A Farmer Without Land

My father and mother had me one year after their marriage. In countryside, if a man or woman hadn’t married by the age of twenty-four, they would be called “leftover”. People would talk behind their backs and predict a miserable future – no wife or husband, dying alone without being noticed for days. With the help of a matchmaker, my father met my mother, and they gave no chance for gossip. My father, though the son of a farmer, was not as accomplished as his own father, for he failed with every crop he planted – peas, eggplant, potatoes, chillis, and more - on the land he inherited from his late parents.

My mother often said that my birth was tough. The midwife came to help when my mother’s water broke. After four hours of exhausting of howling and pushing, my mother finally brought me into the world. I guessed that I lingered in her womb because I like the warmth inside. Who would choose to enter a cold world when she could stay in warmth. Born on the Winter Solstice, I entered a world marked by withering, fading, and decay.

My mother thought I might not make it through the days as she lacked the milk to nourish me because of a nutrient deficiency. I was frail and underweight, even smaller than my peers. They even invited a fortune-teller to see if I had a future. My father applied for support from the local government, and each month we received two kilograms of rice for free. That winter I survived. I survived more winters, growing taller and healthier.

An expert was invited to investigate why our land always failed to produce crops. That year, when I was five, I tiptoed after my father as he followed the expert carrying a toolkit box across the land. Curious, I peeked inside and saw spoons, tubes, bags, and tiny boxes. It appeared to me that this kit had the power to transform our barren land into fertile soil. The expert gathered soil samples and left. About a month later, my father’s face was dark and he remained silent throughout lunch. My mother sensed that something bad had happened. My father spoke the cruel truth: our land was contaminated with excessive chemicals, rendering it unsuitable for cultivation. My mother sank into the wooden chair, her sorrow deeper than my father’s. He began to comfort her. Poor families had little to offer each other beyond comfort.

In China, an ancient proverb declares, “A married woman is like water poured away – never to return.” The expression “water poured away” signified that she would bear children who carried a different surname. “Water being poured away!” – the saying filled me with dread. In my nightmare, I became a bowl of water. No one heard my scream as I was spilled onto the ground, which soon dried, erasing me without a trace. Luckily, my father - who held an elementary school diploma - was different from most. He was overjoyed when he heard I had achieved first place in the final exam. To celebrate, he brought me to the town fair and bought me sugarcoated haws, my favorite treat. When I was basking in my parents’ love, my younger brother came into the world. Though it was her second journey into motherhood, she lacked the aptitude for it and often became impatient and irritated when my younger brother cried. My aunt’s words frightened me. She said I needed to care for my baby brother and stop attending school. She was my mother’s elder sister and sometimes came to help. With the money her husband regularly sent from his factory job in Shenzhen, she dressed more finely than any other villager. Her well-off life was proof that Shenzhen was a place where anyone could strike gold.

At the Spring Festival, among the gifts that my aunt’s husband brought back, gleaming candies took my breath away. Their glossy wrappers shimmered in the sunlight and whispered as they were open, like something out of a dream. During the New Year Eve dinner, my aunt’s husband, the man who altered my family’s destiny, advised my father that pig farming was profitable. Upon learning of our limited savings, he urged my father to seek a loan from the bank, though it meant pledging our land. My father pondered the plan for several days. My father and mother resolved to embark on the plan of raising pigs after comparing our life with my aunt’s.

When the loan was finally approved, happiness filled our home. My father brought back a string of sugarcoated haws from town for me and my mother prepared more dishes than ever before. For a poor village family, “more dishes” meant that, beyond the usual fare, we had a plate of fried scrambled eggs, and a plate of fried eggplants. Eventually, the fried eggs belonged only to my younger brother. My mother said nothing, yet my father promised that when fortune came, the pan would overflow with golden eggs for us all.

My father started constructing a shed after buying bricks, asbestos tile, thatch, and dirt cubes. As I returned from school, the tractor loaded with materials rattled past, and soon the shed stood finished. On a Sunday morning, a truck carrying pigs arrived at our yard. The stench of dung filled the air, and their oinks rang in our ears. I pinched my nose, and kept my distance from the truck, though curiosity tugged me forward. After the truck engine stopped, the pigs’ oinks grew clearer. The driver opened the side railing, and set a sliding plate against it, allowing my father to step onto the truck. Bound in a line, the pigs shuffled forward, guided by him, until they descended the plate and touched the earth.

