Raising my baby in 1960s China (1)

Huang YueLiang

[**The author of the popular blog series on MoshangUS, “Lanlan diary” during the March-April coronavius outbreak in New York/New Jersey, was killed in a car accident. The author’s mother is now writing her own blogs in memory of Lanlan. This is her story]**

translated by: Xi Fan

January 18, 1969, for Yungui Plateau of southwest China, was a rare sunny day. I was lying on the delivery bed in Guiyang Medical College, looking out the window in between the pain of contraction. The sky was really blue, the clouds were really white, and the sun was so bright.

Early in the morning, my baby started kicking hard in my belly, as if tumbling inside. (in those days, there was no epidural or any kind of anesthetic, all childbirth was done naturally) Some time after 4 pm, in a surge of overwhelming pain and tears, my daughter was born. A nurse took her over and placed her between my legs, foot to foot, under the cover of a thin blanket, a male nurse pushed us out of the delivery room, and I heard my baby crying along the way.

It was at the height of the Cultural Revolution, dramatic changes came wave after wave. As doctors were considered “reactionary academic authority”, they were mostly sent to the “barn” (rural areas to do hard labor) or camps (to be “educated”). Fortunately, nurses were a group without those kind of “authority”, so they could still stay on the job, and helped me give birth to my baby.

In the ward, it was the same male nurse who picked me up and placed me on the hospital bed, and placed my daughter next to my pillow. The little one surprised me with a big sneeze as soon as she saw me. I looked closely at her tender little face: thin lips, small eyes, lots of wrinkles on the forehead, my first feeling was, this baby is so ugly and cute! what! All this is still so vivid, as if it happened yesterday.

At that time, I was still an “educated youth” (the entire generation of high school students from the cities across the country, sent to rural areas to be “re-educated” by the peasant class). Perhaps because I had been doing physical labor, the process of giving birth went pretty smoothly. After spending a few days in the hospital, my mother accompanied me to walk back to home, not far from the hospital.

The arrival of my daughter brought a ray of sunshine to our family under the thick cloud of grim realities at that time, and brought us hope of life. Her carefree crying and laughters brought a lot of life to an otherwise dead-silent home. She made my grandfather very happy, he enjoyed the four generations under one roof. He would come to my room in his traditional clothes whenever he could, sitting by the fire basket and chat with me. In fact, he just really wanted to see his great-granddaughter.

During the first month, we just called my daughter “the baby”, thinking that when her dad comes, he could give her a good name. But my mother said, as little as she was, she was also a real person, how can she have no name? Let’s start with a nickname, and her dad could give her an official name later.

Before my baby arrived, three generations of my family lived together. My grandfather, who was named as a “rightist” (those identified by the government as hostile to the communist regime), had lost his job a long while ago and was staying at home. My mother was expelled by the Guizhou Military Region Bayi School, and came back home and worked at a service station, making shoe soles by hand, her pay was based on the number of soles she made, each pair for about 20–30 cents. My father was identified as a “pre-liberation counterrevolutionary”, (enemy of the communist regime before it took power) sent to labor camp at Dongpo Fruit Tea Farm in Huangping, we hardly hear anything about him.

My oldest kid brother was also an “educated youth” at Moon Hill in Sandu County , supporting himself with meager “work points” (each day of work was recorded in a point system, based on which pay was calculated). My youngest kid brother was still a middle school student, while the school was in the state of “suspending all classes for the revolution”. Everyday he would take less than 50 cents to the farm market to get in line to buy radish or cabbage that cost a few cents a pound.

Even the 10 Yuan (RMB) alimony sent by my uncle who worked at the Chongqing Power Supply Bureau to grandpa every month suddenly stopped, because he was required to disown his (pre-liberation counterrevolutionary / rightist) family to keep his job, at a time of “class struggle” being talked up all over the country. Therefore, the livelihood of our whole family at that time was supported by my mother’s meager income, and about 20 Yuan RMB my husband sent each month. We were facing deep economic hardship.

At a time when everyone was having a hard time, it was even harder for our family, with a great burden of humiliation. It came from an officially defined caste: because my father worked for the previous government (before the communists took over), he was put in the category of “pre-liberation counterrevolutionary” in the 1954 purge. So our entire family became political pariahs and lived at the bottom of society. My grandfather and my mother were called “counter-revolutionary families”, me and my brothers were called “black dog bastards”. Those who moved in to what used to be our private house after the “private housing reform” (basically confiscation of private properties by the government), while “supervising/monitoring” us, could also scold my grandpa and us at their whim, and we had no recourse to argue or defend ourselves.

Life was so difficult, survival was so hard! Our entire family lived in such a depressing environment. Even if the sky was clear, we couldn’t see a hint of bright color. My mother said, since our life was so hard, just call my baby “nan nan”, (“nan” means difficult/hard in Chinese) so my daughter had her first nick name in her life.

(to be continued)