Before dawn the next morning, even before the roosters began crowing, the sound of a gong rang out thunderously from outside. Someone was shouting, “Everybody get up and get ready to harvest rice!”
It was the brigade leader of Shenjia Village. After repeating the call several times, the sound of the gong faded into the distance. Shen Yao heard her father open the door and head out. Not long afterward, the sound of whistles traveled farther and farther away. Similar gongs and whistles echoed through all twenty-six production teams in Shenjia Village, and the village, silent throughout the night, burst into activity.
At five in the morning, the brigade loudspeaker began playing The East Is Red. Amid the broadcast of the revolutionary song, Shenjia Village’s annual double harvest season officially began in a lively atmosphere.
Shen Yao did not linger in bed. She got up, washed, and once everyone else had headed to the fields, she grabbed a basket and went into the hills to cut pig fodder. Having followed Shen Gang along the mountain paths for several days, she was already familiar with the routes. Going into the hills alone for the first time did not frighten her much. Knowing her strength was limited, she stopped once the basket was more than half full, judging that to be about all she could carry, and headed home. By then, the sun had already risen.
In the courtyard, Shen Yao chopped up the pig fodder. Once she estimated the time was right, she went into the kitchen to prepare breakfast.
Tasks that always looked easy and effortless when Wang Yunzhi and Shen Gang did them somehow went completely wrong in her hands. Just getting the firewood lit took more than half an hour. Fortunately, after hurrying and fumbling her way through, she managed to cook the porridge. Following her memory of how Wang Yunzhi did it, she also scooped out the rice for lunch and dinner.
Although she did not know much about the double harvest season, she understood that it was the hardest time of the year for local farmers, so she used slightly more rice than usual. The remaining porridge after the rice was scooped out was thick and hearty. After much trial and error, she finally finished cooking a pot of porridge. There was still a little of each dish left over from the previous day. Reheating them would be troublesome, and the large farmhouse cooking pots were far too heavy for her to move. She decided to let the family simply reheat the porridge and make do with the cold dishes.
Once she finished the kitchen work, Shen Yao put out the fire in the stove before returning outside to continue chopping pig fodder.
When the three members of the Shen family returned from the early shift at eight o’clock, they saw Shen Yao sitting on a low stool in the courtyard, chopping pig fodder with a kitchen knife. She looked up at them and smiled. Her fair face was covered with black, white, and gray smudges in uneven patches.
Although they had noticed that Shen Yao had become much more sensible, it was still the first time they had left her alone at home. Wang Yunzhi was startled by her appearance.
“What happened to your face?”
Shen Yao looked puzzled and touched her face.
“What happened?”
She only succeeded in smearing it even more before realizing that stove ash had somehow gotten onto her hands. She hurried into the house to look in a mirror.
Wang Yunzhi entered the kitchen. The moment she stepped through the door, she smelled the fragrance of porridge. In the basin on the stove was the rice already scooped out. Lifting the lid, she found half a pot of thick sweet potato porridge.
The emotions that welled up inside her at that moment were difficult to describe. Her nose stung, and tears threatened to spill. She was happy, truly happy, yet so happy that she wanted to cry.
Her daughter had really recovered. She truly had. She no longer needed to worry about how her daughter would live in the future or what kind of family she would marry into.
Her hands were dirty, so Wang Yunzhi wiped her eyes with her sleeve. Then she went to the hand pump, washed up, returned to the kitchen, and ladled out several bowls of porridge.
Shen Guozhong was surprised. He had assumed it would take at least another half hour before they could eat. Then he noticed Wang Yunzhi’s reddened eyes.
He heard her say, “Yaoyao already made breakfast. No wonder her face was smudged like a little tabby cat’s. Ever since she was little, I never let her near the stove. I was afraid she’d get hurt by knives or fire. It’s her first time cooking by herself, and she did this well. Our Yaoyao is really quite clever.”
To Shen Guozhong, the bowl of porridge he ate that morning was the sweetest and most delicious porridge he had ever tasted in his life.
Before this, Shen Yao’s contact with farmers had been limited to two things. One was a chance encounter with the steward and his wife from her family’s estate. The other was the depiction of farmers in the poems and writings of scholars and literary talents.
