In the blink of an eye, the cold winds of the twelfth lunar month blew into the village, carrying the scent of the upcoming New Year. Since the start of winter, the first thing Li Xia did every morning upon waking was silently thank the heavens that she was still a nine-month-old infant. She didn’t have to be like her eldest and second sisters, who had to wrap themselves in patched cotton jackets before dawn and head out with frozen, stiff hands to “scrape dung.”
“Scraping dung” involved carrying a bamboo basket and clutching a small bamboo broom while walking slowly along the village’s dirt roads. Whenever they saw droppings left by cows, sheep, or pigs, they would quickly sweep them into the basket. Then, they would carefully carry it back and dump it into the manure pile in the corner outside the courtyard to ferment, waiting for spring to use it as fertilizer for the fields. In this era, there was no chemical fertilizer, and the harvest depended entirely on this “farmyard manure.” Even in the freezing cold, no one dared to rest.
The two sisters were the family’s primary labor force after their parents. The eldest sister, Chunfen, was nine and could already follow the adults into the fields to reap wheat. The second sister, Xiaoman, was seven; besides scraping dung, she had to feed the pigs, wash clothes, and help their mother cook. Occasionally, during the slack farming season, the second brother, Lidong, would be called to lend a hand, but most of the time, the grueling work was prioritized for the girls. The villagers seemed accustomed to this division of labor—it was considered a girl’s duty to work hard. Only during busy seasons like spring plowing or autumn harvest, when they were truly overwhelmed, would they make use of the boys in the family.
Li Xia lay in her warm bed, watching her mother get up before dawn. Her mother would first block the gaps at the head of the bed tightly with old pillows—fearing she might crawl off and fall when no one was looking—before hurrying to tie on an apron and head to the kitchen to light the stove and cook. Once her mother’s footsteps faded into the distance, Li Xia would secretly take out a calcium milk biscuit from the system warehouse and feed it into her mouth bit by bit. The milky fragrance of the biscuit dissolved on the tip of her tongue, a rare sweetness in these bitter times. She only dared to eat one at a time. After all, so far, the only ready-to-eat food she had drawn from the system was these one hundred cases of biscuits. Her third lottery draw had occurred when she was seven months old; although she had drawn one thousand raw eggs, she couldn’t eat them yet and could only keep them stored in the system, hoping she would grow up faster.
Perhaps because she had been secretly adding a biscuit as a snack every day for the past month, Li Xia clearly felt her arms and legs were much stronger than before. When she had nothing to do, she would lie prone on the bed covered with coarse cloth padding and work hard at practicing crawling and standing. She would use her tiny arms to prop up her body and move forward, or hold onto the railing at the head of the bed to slowly stand up. Even if she could only hold it for a few seconds each time, she never grew tired of it. She desperately wanted to shed her identity as a “crawling creature” and live the life of a “two-legged beast” who could walk on her own. That way, she could follow her sisters to the courtyard to bask in the sun instead of always being confined to the bed.
About two hours later, the voices of her eldest and second sisters came from outside the courtyard gate. Li Xia pricked up her ears to listen. Before long, the bedroom door was pushed open. Chunfen’s small face was flushed red from the cold, and a bit of white frost clung to the tip of her nose; even her breath came out in white puffs. “Is Li Xia awake?” Chunfen smiled as she set down her bowl, reached out to feel Li Xia’s forehead, and then skillfully dressed her in a thick cotton jacket and pants before carrying her to the dining table in the central room. By now, Li Xia could already join the family in drinking a bit of thin porridge. Although the porridge had few rice grains and many wild vegetables, she would stop after only half a small bowl—after all, having secretly eaten a biscuit in the morning, her stomach wasn’t hungry.
At the breakfast table, amidst the swirling steam, her parents discussed the New Year arrangements while drinking their porridge. Suddenly, Mother Yuan set down her chopsticks and looked at Father Yuan: “Is it our family’s turn to slaughter the pigs tomorrow?”
Father Yuan nodded. “Yes, Second Great-Uncle is coming to help tomorrow morning. Regarding our two pigs, I’m thinking of selling one and a half and keeping half a pig for ourselves. It’ll let the kids have a taste of meat.”
