Chinese Literature

was bitterly cold. Everyone in the village was seized with the same fear. ae. “Merciful Heavens, is it going to be like last year again?”

I

The sky eventually cleared up; people crept out of the gloomy houses in which they had been hiding for over a month, and looked about. Happy smiles hovered on pale, sallow faces; children ran around in groups under the sun, their bare legs sporting over the soft muddy ground.

Everywhere the water level was high—in the ponds, the fields and the lakes. Young grass was springing up all over the place and sparkling rain drops hung from the rushes like little particles of silvery pearls. The willows too had begun to sprout. Spring sunshine appearing after a long period of rain lent an atmosphere of vitality and freshness to everything in the village.

People promptly started to chatter among themselves and bustle with activity. On the foot-paths near the fields, bare-footed people walked about, loitering here and there, now pointing at the ponds, now examining the ditches and talking of this and that. All of them were making plans and preparations for the work of the coming season.

There was a sudden drop in the market for rain hats since the weather had cleared up in that vicinity. The men could no longer stay at home all day to cut the strips, and as a result work slackened for the women and children. The tight screws of life were immediately felt within the whole village.

Uncle Yun-pu, who had prayed day in and day out for the rain to stop, now had his wish fulfilled. But a smile only flickered fleetingly over his face; it disappeared immediately to be followed by tightly knitted brows. It was still too cold to dispense with his padded gown. The sun only produced a faint tingle of warmth on Uncle Yun-pu’s body, but he did not bother about that. He was only worried as to how he could get over the present crisis—how to get a few good meals of rice so as to have strength enough to go to work in the fields.

The drop in the market for rain hats. meant cutting out their daily meals of thin gruel. Uncle Yun-pu was therefore more worried than ever. He was convinced that it was his fate to suffer: he had not known an hour of comfort since the day he was born. By the time he was fifty, he had undergone any number of hardships, but he had yet to see one happy day. The fortune-tellers said that his old age would be spent in comfort, but that was something which would come about after he had turned fifty-five. It was hard for him to believe in something so far in the future. Neither of his sons was at all worldly-wise, and he found it

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