Spring departed and autumn arrived, bringing the timeline to the year 1958. The late autumn wind already carried a touch of chill as it blew against Lixia’s face, yet it always felt wrapped in an indescribable, stifling dullness. Seven-year-old (by traditional counting) Lixia carried a half-full basket of wild herbs for the pigs, her steps slowly shuffling past the old scholar tree at the entrance of the village. The shadow of the tree fell obliquely across the end of the dirt road; if she walked forward for another ten minutes or so, she would catch sight of that row of white-washed, single-story buildings belonging to the primary school on the street. The reading voices that occasionally drifted over were like tiny insects, gently scratching the tip of her heart.
Across all seven settlements in the entire village, the children who could actually go to the primary school on the street to study could be counted on her ten fingers. Among her four older brothers and sister at home, the eldest sister was fifteen years old and the youngest, the fourth brother, was already eleven, yet not a single one had ever touched a textbook. She didn’t even possess the courage to mention the words “I want to go to school.”
Walking onto the rocky beach by the river, Lixia halted her steps and carefully took off the gloves from her hands, revealing fair, tender, and slender fingers. Those gloves had been pieced together by her using old scraps of fabric; the stitching was crooked and uneven, and thread ends even poked out from the seams between the fingers, making them so ugly she felt embarrassed herself. But there was no helping it; after long days of cutting wild herbs for the pigs, the emerald-green grass juices would seep into the skin, leaving every girl’s fingers a dark, greenish-black. Only during the winter, when they no longer cut wild herbs for the pigs, would the skin gradually fade back to its original color by the start of the following spring. She folded the gloves neatly, tucked them into her clothing pocket, and squatted by the water’s edge to wash her hands, the ice-cold river water jolting her fingertips with numbness.
This was Lixia’s most pleasant “secret eating” moment of the day. She reached into the lottery system and retrieved a warm rice ball, inside of which was rich but non-greasy char siu pork. This rice ball was a system “bug” she had accidentally taken advantage of. Only items obtained from the lottery could be placed inside the system; external objects could not be stuffed in. Because she had drawn one thousand portions of char siu pork during her last lottery, and it so happened that while she was home alone she couldn’t resist secretly steaming a bowl of rice to eat with the char siu pork. Before she could finish eating, however, her eldest sister came back. In her desperation, she stuffed the rice into the system, and it was actually stored inside, though the bowl remained outside. From then on, she would always take advantage of times when no one was home to secretly cook a pot of rice, mix it with the char siu pork to shape into rice balls, and store them away. Whenever she grew tired from chores, she would hide by the river, take one out, and eat it. The soft, chewy rice wrapped around the savory meat aroma; the satisfaction of that moment could make her forget the exhaustion of cutting wild herbs for the pigs, as well as her worries about wanting to go to school.
Having eaten her fill, Lixia walked toward home carrying the wild herbs for the pigs. Just as she reached the courtyard gate, her eldest sister, who was chopping pig feed, came forward to meet her, taking the basket and skillfully emptying it into the stone trough. “These wild herbs are getting older and older; the stalks are extremely thick,” the eldest sister said, tapping the herbs in the stone trough with the back of her knife, her brows furrowed. “I reckon once the temperature drops in another couple of days, they will freeze to death.”
Lixia shuffled over to the edge of the stove, smelling the sweet aroma of sweet potato porridge drifting from the pot. “Eldest Sister, is the food ready? I’ll go deliver food to Mom and Dad.”
“No need for you to deliver it,” the eldest sister said, reaching out to push her slightly aside while the spatula in her hand continued to stir the porridge in the pot. “Let your third brother deliver it. Your strength is small, and there are many rocks on the road; don’t break the bowl.” The fifteen-year-old eldest sister already had her hair combed neatly, and her speech and actions carried a sense of steadiness. She had long been the “manager” of this household, second only to Mom and Dad; she knew perfectly well in her heart who should do what and who couldn’t do what.
Hearing the words “deliver food,” Lixia’s heart felt as if it were being clutched by something, a dull, aching pain. She had originally thought that the village people working the fields was already bitter enough—going down to the fields before dawn, weeding under the baking sun, and bending their waists so low their backs could touch the ground when harvesting crops. Only later did she learn that there was an even more bitter chore, called “river dredging labor.” Every year during the slack farming season, whether man or woman, as long as a household possessed able-bodied labor, they had to go “dredge the river.” She had followed her fourth brother to take a look once. From afar, she caught sight of a dense mass of black figures on the river worksite. Every single person carried a shoulder pole, and the mud baskets at both ends of the poles were piled up to a peak, weighing down the carrying poles until they creaked. Father Yuan and Mother Yuan were among that crowd of people. Father’s waist was bent even lower than when he was at home. In the dead of winter, Mother’s pant legs were rolled up to her knees and her legs were covered in mud, her body swaying with every step she took, looking as if she might collapse at any moment.
In later generations, people often praised the prosperity and affluence of the Jiangnan region, calling it a “land of fish and rice.” However, all of this did not happen overnight; rather, it was only achieved through the diligent efforts and unremitting struggles of generation after generation.
The terrain of the Jiangnan region was low-lying, with rivers crisscrossing and intersecting. Every rainy season, floods would rage, submerging vast expanses of agricultural fields and houses, bringing immense losses and disasters to the local common people. In order to change this situation, the people began grueling and monumental water control projects.
Using crude tools, they excavated the soil scoop by scoop and transported the earthworks basket by basket, tirelessly widening the river channels and deepening the riverbeds. After decades of fighting through countless days and nights, they finally dug out wide rivers one after another.
These rivers could not only effectively divert floodwaters when floods arrived, protecting the fields and houses from the onslaught of inundation, but also provided an ample source of irrigation water for the agricultural fields during dry seasons, ensuring the growth and harvest of crops.
Returning home that day, Lixia barely ate any dinner. At night, waiting for her parents to finish work and return home, she silently boiled hot water, poured it into a wooden basin, and carried it before her parents. Once they finished washing their hands and faces, she climbed onto the brick bed, kneeling behind them to rub their backs. Her strength was small, so rubbing wasn’t of much use, so she took off her shoes, letting them lie prone while she gently stepped on them with her feet. Sometimes as she stepped, she could hear her parents’ even breathing. They were truly too exhausted; lacking even the strength to speak, they fell asleep just like that. Lixia didn’t dare to move, afraid of waking them, and could only gently move her feet away. The moon outside the window rose, shining into the room through the window paper, spilling a faint, pale light.