I stared at the pigs, who seemed bewildered and restless, their oinks filling the yard as they shuffled in circles. Their bodies were smeared with earth and dung, a stench strong enough to make one retch. My mother, despite being raised on a farm, could not withstand it and fled from it. After my father had herded the pigs into the shed, I approached them with my nose pinched tight, and watched them crowd the trough, snouts buried in their meal. Sweet potato vines were crushed to aid the pigs’ swallowing and digestion. The big pigs shoved the smaller aside, greedy for more, while the little ones oinked in protest, their cries rising as they were forced away from the trough. A wooden fence stood between the pigpen and the toilet my father set up. Each time I relieved myself, I feared that the pigs would bite me, so I hurried to finish. Only later did I realized that pigs never bite humans. Once my father slipped in the pen, the stench clung to him and could never be removed, even though his clothes were scrubbed again and again.

When spring arrived - an important moment - a boar was borrowed. Curious, I crept to the fence to see what breeding was like. At first, the boar stood in the corner, seeming proud, or perhaps frightened by the sows. Slowly, one sow approached him. They sniffed at each other, and oinked and then the boar climbed up onto her back, a scene that terrified me. The female pig grunted as the boar mated with her, which filled me with distaste. My mother pulled away from the shed. Weeks passed, several sows became pregnant, and three months later, they were ready to give birth. Repeatedly, my father returned to the pen to check their body temperature, waiting for the drop that signaled birth. I studied his face, hoping to read whether the moment had come.

In the second half of night, my father’s joyful cheer woke us, drawing us to the pig shed. In the dim corner of the pen, one of the sows lay heavy on the straw, her body swollen like a balloon, rising and falling with labored grunts. Her nipples were large and pink, as if waiting for her babies to nurse. I guessed she must be suffering for I saw her tears gathering at the corners of her eyes. She pushed harder, then a tiny head appeared. Moments later, the rest of the pink body slipped out. My father cheered, jumping and clapping as the piglet landed in the soft hay. The sow licked the newborn piglet, but soon she resumed grunting, as though more remained within her. The second one seemed to cause her greater pain, and for a while nothing appeared. My father paced back and forth, his hands pressed on his mouth. All of a sudden, my younger brother shouted – the second piglet was coming, but with its legs showing first, which could have been a tragedy. The piglet’s legs were wriggling in the air, while its head remained inside the sow. My father stepped forward to assist, gently pulling on the legs to help with the birth. I prayed silently in my heart as my younger brother grew quiet and my mother kneeled beside my father. The second one was finally pulled out, but there was no sign of life upon its face. My father stared at the lifeless piglet for a moment before he began to weep. He laid it gently aside and then assisted the sow in delivering two more piglets. Afterwards, he placed the three healthy ones at the sow’s nipples, and soon they were feeding. I observed the dead one, its blood dried black upon the skin, its face pale purple, and eyes shut tight - as though it had drifted into a deep slumber. Perhaps, it was a blessing, spared from ever having to face the coldness of the world.

My father spent a large portion of our family’s savings on vaccinations, another on medicines to treat illness, and part on buying thatches for roofs to keep in the warmth, as well as on food for pigs. When the Spring Festival arrived, he would sell them to the fine restaurants in town. Yet before the day arrived, one pig lay collapsed in the pen, blood spots covering each inch of her skin. Swine fever had spread among all the pigs in our village. The next morning, two men arrived dressed in white protective suits, goggles covering their faces, tanks strapped to their backs, and nozzles poised to spray mist into the air. Like villains from a science fiction film, they haunted my nightmares ever after. They explained that they worked at the animal epidemic prevention station and that the injections would ease the pigs’ suffering, allowing them to die peacefully. After the procedure, they gathered all the bodies and placed them into heavy tarpaulin bags, which were then loaded onto their truck.

