do not relent, threatening to go to the town to sue, is also a joke.”
“In the end, more than a dozen households passed the review, but the final decision on whether to obtain low income is determined by the number of votes. This, then, was directly manipulated – for example, your third uncle, a widower, once his two daughters married, he was left alone and was sick all over – his case would have been the most qualified to apply for it, but he didn’t bother to get connections, so when it came to voting, his application was relegated to The family of Li Zhenmei, on the other hand, was at the top of the list. Those who are officials, are voting for the front of the line, to the last, is basically the same as losing the election.”
People in the village are shallow-eyed, and what they can’t see is that others take advantage of more than they do. This low income, although Li Zhenmei family is evaluated, but eat not peace of mind. I don’t know when the breakfast of Li Zhenmei’s family changed from rice to thin porridge. When eating, the family of three, each with a bowl of naked, watery porridge, standing outside the door to drink. When there are neighbors passing by, they make a “sucking and sucking” sound, one louder than the other.
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