Snow Flower and I rubbed her children’s hands. They wept quietly, even the eldest boy. We pushed the three children together and covered them with a quilt. Snow Flower and I nestled together under another, while the mother-in-law took an entire quilt for herself. The last was for the butcher. He waved at us dismissively. He pulled one of the men from Jintian aside, whispered a few words, and nodded. He knelt down beside Snow Flower.
“I’m going to look for more firewood,” he announced.
Snow Flower gripped his arm. “Don’t go! Don’t leave us.”
“Without a fire, we won’t last the night,” he said. “Don’t you feel it? Snow is coming.” He gently pried Snow Flower’s fingers from his arm. “Our neighbors will look after you while I’m gone. Do not be afraid. And”—here he lowered his voice—”if you have to, push these people away from the fire. Make room for yourself and your friend. You can do it.”
And I thought, Maybe she can’t, but I couldn’t allow myself to die up here without my family.
As tired as we all were, we were too scared to sleep or even close our eyes. And we were all hungry and thirsty. In our little circle around the fire, the women—who I learned later were post-marriage sworn sisters—distracted us from our fears by singing a story. It’s a funny thing that although my mother-in-law was extremely literate in nu shu—perhaps because she was so familiar with such a variety of characters—singing and chanting had not been very important to her. She was more interested in composing a perfect letter or a lovely poem than in the entertaining or consoling qualities of a song. Because of this, my sisters-in-law and I had forsaken many of the old chants we had grown up with. In any event, the tale sung that night was familiar but one I hadn’t heard since childhood. It told of the Yao people, their first home, and their brave fight for independence.
“We are Yao people,” Lotus, a woman perhaps ten years older than I, began. “In antiquity, Gao Xin, a kind and benevolent Han emperor, was under attack by an evil and ambitious general. Panhu—a mangy, unwanted dog—heard of the emperor’s problems and challenged the general to battle. He won and was given the hand of one of the emperor’s daughters. Panhu was happy, but his betrothed was embarrassed. She did not want to marry a dog. Still, her duty was clear, so she and Panhu fled into the mountains, where she gave birth to twelve children, the very first Yao people. When they grew up, they built a town called Qianjiadong—the Thousand-Family Grotto.”
This first part of the story finished, another woman, Willow, took up the chant. Next to me, Snow Flower shivered. Was she remembering our daughter days, when we listened to Elder Sister and her sworn sisters or Mama and Aunt as they sang this story of our beginnings?
“Could there be a place of so much water and such good land?” Willow asked in the song. “Could it be safer from intruders when it was hidden from sight, the only access through a cavernous tunnel? Qianjiadong held much magic for the Yao people. But such a paradise cannot remain undisturbed forever.”
I began to hear verses sung by women sitting around other fires in the bowl. The men should have stopped our chanting, for certainly the rebels could hear us. But the purity of the women’s voices gave us all strength and courage.
Willow continued. “Many generations later, in the Yuan dynasty, someone from the local government, bold in his explorations, walked through the tunnel and found the Yao people. Everyone was dressed resplendently. Everyone was fat from the wealth of the land. Hearing of this tantalizing place, the emperor—greedy and without gratitude—demanded high taxes from the Yao people.”
Just as the first snowflakes fell on our hair and faces, Snow Flower linked her arm through mine and raised her voice to recount the next part of the story. “Why should we pay? the Yao people wanted to know.” Her voice trilled with the cold. “On top of the mountain that blocked their village from intruders, they built a parapet from stone. The emperor sent three tax collectors into the cavern to negotiate. They did not come out. The emperor sent another three—”
The women around our fire joined in. “They did not come out.”
“The emperor sent a third contingent.” Snow Flower’s voice gathered power. I had never heard her this way. Her voice floated out clear and beautiful across the mountains. If the rebels had heard her, they would have run away, fearing a fox spirit.
“They did not come out,” we women called our response.
“The emperor sent troops. A bloody siege occurred. Many Yao people—men, women, and children—died. What to do? What to do? The headman took a water buffalo horn and divided it into twelve pieces. These he gave to different groups and told them to scatter and live.”
“Scatter and live,” we women repeated.
“This is how the Yao people came to be in the valleys and in the mountains, in this province and in others,” Snow Flower wound down.
Plum Blossom, the youngest woman in our group, finished the tale. “They say that in five hundred years, Yao people, wherever they are, will walk through the cavern again, put the horn back together, and rebuild our enchanted home. That time comes to us soon.”
It had been many years since I’d heard the story, and I didn’t know what to think. The Yao had believed they were secure, hidden behind the safety of the mountain, their parapet, and the secret cavern, but they were not. Now I wondered who would come into our mountainous bowl first and what would happen when they did. The Taipings might try to win us over, while the Great Hunan Army might mistake us for rebels. Either way, would we fight a losing battle and be like our ancestors? Would we ever be able to return home? I considered the Taipings, who—like the Yao people—had revolted against high taxes and rebelled against the feudal system. Were they right? Should we join them? Were we violating our ancestors by not honoring that?
That night none of us slept.
Winter
THE FOUR FAMILIES FROM JINTIAN STAYED TOGETHER UNDER the protection of the large tree with its spreading branches, but the ordeal didn’t end—not after two nights or even a week. We suffered worse snow that year than had been in our province in anyone’s memory. We endured freezing temperatures at every moment. Our breaths became clouds of steam that were swallowed by the mountain air. We were always hungry. Each family hoarded its food, unsure of how long we would be away. Coughs, colds, and sore throats swept back and forth across the camp. Men, women, and children continued to die from these ailments and from the relentlessly frigid nights.
My feet—and those of most of the women in these mountains—had been badly hurt during our escape. We did not have privacy, so we had to unwrap, clean, and rewrap our feet in front of the men. And we overcame our embarrassment about other body functions, learning to do our business behind a tree or in the common latrine, once it was dug. But unlike most women up here, I was without my family. I desperately missed my eldest son and the rest of my children. I worried constantly about my husband, his brothers, my sisters-in-law, their children, even the servants—and if they had reached the protection of Yongming City.
It took almost a month for my feet to heal enough to walk on them again without restarting the bleeding. At the beginning of the twelfth lunar month, I decided I would go every day in search of my brothers and their families and Elder Sister and her family. I hoped they were safe up here, but how could I locate them when we were ten thousand people spread out across the mountains? Each day I draped one of the quilts over my shoulders and gingerly set out, always marking my progress, knowing that if I didn’t find my way back to Snow Flower’s family I would surely perish.