“Keep half?” Mother Yuan frowned. “Setting aside the need to entertain relatives for the New Year, you’ll have to give some to your mother’s side and a portion to Second Great-Uncle as payment. How much will be left in the end?”
Father Yuan paused, his tone hesitant: “Then otherwise… should we sell one and keep one for ourselves?”
“Keep one to eat?!” Mother Yuan’s voice rose sharply before she quickly lowered it again. “I’d rather sell them both for cash, just to save your mother from constantly eyeing them.”
Cradled in her mother’s arms, Li Xia saw the flash of resentment in her mother’s eyes and caught the irrepressible helplessness on her father’s face. She suddenly remembered her paternal grandmother, whom she had seen once after the autumn harvest. That day, her parents had gone to town to deliver the public grain tax. They had just arrived home and hadn’t even had time for a drink of water when her grandparents arrived with a flatbed cart, clutching empty cloth bags—they had come to demand “old-age grain.” Her father didn’t say anything; he just silently packed up the grain stored at home for them and watched as his father loaded the grain onto the cart and pushed it away.
That night, her mother was so angry she didn’t eat a single bite. She sat on the edge of the k’ang bed and grumbled all night long, allowing Li Xia to “hear all the gossip.” It turned out her father was the eldest child. Above him was a married elder sister, and below him were a younger brother and a younger sister. According to village custom, the parents should have lived with the eldest son, but her grandparents disliked her father and favored the younger son—after all, they had raised the younger son themselves, while her father had been raised by his own grandparents. When the family split, her grandparents insisted on living with the younger son and even gave the incense shrine (the cabinet used for family worship), which should have been inherited by the eldest, to the second son. Her father, being honest and simple, eventually agreed. He only asked for the large tree behind the house, intending to build his own incense shrine, but his parents wouldn’t even grant that small request. His younger brother and sister-in-law just stood by silently, letting the old couple take the lead.
In the end, her father was only given this old, dilapidated adobe house where his grandparents used to live, plus two bags of grain and some old household items. Almost all the furniture and farm tools remained at the grandmother’s house (the second uncle’s house). Her mother said that if she hadn’t gotten up in the middle of one night and seen smoke rising from the grandmother’s chimney and smelled the fragrance of rice, she wouldn’t have known the old couple had long since hidden away the good grain, only willing to divide the small amount of grain left in the open during the family split. “They aren’t even that old and still farm two mu of land themselves, yet they come every year to demand old-age grain!” The more her mother spoke, the angrier she became. “There are no other elderly people in this village so young who demand grain from their sons. Why don’t I see them asking the second son for anything?”
These matters were like a thorn buried deep in her mother’s heart, impossible to pull out. Every time the topic came up, her father would eventually slam the table in anger: “That’s enough! Just mention it and be done with it, don’t go on forever!” Her mother could only blow her nose hard, swallow her words, and endure the grievance. Listening to all this, Li Xia felt a knot in her chest as well. *Sigh, it’s all because of poverty.*
Sure enough, the next morning, Second Great-Uncle arrived with his slaughtering tools. After some busy work, the two pigs were processed. Just as the meat was being portioned out, the grandparents arrived right on time. No matter how unhappy her mother was, she had to force a smile and busy herself with cooking—after all, Second Great-Uncle was still there, and they couldn’t lose their manners. After lunch, Second Great-Uncle left with a portion of meat as his wage. From the meat already set aside, her mother picked a piece that was mostly lean with very little fat and handed it to the grandmother. Who would have thought that the old lady, as soon as she stepped out of the courtyard, would complain to the neighbors: “The eldest daughter-in-law is too stingy! The meat she gave me is not only small, but it’s all lean meat without a drop of oil!”
Her mother’s anger simmered until the afternoon, and it wasn’t until her father handed her the cash from selling the pork that a small smile finally appeared on her face as she looked at the crumpled bills. Sitting to the side and watching her mother’s smile, Li Xia thought silently: *It turns out that for this family, the New Year is never just about excitement and good food; it’s also filled with all these inexplicable grievances and helplessness.*