I knew this accident had struck my father deeply. He grew more silent, as though dark clouds hovered over him. At meals, he would suddenly stop chewing, his eyes fixed on nothing, as if his soul were trapped elsewhere. One afternoon, a pile of documents lay on the table. After four of us had taken our seats, my father announced that our land and house would be taken away for repaying the loans.

We packed our belongings into several bags – mostly clothes, sheets, and blankets. I had a bag for my books, exercise notebooks, and a collection of glossy candy wrappers. In the end, I discovered them tossed into the trash bin. I wept, but my mother scolded me, saying that we were on the verge of being homeless, and had no room for such useless things. The last time I crept to the pig shed, the only trace the pigs had left was the odor clinging to the walls. Yet even that lingering smell would fade someday. Just as the scent would vanish, so too would every trace of my family’s life on this patch of land. A small van pulled up, and then we loaded our belongings inside and drove to my aunt’s home. Though her face showed reluctance, she opened her door for us, knowing people would talk if she didn’t.

With the help of my aunt’s husband, my father found work at a medicine factory in Beijing. I had no HuKou – the legal paper that would allow me enter the public schools – so I was placed in a school for the children of migrant laborers, those who drifted in from the countryside. Children of different ages were placed together in rooms – rooms that felt more like containers than classrooms. Each of us sat bewildered, while the teacher murmured to herself, leaving us to drift in our own thoughts.

The place we lived in Beijing was called Lotus Village, where migrant laborers gathered with their wives and children. Long ago, there had been a lotus pond, and that was how the name remained. The village was dirtier, smellier than my hometown village. People poured their used water onto the ground and the earth carried the scent of soap, sweat and leftover food. In summer, the air grew heavy with it, so thick it made people gag. Anything could be stolen in this village. My shoes disappeared, and women’s bras were taken from the clothesline, and a family’s sheet went missing, and even a bar of soap would vanish if you forgot to bring it back inside.

My father worked hard in the medicine factory that made remedies for colds. The pay was meager. To rub salt into the wound, the boss ran off, unable to repay his debts. In the end, my father was not paid in money, instead, he carried home three cartons of cold medicine. That winter, we squeezed in the five-square-meter room, the four of us trembling in the cold. One night, the bed collapsed beneath us, and it felt as if our lives had collapsed too.

My father roamed the city looking for work, but more and more factories were closing under the weight of the Asian economic crisis. One evening, as he ate noodles my mother had cooked, an idea came to him. He thought he might start a noodle stall with my mother, who could make truly delicious noodles. Then my father built a wooden cart and bought a gas stove, a cylinder of gas, some kitchen utensils, and a large sack of flour with the money that should have gone to my tuition. My mother rose early each morning to prepare the noodles and made two kinds of toppings - scrambled eggs in tomato sauce and eggplants fried with chili. At dawn, she and my father wheeled the cart to the train station, where the day’s work would begin.

Hurried passengers wheeled their luggage through the station, dust rising to hang in the air. There was no better place to witness chaos than a train station. No one had ten minutes to spare for a bowl of noodles. Yet our strongest rival - a peddler of instant noodles - can serve one in just a minute. He tore off the lid, shook the seasoning into the bowl, poured in steaming water, and took the money. It was all over in a minute. In the end, we waited for our moment. Around midnight, we sold twenty bowls to the hungry who lingered for their trains. The steaming noodles brought comfort – not only to their stomachs, but to their weary souls.

What frightened my father and mother was that my brother and I had failed our final exams. My brother was last in his class, and I was second from the bottom. After that, we could no longer show ourselves at the train station.

After our noodle stall began to earn some money, my father resolved to open a small noodle restaurant. My mother thought the move was too risky. In the end, my father found a storefront with cheap rent, so our restaurant began. But just as we were waiting for our customers, three other noodle shops opened beside us. Their places were brighter, more spacious, better decorated, and offered a richer selection. On Sunday afternoon, my father shuffled home with bruises on his face. He had gone to confront the neighboring restaurants, but what he received were punches and kicks. For the next two days, he ate nothing. Then three men came to take away our kitchen utensils and equipment for scrap. My father stood in the empty restaurant and for a short while, he wailed. I quietly approached my father, and instead of receiving a hug from him, I gave him my first hug while he was crying.