The steward and his wife had always been relatively respectable people, and whenever they met the estate owners, they took special care with their appearance. As for poetry, its descriptions of farmers were merely superficial.
So, after the village finished its frantic harvest and entered the third day of replanting, Shen Yao was shocked to discover that the skin between her parents’ and brother’s fingers and toes had peeled away layer after layer. Their feet were especially terrible. The flesh between their toes had eroded so badly that orange-red strands of raw tissue were exposed. She cried uncontrollably at the sight.
Shen Guozhong was somewhat at a loss.
“W-Why are you crying? It’s like this every year during rice planting.”
Shen Yao could not understand how working in the fields could damage the skin so severely. Shen Guozhong explained:
“The newly tilled rice paddies are treated with lime and chemical fertilizer. The mud and water dissolve pesticides and fertilizer, making them corrosive. That’s why this happens. There’s nothing that can be done about it. Everyone’s the same. Once the double harvest season is over and some time passes, it’ll heal. It just looks frightening.”
His attempt at reassurance did not help at all.
Shen Yao had not been with this family for very long, but they truly cherished her. Even Shen Gang, who was younger than her, always acted as though he were the older brother. By now, she already regarded them as her real family. Seeing them suffer like this was something she could not bear.
She grabbed Shen Guozhong’s arm and said, “Dad, can’t we stop being farmers? Can’t we move to the city? Farmers have it too hard.”
Shen Guozhong patted her head and sighed.
“If only it were that easy.”
He looked at his daughter, who was growing into a beautiful young woman, and said:
“There’s not much hope for me anymore. But you and Gangzi still have a chance. After the double harvest season ends, study your characters properly. In life, you never know when an opportunity might come your way. Only those who are prepared can seize opportunities and live better lives. Setting distant examples aside, just look at me. If I couldn’t read and write, and if I didn’t know a thing or two about farming, I never would have become team leader. Even though it only earns me one extra month’s worth of work points each year compared to an ordinary commune member, it’s still additional income.”
He also said to Shen Yao and Shen Gang, who was sitting nearby, “Study hard. No one gets to choose where they’re born. You were born here in the countryside, but the road ahead is yours to choose. There are only three ways out of rural life: the military, factory work, or becoming a cadre. Whether you become a soldier, a worker, or a cadre yourselves, or marry someone who is, whatever the case, work hard to leave the countryside.”
Since the topic had come up with the two children today, he took the opportunity to carefully analyze their possible futures for them. Opportunities only came to those who were prepared.
Slogans about contributing to socialism were plastered everywhere, but who was truly willing to spend day after day, year after year, endlessly bent over farm work? Who did not envy the polished lives of city people? Shen Guozhong was a Party member, but he was not filled with that much self-sacrificing spirit. He hoped his children could leave the countryside and earn a respectable living supported by state grain rations.
The rest of the Shen family did not think much about the corrosion on their hands and feet, but Shen Yao took it to heart. She searched through the original owner’s memories and recalled a type of shoe called overshoes, also known as rain boots. They were waterproof. If worn while transplanting rice seedlings, they would at least protect the feet.
The irony was that this kind of shoe, which was perfectly suited to rural life, was beyond the reach of most villagers.
In this place, buying grain required grain coupons, buying oil required oil coupons, buying cloth required cloth coupons, and buying shoes required shoe coupons. A farmer from the countryside needed one or two liang worth of grain coupons just to buy a baked flatbread in town. The state assigned farmers all sorts of labor quotas, but did not provide enough cloth coupons, oil coupons, or other ration coupons to meet their daily needs.
As a result, in villages like Shenjia Village, very few people could afford overshoes because they could not obtain the necessary coupons. Most wore cloth shoes or straw sandals, and many children went barefoot. When it came time to work in the paddies, no one was willing to ruin their precious cloth shoes, so they stepped into the fields barefoot. Besides, even wearing cloth shoes in the fields was not much help.
In the past, Fifth Grandma’s family had possessed some coupons. Now, according to Shen Yao’s memories, the only people with various ration coupons were the educated youths who had come from the cities.
