This was an excellent place, a heavenly place.
During the day, while the prefect was working in the fields, Sister Hua would be either sewing or mending shoes. With one of them working in the fields and the other in the doorway of their home, they would always be carrying on a conversation,
She asked, How could you have decided to simply chop off your hand?
He said, If I hadn’t been disabled, would you have agreed to marry me?
She said, No, I wouldn’t have.
He said, Well, there you have it.
Sometimes, when he was working in the fields and happened to stray too far from the house, such that the two of them could no longer hear each other, she would move her spinning wheel over to where he was working, and would spin cotton or mend shoes while he worked.
He said, This soil is very rich; it’s full of oil.
She said, Actually, you should have accepted the position of magistrate — that is a man’s true honor.
He said, To tell the truth, when I was seven I had a dream that if I wanted to enjoy a heavenly existence, I should study hard. If I studied hard and became an official, heavenly days would await me. So, I studied diligently for thirteen years, passed the jinshi exam, and was appointed county magistrate. When I passed in front of your house, that dream from thirteen years earlier suddenly reappeared in my mind’s eye, with you and the fields of crops appearing just as they had in my dream. I remembered that in my dream there were nine chickens, and your house also turned out to have nine chickens. In my dream there were six or seven ducks, and your house also turned out to have six or seven ducks. In my dream the girl was three years younger than I, and when I met you it turned out that you were seventeen while I was twenty. In my dream there was a pile of grain as big as a mountain, and the mountain slope was covered in fresh flowers, and it turned out that your house also had a pile of grain as big as a mountain and a mountain slope covered in fresh flowers.
He asked, Why wouldn’t I have stayed behind?
Needless to say, each night they would hug each other tight. He told her countless stories he had learned from books, and she would tell him endless stories about life in the mountains. Time flowed like water, grass, or wheat fragrance, as one day followed another, year after year. Eventually she said, Someday, I want to give you a child.
He said, I worry that the child might turn out to be a wholer.
She said, Actually, I hope we have a wholer.
He said, If it is a wholer, then when he grows up he won’t understand people’s lives here, and might miss out on this heavenly life and instead leave and wander aimlessly. He would endure immense hardship and sorrow.
She reflected for a moment, but didn’t respond. She ended up getting pregnant anyway, and while she was pregnant provincial officials discovered that as the new magistrate was on his way to assume his new post in the Shuanghuai county seat, he had happened to encounter days of livening and had decided not to take his assigned post after all. The provincial officials reported this matter to the emperor, who thought, Are you not using the livening days of the disabled to mock the prosperity of the able-bodied? He therefore replied angrily, Having only one hand, he can’t very well fight, but he can certainly cook, so send someone to make him join the army, to cook for the troops.
At that time, there were many uprisings in the area around Yunnan, so the prefect was told to go there to serve as an army cook. When he left, Sister Hua gabbed him by the leg and sobbed. He said, I should have chopped off both of my hands, because if I had, today’s events would never have come to pass. He added, These past few years of livening have been worth it. I’m just worried that after our child is born, you won’t be able to bring yourself to render him disabled. He added, Mark my words. First, wait for me to return, and second, after our child is born, you must at the very least make him lame in one leg, so that he can’t walk properly and would be counted as disabled.
Having said this, the magistrate was taken away by the troops.
Sister Hua gave birth to their child on Sister Hua Slope. The child was a perfectly healthy wholer. Afraid that Sister Hua might have a difficult delivery, the women of Liven all came to watch over her bedside, and they were delighted when she gave birth to a wholer. Given that she was the child’s own mother, how could she possibly bear to maim him? Even the prospect of shaving off a layer of skin from the back of his hand was enough to make her burst into tears. She and the child therefore waited at Sister Hua Slope for her husband to return from Yunnan. They waited and waited, and when her son turned seventeen he announced that he wanted to leave the Balou mountains and go look for his father. One day, the son did in fact leave Liven and set out in search of his father, wandering through distant lands.
Like his father, the son never returned.
In order to encourage her husband and son to come home, Sister Hua stopped planting crops on the hillside, and instead covered the hill with flowers and grass. She planted carriage-wheel chrysanthemums, rizhao plums, magnolias, and white orchids. They were fragrant in autumn and bloomed red in winter, and all year round there was a floral fragrance that could be smelled for more than ten li in every direction.
Sister Hua hoped her husband and son would smell her flowers and return to Balou. Every year when the flowers were in season, she would sit on the hillside gazing out at the world with tear-filled eyes. The year when the flowers and grass were most verdant, and their fragrance spread to permeate the entire region, she was sixty and blind in both eyes, having lost her sight staring out from that flowery hillside.
In the end, Sister Hua’s husband and son never returned. The people of Liven and of Balou never again planted crops in the rich soil of that hillside, and instead just let it continue growing flowers and grass. The hill came to be known as Sister Hua Slope.
5) Loose earth. The term refers not only to the land that each family has planted for itself, but also to a form of farming and a style of life that Liven has practiced for a long time, and that are directly antithetical to those associated with the land and labor collectivization movements. More specifically, the term refers to an existence in which one eats what one grows, does not pay grain taxes, and has no relationship whatsoever with the government.