Chinese Literature

if this year’s fate was already sealed. Had not the oracle in the Kuan Ti* Temple stated clearly that it was going to be a bad year and that death would take a toll of 60 to 70 per cent of the population?

Memories of past suffering, deeply engraved in the mind of Uncle Yun-pu, inspired these fears. He remembered the year 1924 when he had just managed to scrape together one meal a day composed of yams and weeds which he had gathered here and there. The year after was slightly better, but the following year they were again reduced to tree bark and roots. As for previous famine years, they had occurred when he was still very young, so the suffering did not seem quite so bad. But last year—Heavens! It was something Uncle Yun-pu dared not even think about.

The year before, there had been eight mouths to feed in his household; this year there were only six left. Besides Yun-pu and his wife, there was their eldest son, twenty-year-old Li-chiu, who was his father’s right-hand man. The second son, Shao-pu, was fourteen. He too had started to help with work in the fields. Ying-ying, the ten-year-old daughter, helped her mother make rain hats, and the youngest was Szehsi, the baby, who was still being breast-fed. Yun-pu’s father and the six-year-old child, Tiger, had died the September before from eating Mercy Powder.**

What a jolly family he had, and not a single member who ate without working for it! Who would say Uncle Yun-pu wasn’t destined to become rich? Yes, Uncle Yun-pu was meant to spend a comfortable and prosperous old age. It was only tough luck that had brought a succession of wars, droughts and floods, year after year, erushing him so that he could hardly raise his head.

The year before, that dreadful year before, had been worse than a nightmare. Because of wars and natural calamities, he had been compelled, in desperation, to rent seven mou of Mr. Ho’s land in the hope that his fortune might take a turn for the better. After all, there were many hands in his family; each extra mou of land cultivated would mean just so much more at harvest time. He had hoped that after deducting the rent to be paid to Ho there would be some grain left for themselves. If they could have managed to get enough to eat for a year or so, there is no question but that they would have become prosperous. Yun-pu had made up his mind to sell his entire property, which consisted of the little hut they lived in, and become a tenant of Mr. Ho’s.

He had moved his whole family into the ancestral temple in March and had become caretaker of the ancestral tablets, for which duty he was

*uan Ti, or Emperor Kuan, was regarded by the peasants in some parts of China as the ruler in Heaven. Originally called Kuan Yu, he was a famous general during

‘the period of the Three Kingdoms in the third century.

** Fine white clay, believed to be edible and sent by Kuanyin, the Goddess of Mercy.

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