After dinner, Shen Guozhong rested briefly before heading out to blow his whistle and notify everyone to report for night work. Efficient rice transplanting depended on having enough seedlings prepared in advance. Pulling seedlings at night was a separate task that earned its own work points. Workers would pull up the seedling clusters, wash the mud from the roots, and tie them securely with rice straw into bundles.
The villagers were highly enthusiastic about pulling seedlings. Rural nights were much cooler than daytime, and the seedling fields were crowded with people pulling and washing seedlings. Experienced farmers who could work skillfully with both hands could earn as many work points in a night as they did during a day shift.
Once the family had all gone out, Shen Yao paced back and forth through the main hall several times. After thinking it over, she left the house and headed across the river.
The educated youths’ dormitories were lined up in a row, and the outermost room belonged to Song Jincheng. Without much thought, Shen Yao headed straight there. However, before her hand could reach the door to knock, someone called out to her.
“Shen Yao, what are you doing here?”
Turning around, she saw He Shi and Xu Xiangdong approaching with lunch tins in hand. It looked like they had just picked up their meals from Shen Laoliu’s house and were heading back to eat. In the darkness, she could not clearly make out He Shi’s expression.
By now, she no longer disliked him as much as she had at first. Since she had come specifically to find the educated youths anyway, it made little difference whether she asked He Shi or Song Jincheng first.
“I came to ask if any of you have shoe coupons,” she said. “If you do, I’d like to exchange for a few. I can trade money or rice.”
He Shi quietly breathed a sigh of relief. The moment he had seen her heading toward Song Jincheng’s door, he remembered the time she had sneaked into his room at night and thought she had done something foolish again.
Shoe coupons were something he certainly did not lack.
Looking at her, he said, “I do. But I don’t cook, so rice isn’t very useful to me.”
The moment Shen Yao heard that he had some, her eyes lit up. She also caught the meaning behind his words. He was probably not interested in either money or rice.
“I need three coupons. What would you like in exchange? Our family’s circumstances are pretty limited, though.”
After hesitating, she gritted her teeth and added, “We do have a chicken we could trade.”
For rural families, aside from the pigs in the pen, chickens were among their most valuable possessions. They relied on them to lay eggs for extra income or nutritional supplements. He Shi could practically feel her reluctance as she offered the chicken.
Smiling, he said, “That won’t be necessary. Just treat me to a few meals later.”
“Wait here a moment. I’ll go get them.”
With that, he walked past Shen Yao and headed inside. Xu Xiangdong hurried after him, following him into his room.
Watching He Shi rummage through his bag, pull out three shoe coupons, and head back outside, Xu Xiangdong’s curiosity was burning.
When Shen Yao accepted the three shoe coupons He Shi handed her, she was still having trouble believing it. She had only come on the off chance that someone might have them. She had never expected things to go so smoothly.
After giving her the coupons, He Shi did not leave immediately. He cleared his throat softly and said,
“In the future, if you need something, come find people during the day. You’re a girl. It’s better for you to stay at home at night.”
The moment the words left his mouth, he felt as though he were inexplicably worrying like an old father.
Chuckling, he added, “Hurry home.”
Shen Yao was quick-witted. After a brief thought, she understood exactly what he meant. Rather than finding it annoying, she felt he was actually quite upright and decent.
Smiling at him, she said, “Thank you. After the double harvest season is over, when Gangzi and I catch some fish, we’ll invite you over for dinner.”
He Shi laughed.
“Alright.”
When He Shi returned to his room, he found Xu Xiangdong leaning against the table with his arms crossed, shaking his head as he stared at him.
Without changing expression, He Shi walked over, pulled up a stool, sat down, and opened his lunch tin.
“Eat. Let’s get some rest afterward.”
Xu Xiangdong dragged over a stool and sat down as well.
Looking at He Shi, he asked, “You really don’t think you’re especially good to that little girl?”
He Shi paused with his chopsticks.
“Yes.”
He was openly admitting that he treated Shen Yao better than others.
Excited, Xu Xiangdong slapped the table lightly with a smack and laughed.
“Brother, I knew it! I could tell ages ago that you like Shen Yao!”